Some time ago (WARNING NSFW DUE TO A COUPLE OF EFF BOMBS)

[crushingdestiny]

Sawdust and cow shit. It is amazing what sparks memory. Sounds, colors but most powerfully…Smells.

“You ready, boy?” the stooped man with the leathery skin asks, looking down over the top of his horn-rimmed glasses.

The teenage boy looks up some measure of apprehension. “I guess so”, he says with fear wrought breath.

“Damn it, boy! ‘I guess so’ isn’t good enough! Even here in this shed, even with your ability you need to be sure! Damned sure! You need to hold that image in your head with clarity. What have I told ya?”

The boy looks down with shame, his unkempt hair covering his eyes. He feels the ache in his knees from kneeling down for these past several hours of his ritual casting. This brief respite the final moments before his Master acknowledges the boy’s own Mastery.

The Boy looks back up and into his Master’s eyes, matching the stare imbued with so much steel.

He speaks as if reciting scripture, he recites with passion “We are not gods, but we can change the world as old gods were legend to do. We pay a price for this in humility. Without Humility, we shall surely fade as the old gods did. We can veil and unveil. We can shield and compel, weave the patterns and unweave them too. We may even fray the patterns. If we truly embrace the Wisdom of the Way, we can even make and unmake the world. We change the Way but are part of the Way also. The Way can unmake us as well, if we have no Wisdom or Humility. I am ready…Old Man.”, the Boy finished with a small smile.

The old face creases in a rare but heartfelt smile. Creases so rarely bent in the weathered face deepen in humor and then pride.

“Then I leave you to it Boy, come get me when the Making is done.”

The Old Man walks out.

That’s when I know it is a dream. I never saw what happened outside the shed that is the Old Man’s Sanctum and Demesne. I never saw the rain begin on the hot Texas afternoon. I see now as well as see the act of Making…the act of old gods. I see the Old Man walk outside and be surprised by the two unwelcome visitors to the old ranch and I see the ultimate test of Life…to create it. I know well the action I took to finish the ritual. The drop of my blood that I reverently smeared across the Rune. The feeling of primal power that flooded my body. My will propped up my understanding of the truth of reality. I felt life build from nothing and take form in front of me.  I knew the Old man wouldn’t approve if he knew where the form had first been imagined from.

“Akira”, the Boy says with an exhausted smile on his face. He has only recently seen the movie. He enjoyed some of the older cartoons out of Japan but this movie changed his entire understanding of what he has recently heard called ‘Japanimation’. It caused this dedication to seeing the world and his Art in an entirely new way.

I know I never saw what happened outside but I see it anyway.

The Old Man walks out of the room. He locks the door behind him and sets his familial spirit to protect it. Each measured step takes him around the old shed. Past the chicken coop and along the fence line keeping the cattle.  The smell of wet animals and wet Earth following his every step.  He sees the two members of the Consilium from so many miles away and knows they are here to put an end to his student. The Old Man has heard their arguments before and made his view perfectly clear. They are wrong. His student, the Boy, is not the destruction seen in their prophecy. The Old Man knows they have decided to take matters into their own hands. He will not allow this.

The Boy catches his breath and examines every measure of his creation down to the smallest neural cell and is satisfied with his work. The man before him has no mind or soul but is well and truly alive. The Boy is convinced that the Old Man will be satisfied.   The living being will exist for a day and a night so the Boy is in no hurry as he cleans the work area. The Old Man has used this shed for years and without ever being told, the Boy makes certain to put supplies away and cleans the area. He then walks over to the trough and dunks his head into the clean well water. Water drawn up from more than three hundred feet below the ground. It is cold and refreshing; it clears both the sweat and weariness from the Boy. He dries himself with the old towel he has used for just this purpose since he arrived on the ranch two years ago.

He puts on the new white T-shirt, unstained by his own blood and sweat and slips his boots back on. Pulling the key out of his pocket, he unlocks the door and stops dead in his tracks at the sight of a fully manifested spirit. He knows this particular spirit well. It is the classic image of a Greek Minotaur. Over seven feet tall, incisors and canines in the mouth that match no typical Bovine. The brass ring through its nose quivering as the spirit strains against some unknown barrier. The Boy knows that this thing is bound as a familiar to the Old Man and knows that the Old Man planned on posting the creature here in case the casting got out of control. The Old Man and the creature have been together for decades and this spirit if far more powerful than a typical Familiar is. Yet it is bound by the guardianship that the Old Man set for it on this door. The Boy knows all of this at a glance. He also sees the look of frenzied panic on the Creature’s face and in its eyes.

