Chapter 13.A

“Everyone good with the plan?” asked Cerulean. The team nodded in response. Hank double checked the magazine on his 1911, and then made sure he had one in the chamber before re-holstering it in his concealed carry crossbreed holster. He drew the rail-pistol, ready to fight. There was still a large line of people carefully shuffling into the large stone building carrying their bundles of something wrapped in different types of cloth. Dractus walked up to one of them and yanked the bundle away and shook it out onto the lawn. A perfectly grilled human arm rolled out… Grill marks and all on it, it looked like it might even be slathered in some kind of grill sauce. What the fuck is going on here? The person who was carrying the arm quickly collected it and re-wrapped it before getting back into the line to go inside. Dractus looked back at the remaining team, no words needed to be exchanged.

Dractus took lead which on some primal level upset Hank, but he had to admit as far as Arbiters went this was a veteran crew and he was the low man on the totem pole. He may have lots of experience shutting down evil humans, but he had exactly zero experience fighting space-faring demons. Hank felt slightly unsure about the rail-gun which was why he had brought the 1911 as well. In the military, before each mission you test fire your weapons. They had just rushed the entire way here leaving Hank no opportunity for a test fire of the rail-gun. As an Arbiter though his Intuition told him a lot. It wasn’t exactly a lie detector, but he got the strong feeling that Dractus and Cerulean would never give him a non-functioning weapon. So in this instance, he decided to roll on faith.

Dractus was marching ahead, only a few steps from the door now which was still congested with humans who were seemingly waiting for their turn to feed this Bertha alien. Even in their addled state of mind they seemed to know to move when Dractus walked near them. Apparently getting stepped on by a giant lizard man didn’t sound appealing, Hank couldn’t blame them. The rest of the team was hot on his tail. The inside was only semi-lit. The electricity in the building was out, but someone had dragged in some kind of metal stands that all had a large flattish bowl on the top. In each bowl rested a small fire. The inside of the building opened up into a large room with stairs at the back that led to the next story up, but the stairs had a landing before they split like a t-Intersection.

On the landing were three different sized thrones constructed of random materials and coated in some kind of black sludge. Hank thought he noticed a few human bones among the eclectic mix. The team spread out a bit and scanned the walls, ceiling, and every nook or cranny they could see. Jimmy was hyper alert after having the space-demon-monkey thing jump on him in the warehouse, he wouldn’t be gotten twice. At the edges of the firelight off of the main path to the thrones Hank thought he could see giant translucent eggs, like the ones Jimmy had told him about. He cleared his throat to get everyone's attention and pointed them out.

“Yep, this is one of her nests,” said Cerulean quietly.

The stained-humans were still coming in behind the team carrying their bundles of cooked flesh, seemingly unaware of the Arbiter team’s presence. They were carefully unwrapping their gifts and setting them in a large pile at the base of the stairs. The whole place reeked of evil, even Jimmy with no Arbiter abilities could feel it in the air. The team was beyond tense and ready to open fire on the first hostile they could find. Why were the thrones empty?

Dractus pulled his giant ax off of his back and held it in front of him in a fighting stance. “COME OUT COWARDS, FACE MIGHTY DRACTUS!”

“Oh yeah, I should have warned you about that. That’s like uh… his thing,” Jimmy said to Hank followed by a short giggle.

Cerulean patted Dractus on his back, “Don’t worry big buddy. We’ll get you someone to chop.”

“Well can we at least burn some of these eggs while we wait?” asked Hank. “Anyone got an incendiary device?”

“I do, but we will have to get the civilians out of here first,” said Cerulean.

Dractus saw his time to shine so he grabbed a few humans under each arm and started stomping around near the stragglers until they had to back up to avoid him, like a sheepdog moving its herd.