“I’m finished Bessie. You’re released…” is all the Boy speaks before the creature pivots on its bipedal hoof and runs at the far wall in a blur of speed and then through it. The Boy jumps back in startled fear to feel the first stirrings of panic.  His workings of the unseen move him faster than his mind can begin to catch up with the implications. He rushes through the hole in the wall before the third broken board hits the ground. Running around the side of the shed, past the chicken coop and along the fence line of the cattle pen, his mind catches up to the panic in his body and he slows to a stop at the corner of the shed, his old cowboy boots slipping only a little in the rapidly expanding rain spawned mud.

Crouching low as he was taught, he peers around the corner and freezes. His breath stops. Rainwater dribbles down his scalp into the neckline of his T-shirt, off his forehead into his eyes. The Boy sees the unrecognizable body against the back of the house, held there by the pitchfork though its chest. He sees the body parts strewn across the intervening field. The Boy sees the Old Man lying on the ground under the corpse with the pitchfork pinning it to the wall. He can see the Old Man’s hand slowly opening and closing in the scorched and muddy field.

The boy does not notice the intervening distance that he crosses; only that he kneels beside his Master, his mentor, his friend and ultimately…the only Father he knows. The Old Man coughs, blood spraying like droplets of rain. Each one marked by the senses of the Boy, the same senses that clearly mark off the swift cessation of the Old Man’s force of LIFE.

“Half a life ago, I had a dream… (Cough)…I dreamt that I would find a Son and he would one day change the world. Some would fear him… (Cough)…I would teach him to be a man. I found you, Boy! You hear me? You… (Cough)… I hope I ain’t failed you, Boy...”

“Shut up, Old Man! I can fix you!” The Boy screams as he bends his indomitable will against the colossal will of the Universe.   The Universe is unimpressed.   A trickle of blood flows from the Boy’s left nostril, mirroring the trickle from the Old Man’s right one.

“Stop!” the Old Man shouts, immediately throwing him into a coughing fit, spraying blood all over the Boy’s chest. The Boy notices the score of gunshot wounds over the Old Man’s chest. Each weeping blood as a little river, soaking the wet dirt into a coppery mud.

The Old Man forces himself to stop his violent exhalations and rolls over onto his back. Reaching up, he grabs the Boy’s collar, blemishing in blood the stark clean white of the shirt. He pulls the Boy close, pressing the Boy’s face against his chest over his heart.

“You are my hopes, Boy. You are the Honor I thought I had lost long ago. I give these things to you… to you, Dennis.   My dreams, my hopes…my Life. Don’t you let any of them take that away from you. You have to raise your head up…Ignite the heavens with your light. Bring us all home…Son…”

As the Old Man spoke, the Boy hears the crackle of flooding lungs, the slowing of the Old Man’s heart. He listens as the Old Man dies. For several long minutes after all had grown silent, the Boy remained, his cheek pressed against the Old Man’s chest.   The Boy felt the pelting of rain lessen.  He slowly moved the Old Man’s hand off of his collar and sat up. The Boy looked down at his clean white T-Shirt. It is drenched in the Old Man’s last bleeding. It would never be clean again. The Boy stares down as more blood invades the shirt. He reaches up to his face and wipes his hand across, coming away with blood, growing colder by the moment as the cleansing rain washes it down his neck.

On his knees next to his Mentor, his Teacher, his Master, his Father…the Old Man, the Boy’s head arches back as the countryside is greeted by the Sun cresting the clouds and the wailing scream of pain. The anguish filled cries last less than half a minute. The Universe acknowledges the pain with lightning and thunder, rolling across the barren Texas plains.

~~~~~~

Ruktis woke suddenly, drenched in sweat and hyperventilating. He quickly looked over the room from one side to the other before pausing to calm himself. He could recall the dream with sickening clarity. The scream had sounded so inhuman and still echoed in his ears like whining. Ruktis was still clearing his head when over 200lbs of dog landed in his lap, whining fearfully.

“Damn it, Deeohgee, get off me! What’s wrong with you, boy?” Ruktis yelled at his dog while shoving him off his immense bed scattering a half dozen pillows.

“Danger. Bad. Fear. Run…FIGHT!” Ruktis heard in his head and froze. His familiar was generally happy to be nothing more than a big stupid dog that had delusions of being sneaky. As if a huge hound could quietly steal chocolate cookies. The Familiar almost never communicated in other than whimpers and barks.

Ruktis quickly slid off the side of the bed and dropped his pajama bottoms while grabbing up his work jeans. A couple steps took him to the dresser where he opened two drawers pulling out socks and a clean white shirt, throwing them both onto the bed. After digging out his work boots from under the bed, he sat and donned the socks and boots, stood and grabbed the shirt…and froze. Across his vision for the briefest instant, he saw blood running down the front of it. His breathe caught in his throat and he blinked rapidly for a moment. When he looked at the shirt again, it was clean and stark white.

“Not again, Lady…not this time.” He quietly whispered as he pulled the Hanes shirt over his head. “Where’s the Problem, Boy?” he said to the dog as he followed it out of the room.

The dog leads him to his Son’s room down the hall. He walked in and couldn’t help but secretly smile. His son, Alexander had just gotten a ‘Big Boy’s’ bed two weeks earlier. So far Alexander had only rolled out of it twice onto the floor. Each night, Ruktis quietly snuck in to the room and put a half dozen of his pillows beside the bed and picked them back up when he awoke. Deep down, Ruktis knew he wasn’t fooling Boomer, but it was one of those stupid juvenile games he couldn’t quite stop playing. He put thoughts of Boomer out of his mind because he needed to think clearly. It concerned his some that thoughts of Boomer…of Rebekha…clouded his head so often.

Looking around the room, he didn’t see anything out of place. The Dog continued to whimper and pace around the room so Ruktis looked closer at everything. The walls were alive and healthy. His Son slept well and was perfectly healthy. Hell, Alexander had even picked up his toys before going to bed. He reached his senses out further and was mildly surprised to sense that neither, Boomer, Klepto or Bowie was home. Bowie was likely with Noel Ang. On recollection, Ruktis was fairly sure he recalled hearing the other two say something about going to the store as he had headed to bed. It was a bit cold for this time of year but that wasn’t…then it hit Ruktis. It had only gotten cold when he had come into his Son’s room. He looked the room over again and wished damnation on the fools who had tried to raise a new Ladder and their failure. A year ago Ruktis would have been at least an Initiate in every Arcanum and would have narrowed down the disturbance in seconds. The thought surprised Ruktis. He wasn’t one to often complain about the way things simply were. This was different though. He could feel nascent fear from his dream beginning to bubble to the surface of his conciseness. This concerned his Son.

After two tense meticulous minutes, Ruktis saw the obvious. The window was frosted up. It was near the end of April in Central Florida. “No way in hell is that natural…” he thought to himself as he crossed the room to get closer. The temperature dropped thirty degrees as he moved twenty feet across the room. He began to see his breath.

Slowly Ruktis brought his hand up to the window, wincing at the frigid bite. It was a simple act of will that brought hot blood to his hand faster and faster until the hand print on the window cleared of frost. Half a minute that Ruktis stood there terrified for the first time in more than two decades. When he saw the glass began clearing around his hand, he slowed his blood and allowed his induced fever to drop along with his hand. He wished he had kept it there after a bare second.

Outside of the window, between the Home he stood in and the unused school a hundred yards away was a landscape of winter delight. He could see the lightning from a thunderstorm overhead, but any rain turned to snow as it fell. Across the windswept tundra, near the back wall of the school stood a quintet of figures, obscured by the blizzard. It made no sense until Ruktis shifted his sight out of the Material into Shadow. In an instant, his breath once again caught in his throat.