“GET OUT PUNY HUMANS!” Dractus shouted as he threw the arm fulls of people out the front doors and then slammed them shut. Stained-people immediately started banging on the doors, upset that they couldn’t fulfill their task. Dractus grabbed a nearby bench and threw it in front of the doors then ripped one of the legs off and shoved it through the looped door handles. Hank had to admit that Dractus was quick and efficient. That whole affair had taken less than a minute. Cerulean pulled something off of her belt that looked like a Tic Tac box with a metal prong on one side. She jammed the prong into the side of her tablet and started typing.

“What are we thinking, two minute timer?” she asked the room.

A strange and deep voice answered her before any of her friends could. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

Weapons snapped to shoulders in the blink of an eye as the Arbiter team looked for the source of the voice. It came again from somewhere on the second floor.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t here to greet you. I was reading, I do enjoy this planet’s literature.”

The voice was bouncing around on the marble floor and walls of this place, but then its owner came into view. He was a giant of a man, smaller than Dractus but bigger than Hank by a little, and entirely covered in a shiny black rock. His eyes were like bright embers, burning red. He was slowly marching down the staircase until he got to the landing. At which point he sat in the second biggest throne. Hank tried to probe his aura with his Intuition. It came up neutral. It wasn’t like the stained-people where the aura just didn’t exist, it was there. It was just such a perfect shade of grey. Extremely neutral and unwavering, too neutral… Something wasn’t passing the smell test.

“Well, welcome to my temporary home. You may call be Obsidian. As I was saying I wouldn’t recommend lighting off that firework you have there. If my associate Bertha feels her nest burning she will get quite angry.”

“DEMON!” shouted Dractus.

“Stand down Dractus,” Cerulean quickly adds. “Obsidian, I am the Arbiter Cerulean. I carry the highest authority of the law. If you are allied with Bertha of your own free will, I am afraid that I will have to arrest you and transport you to the nearest suitable prison.”

“I don’t recognize your authority Arbiter. I am a free person on a free planet and I am allowed to associate with who I wish. If you chose to arrest me that would be kidnapping and false imprisonment. I thought you Arbiters were supposed to be the good guys?”

“You don’t have to recognize my authority, for God does.”

“Ah, therein lies the conundrum. For isn’t it also true that God chooses your opposite, those you call Demons?”

Hank could tell Cerulean was stymied for a second. She had come in here guns blazing, not expecting a philosophical debate.

“No one knows how demons are chosen. Everyone knows how Arbiters are chosen. Demons chose to hide from God’s light and the righteous path of the Arbiter,” Cerulean replied with more confidence than Hank thought possible.

“What if these so-called ‘Demons’ are only hiding to avoid being unfairly prosecuted by the Arbiters. Did you know that those you call Demons, call themselves The Balance. For they are the ones who cut the cancer out. They are the ones who kill the plague bearers so that the healthy may live. They are the ones who reduce the population when people are starving, leaving ample food behind. Are these not good deeds? Evil at face value, yes, but ultimately saving more people than the short-sighted actions of the Arbiter. If a forest becomes too dense, does it not burn down? Who are you to decide that these people are demons?”

“Enough!” snapped Cerulean. “I have no time for blasphemy. You have admitted in front of witnesses that you are allied with the demon known as Bertha. You sit on a throne in front of her thralls and the cooked corpses of innocent sentients. Sing whatever marry tune you want, you are evil. Submit to capture or die at the hands of God’s chosen!”

A chill ran down Hank’s spine. He felt the power in Cerulean’s words and he knew them to be true. Never had he felt words have that much meaning and strength behind them before. The only thing that had ever come close to stirring that much raw emotion in Hank was his oath of enlistment he had taken to join the military. The creature known as Obsidian interrupted Hank’s line of thought.

“Well that is unfortunate. I do love a good debate and I hate that you ended ours prematurely. I do consider myself somewhat of an honorable man so I feel it is only fair to warn you that any attempt to harm me in any way, or even so much as touch me, will anger my friends.”