If the Material world was being blasted by an arctic winter, then Shadow was the cold depths of space. In the center of a tornado of near absolute zero winds stood Sasquatch, the last remnant of Ruktis’ old Court of Wild. Sasquatch had agreed to stay with Ruktis as a Spirit Guardian of the property, his home and Sanctum. He was nine feet tall of shaggy sarcasm and good times. It was because of Sasquatch that Alexander had been able to play in snow for a brief hour on their hidden property this past winter. Ruktis hadn’t seen this version of Sasquatch since he helped him overcome his hunger and stop being Windigo, a cannibal spirit of winter. He was still frighteningly powerful but not a danger to itself or others.

Until now. What he saw across the Gauntlet was a creature more than a dozen feet tall covered by course, short white hair with a tail like a tree trunk. Foot long claws grew from fingers too long to be realistic and a bear muzzle graced its scarred face. It fought against a half dozen opponents that defied easy description. Most likely Magath, freaky combinations of spirits that were wholly unnatural. Sasquatch was covered by dozens of wounds but the frozen corpses of nearly a handful of opponents ensured that the wily Guardian Spirit wasn’t out of the fight. Closer inspection by Ruktis’ gifted vision made clear that his hairy friend was through half of his resources already though.

Ruktis turned away from the window and quietly padded over to his Son’s small bed. He crouched down and very tenderly placed a kiss upon his brow. “Sleep deeply, Alex, Daddy will keep you safe.” Ruktis said as he pushed a small measure of his power past his lips, placing his Son in a deeper slumber. He then pivoted to his Familiar, Deeohgee, and said in the First Tongue,” This Boy is the most important thing in the world, Material or Shadow. He means more than the great Supernal Courts. Do you understand?” The Dog familiar nodded and Ruktis hugged him tightly about the huge neck and rubbed his back. Ruktis then stood and walked out the door, pausing at the doorframe.

“Keep my Son safe, Great Tree.” He said as he caressed the molding. At the insistence of his will, the living teak wood of the house grew thicker around the room and Ruktis saw the window seal just before the doorway did the same. Ruktis then turned and ran towards his room. As he reached his room down the hall, he vaulted the enormous bed like an Olympic hurdler and grabbed the handle of his closet door. With unthought-of strength, he tore the door off of the hinges and swept his arm before him. Clothing flew from hangars exposing the back wall of the closet, which Ruktis kicked. The hidden door collapsed inward violently as Ruktis rushed inward. He passed the desk and medical equipment, some things one would expect to find in a research lab and others that seemed out of a mad scientist movie. He headed directly for the old style gym lockers in the back of the examining room.

Violently wrenching the door of his locker open in his barely suppressed panic, he grabbed his old Army duffel bag and tore the binding lock from the weathered canvas without bothering to produce a key. Ruktis then grabbed the bottom of the old bag and up-ended it, dumping its contents over the floor. It took him the briefest moment to locate the two things he sought among the mess of memories Ruktis had collected. Leaving the strewn detritus he slipped the dull gray iron of the ‘brass’ knuckles on his right hand, “Hope this thing is as good as Divaus said it was, Bertram.” He whispered unmindful to himself. The other item he handled a little more gingerly. To all appearances, it was an old leather belt with a huge gaudy ‘Texas’ belt buckle but, under Ruktis’ unveiling sight it held something horrific. It was a legacy of the time before the Ladder in India fell. An unimaginable spirit of destruction lay within. The barest of restraint held it inside the buckle. One use. He had almost used it on the entire Court of Roads once. Ruktis had considered using it on the insane city spirit that now controlled Orlando but now was glad he had done none of those things.

As he turned, he kicked an old T-shirt, stained red under an exam table without noticing. He ducked through the ‘secret door’ twirling the belt into a fist around his hand, pausing only a moment as he grabbed his old brown leather ranch hat. The rest of the house passed in a blur as he threw open the front door and nearly had his breath stolen from him by the freezing hurricane in his front yard.

“HAIRY! GET IN THE MATERIAL!” he shouted in the First Tongue at the top of his lungs. The wind stole his words, but the language that first formed the cosmos was stronger than the wind they helped to define. Ruktis wasn’t the least surprised when a beaten and bloody Sasquatch suddenly materialized a couple score feet in front and to the right of Ruktis. Ruktis was already swinging his belt like a bullroarer when he suddenly whipped it downward toward the stone walkway in front of his first step. The instant before it struck, Ruktis released the sight that granted him access to the Shadows.

The buckle shattered like glass at the sharp impact and the cold and snow suddenly just…stopped. In an instant, rain began to beat down on Ruktis and Sasquatch. At least he wouldn’t freeze to death. Ruktis knew this wasn’t the end …no, it had only begun, this night of horror. He reached out to the patterns he knew as well as his own, over half a mile away. He shouldn’t have been able to, but he had planned for a night like this. It was as easy as flipping a switch. It had been meant for Bertram and Sally if they had got a terminal case of stupid, but Ruktis didn’t know who his assailants were. Someone who could bring an entire Spirit court to fight and create a freak thunderstorm to roll across miles of area. Powerful. That was even beyond something Bertram could pull off. The spirits…maybe. Ruktis racked his mind but couldn’t recall hearing what tower Sally followed. What she Obermos? Was she one hell of a lot more powerful than his information gathering had provided for? Who was the other three then? The Heroes of South town? Ruktis flexed the uncomfortable fit of the ‘brass’ knuckles on his right fist, tilted his head right and left, eliciting a comfortable ‘CRACK’ and stepped off the rock path into the rain.

Ruktis wasn’t ten feet behind Sasquatch when he heard the sharp report of heavy weapons fire. He paused a bare moment to realize it wasn’t him that was hit and looked over to the growing red patches in Sasquatch’s matted brown pelt. Whoever it was, they were trying to make it sure that Ruktis had as little back up as possible. “Get out of here, Hairy!” Ruktis yelled to his hirsute friend as he took off across the field at a dead run.

Ruktis felt the sting of round after round of ordinance bit into his shielding practices. He felt a single round pierce his shields and his living and enhanced clothing, tunneling through his lung before exiting between the seventh and eighth rib on his left back side. “Missed my heart, you bastard…Legion is getting sloppy…” Ruktis thought to himself. That thought died on his lips as Ruktis skidded to a stop a bare thirty feet from his assailants, the wound closing of its own accord. The five people before him, two women and three men weren’t the Heroes of South Town as Ruktis had all but convinced himself. He didn’t know any of them but could feel the power roiling off them in a way that he was familiar with. It was the same way it rolled off of himself. This group had transcended what most Magus understood as supernal understanding. There were five of them. The fear that had been twisting in Ruktis’ gut became a very real and viscous thing.

“Pythia, get the package; Huginn, take him.” The Woman in the center said. The second woman at the left end of the group simply vanished as the man to the right of the vanished woman flicked a switch on the rifle he carried. Ruktis felt a twinge that he knew to be a warning from fate and dived to the side with a less than an instant to spare. The barrage of ammunition that exited the rifle in that instant was physically impossible. “Obermos…or at least a Force Adept” Ruktis thought to himself. As the snow padded his landing. “Two second reload…max” he thought as he vaulted upright and sprinted for all his worth to get inside effective range before that could happen. He almost made it.

The Man to the right of center appeared before him almost as an apparition. The inner forearm strike was well known to Ruktis but at his unbalanced speed he knew it was impossible to defend well against it so he did the unexpected and kneeled down into a slide that would have made a MLB pinch hitter proud. This time the slick snowy ground rapidly turning to slush assisted Ruktis as he slid directly into the one called Huginn. Huginn had just brought the rifle back up after the two point two second reload when Ruktis hit him with over five hundred pounds of body weight moving at more than twenty miles an hour. As both bodies tangled, sliding along the sleeted ground, Ruktis did what he knew how to do so well. He bit, he gouged an eye, kneed the groin, head-butted the bridge of the nose, grabbed the floating rib and flipped Huginn over onto his stomach and started pummeling his kidneys and generally anything he could think to do to make the man hurt and hurt badly. It had been Ruktis’ experience that most hardcore shooters weren’t much good in a close up fight and this time his guess had proven true. The threat of Huginn’s killer rifle ended as they slid to a stop and Ruktis reached forward and grabbed Huginn’s right arm and wretched it back until he felt the shoulder dislocate then swiftly slammed his weight against the elbow causing it to bend in a fashion that nature hadn’t intended. Ruktis rolled to his feet as Huginn’s screams began to echo off of the nearby buildings. He watched as the second man stalked forward in a low combat pose. “Shit…this guy is a different story altogether…” Ruktis thought to himself as he stomped backwards onto the back of Huginn’s head silencing his screams with unconsciousness.