Another voice came from up the stairs in one of the offices that had a door open. “What’s all that commotion down there?” the voice shouted. Hank couldn’t quite place it, but it sounded so very familiar. A naked man walked down the stairs with a barely clad teenager under each of his arms, one male and one female. The teenagers were thralls, that was clear to Hank. Their skin had the stains on it, the sign of Bertha’s influence, and their eyes were glazed over.

“Ah my good friend Eugene,” said Obsidian. “Greet our guests, the Arbiters.”

Eugene? It only took Hank a second to take in every detail of the man. He was fit, and hairless, nothing like the Eugene he knew, but the face… That face was burned into Hank’s memory. It looked just like the Eugene that Hank knew from high school. Without even realizing it he tapped into his Arbiter Intuition and took a read. It was the same aura that Eugene had before, and it was oozing pure evil. That was all the evidence he needed. In less than half of a second he aimed the rail pistol and fired, he had to aim low to avoid hitting either of the teenagers. Hank was unfamiliar with this weapon, but not unfamiliar with weapons in general. In fact he was quite proficient with firearms. So his shot ended up taking Eugene in the thigh. Eugene screamed and fell over, his two thralls stared stupidly not knowing what to do and the room froze in a tense Mexican stand-off. Everyone waited to see who would make the next move.

“Fine fine,” said Obsidian. “If you would like to dispense with the pleasantries and skip right to the part where I murder you, we can do that. It’s time for you to meet the rest of my friends.” Obsidian calmly started descending down the stairs. From the second story came the screech of hundreds of creatures. Cerulean didn’t wait, she started the two minute timer on her incendiary device and threw it into one of the spawning grounds off to the side and then drew a small pistol from somewhere on her lower back and fired it at Obsidian. A thin blue line of light bounced off of his chest and he smiled. Hank and Jimmy went next and started hosing him down with the rail-guns. Visible chunks of his body started chipping off. Before they could finish their barrage creatures started crawling out of the second story, down the stairs, across the ceiling, along the walls. Gravity seemed to be little more than a side note to these new contenders.

Hank and Jimmy shifted focus and started trying to thin their numbers. The main horde seemed to be coming down the stairs. Dractus jumped ahead of Jimmy and Hank and they had to cut their fire to avoid hitting him. He began to swing his mighty ax in great giant circles. As he spun it began to glow. At the end of his next rotation he stopped in place with unheard of grace. The second he stopped his momentum somehow bled off into deadly arcs of electricity that sprayed outward from his ax’s blade into the evil horde of demon spawn. Obsidian and Eugene were also in the blast radius. Obsidian was unaffected and casually walked back to his throne to enjoy the show. Eugene however who was already whimpering began to scream in pain. Unfortunately the blast also partially hit the two teenaged thralls who were knocked unconscious. It was an impressive display of raw power and Hank had to remind himself that the ax Dractus was carrying was more than just a cutting instrument. It was an Arbiter’s weapon probably filled to the brim with evil souls and abilities.

The creatures that had been crawling on the ceiling and walls had avoided Dractus’ blast. They began to jump or let go of their handholds to try and land on Team Arbiter. Jimmy was ready for this and was already firing. Hank wasn’t ready. Two landed on Hank’s massive shoulders and tried to scratch his face and bite his neck. Everyone else was to busy shooting or cutting into the hoard to help him. He swung his railgun upward and started taking pot shots, that’s when he felt the intense heat coming out of the end of it. This gave him an idea. Instead of shooting wildly he just started pressing the end of the barrel of the railgun into the creature’s legs and arms. It instantly seared their flesh and sent them screeching. One of them jumped off of Hank and ran back up the wall. Now that he wasn’t overwhelmed Hank was able to grab the last one who was still trying to bite him, and throw it onto the floor, where he promptly stomped its head in. Viscous black sludge erupted from the thing’s skull.

“IF IT BLEEDS I CAN KILL IT,” shouted Hank.