Ruktis had just recently begun his training regimes with Shin-obi-Do-Jitsu and Shotakan. He wasn’t nearly as good as he was before taking a header off a sixty seven story building though. Not even close. He got into a defensive stance and kept his left shoulder towards the approaching man.

“What’s your name, asshole?” Ruktis shouted to the approaching man.

“Mars…you’re going to die now.” Mars responded calmly as Ruktis saw his muscles bunch up with sudden added bulk. Ruktis was a Master of all of the living patterns of the Fallen World…had been for more than two decades. He hadn’t felt as much as a twitch in the pattern of reality.

“Perfected Adept…shit.” Ruktis thought to himself as the other man stopped some five paces away.

“I didn’t say I would be the one who did it” was the only warning Ruktis had and it saved his life as dozens of lightning bolts rained down from the heavens born of the fury in the above thunderstorm. The night lit up to sudden daybreak as most of the bolts missed the suddenly airborne form of Ruktis. Most, but not all. Gigawatts of electricity coursed through Ruktis as his right shoulder, right hip and left leg were all scorched through. Violent muscle contractions hit Ruktis with such forceful pain that he couldn’t help but scream out in agony past suddenly dry burnt and bleeding lips.

Ruktis staggered to his feet and turned to face his new attacker making the mistake of releasing the closer threat from his attention, a mistake that became apparent as the first sledgehammer blow broke three ribs under his right arm. Ruktis swiftly pivoted at the unbelievable speed of the attack. He knew well the unsubtle dance of violence but couldn’t believe the ferocity of the oncoming attacks. Each strike that Ruktis blocked or dodged was followed by three more in rapid succession, too much for the already beaten upon man to hope to keep up with. After less than a half minute of dodge, pivot, roll and defend the man called Mars came up under Ruktis’ guarding forearms and hit him under the chin with enough raw strength to crush both Ruktis’ teeth and lift him his height again off of the ground.

Dazed and trying to ready his body for impact with the ground, Ruktis felt something snag his more than human pattern and as much as he tried to resist its tenebrous grasp, Ruktis felt it grab his pattern and change the very rules of physics for him. For a few unfortunate seconds, Ruktis perceived his problem. The universe had decided that gravity had changed ninety degrees to a horizontal plane and what was worse was that the universe was pretty sure that gravity should be around Neptune strength instead of Earth. From the apex of just over 6 feet in the air, Ruktis rocketed towards his Home at a gravitational acceleration that shattered the sound barrier.

Ruktis struck the front window of the living room and slammed into and through the partition wall separating it from the kitchen. The shrapnel of his passing shot gunned teak wood like missiles into the dining room, destroying the furniture. Next he hit the center wall of the home blasting through the reinforced wall of his Son’s room. He ceased to be able to distinguish between the snapping of timber and his own bones. He exited through the far wall over his Son’s bed not knowing if he imagined the sound of a canine cry of pain. The flight though the ten feet wide hallway passed faster than the blink of an eye and Ruktis hit the door to his own room. In the fleet instant of time that thought takes place, ticks between realities tocks, Ruktis wondered if he had grabbed his hat. He then went through the closet and through hundreds of thousands of dollars of medical equipment, papers exploding through the room like confetti. As he exited the back wall he momentarily felt bad that Paladin’s medical paperwork just got destroyed and that spark he saw in passing didn’t bode well for the oxygen tanks.

Then he hit the rear support beam. A Siderite sheathed living teak beam, thirteen inches on a squared side. Ruktis tried to scream out in agony as eight of his eleven vertebras shattered but found he had no breath suddenly. The beam was the first thing to deflect Ruktis to an angle towards his work shed as he exited the area of the effect. He hit the large shed at meteoric speed, collapsing it in around him. Ruktis didn’t feel any of it. At that moment, reality had some measure of mercy and relieved him of the responsibility of conciseness.

Ruktis didn’t know how long he spent in painless slumber but knew he hurt like hell when he awoke. A quick personal inventory showed that his broken back had mended itself first, followed by the charred skin where the lightning had bitten deep into his flesh. The torn ligaments and muscle still posed a problem so he delicately caressed his pattern with the universe’s Truth and felt tissue swiftly knit below his skin. It was an odd sensation that he never quite got used to. It was the sensation of hundreds of tiny unseen insects crawling over his flesh, somewhere between ticklish and itchy. Ruktis then took in his surroundings and despaired just a little bit. He was buried in debris. Sharp, poking, prodding and heavy debris.

Just as Ruktis began to consider how to best get out of his predicament, the issue was removed from his concern. The old fashioned anvil that sat precariously on the side of his skull flew away, its three hundred pound weight no longer a burden. Ruktis turned his head to at least face his attacker when a smile spread across his blood covered face. Sasquatch smiled back as it grabbed handfuls of broken timber and threw them over its shaggy shoulder like so many Lincoln Logs. The spirit reached down and Ruktis gladly accepted the hand up.

The spirit and Ruktis began cautiously walking towards the house, edging around the corner. Ruktis noticed the almost perfect six feet thick hole though his house. Sighting through it, he saw no one on the other side as he got low and peeked around the edge of the injured Home, ignoring the almost subliminal wail of pain coming from the living teak of the structure. Little less than half a football field away stalked the woman from the center of the group, Mars and the other man.

“I know you’re almost tapped out, Hairy but, can you distract them?” Ruktis asked of his large spirit friend.   The pain in Hairy’s eyes told Ruktis he shouldn’t have asked but the broad grin that graced the huge face nearly broke Ruktis’ heart. The Sasquatch was going to do something that could risk its oblivion, Ruktis just knew it. As the Count of his old spirit court sprang forward, frigid winds began to pick up spraying debris towards the approaching trio of assailants.  As if by unspoken agreement, Ruktis silently counted to ten and ran towards the group, flexing his right fist, pleased that the ‘brass’ knuckles where still there. He reached the unnamed man whom Ruktis suspected was responsible for the lightning and gravity shift as his victim was lowering his arms from the tornado onslaught.

Ruktis ducked low to remain hidden under his victim’s field of vision, almost sliding in on his knees. Putting everything his beaten body had behind it, Ruktis twisted inward and to the left at the hip while punching upward…right into the man’s groin. Up close, Ruktis could see that the man had some sort of urban combat armor on but the plating didn’t cover the area between baby maker and sewage. As Ruktis swung upward into that ever so sensitive area, he saw the slab of metal on his fist glow bright red a second before impact and it brought an altogether wicked smile to Ruktis’ lips. It lasted almost two seconds as he watched the fate backed effect take hold of the unbreakable Siderite on his fist and simply unmake it from reality.

“Seriously…a Moros who can throw lightning…This just gets better and better…” Ruktis thought to himself as he watched the man fall unconscious from severe reproductive damage and shock. Even this brief elation is cut short by the scream of pain swiftly followed by what could be described as ripping canvas to Ruktis’ ears in the suddenly dying wind. He turned around to see Mars bare paces away holding what looked like a red and brown throw rug. As the two stood starring, Ruktis noticed the ‘rug’ slowly fraying at the edges, dissolving back into the fallen world’s pattern.

“I am Mars…and now you die…by my hands” the large man said as he launched himself at Ruktis.

A scream out of primordial time erupted out of Ruktis’ lungs as he launched himself at the larger man. The two men struck each other like Yokosuka wrestlers, each struggling for a hand hold to get the advantage over the other. Ruktis’ only glimmer of hope in his mind was the other man’s heavy breathing. He gave a small moment of hope at this revelation until the short swing elbow strike hit him in the side of the head. Ruktis landed on the slick slush and mud of the ground thirteen feet away head first and slides another dozen feet before he regains his senses and hears possible salvation.

How can a screaming growl of a bull be described? Ruktis looks through his rapidly clearing vision as the three Minotaur charged towards Mars and Ruktis smiled. Until the universe ticks another tock. Mars braces himself, digging his rear foot deep into the slush and mud as the first mythical beast out of fantasia dips low to gore the tall man. Mars puts each hand ahead of him and grabs each of the horns. The impact of over six hundred pounds of bovine doesn’t break Mars’ stances, but the ground proves weaker. As Mars quickly begins sliding back towards Ruktis, maintaining his braced posture, he twists his torso and arms. The beast’s neck snaps like a twig under the brutal strength of the warrior as Ruktis smells the alarming vulgarity of ozone erupt like an ocean breeze against his face. Blue white arcs instantly trace down the creature’s body, ending at its tail and striking the other two rapidly approaching bipedal bovines. Ruktis raises his arm to cover his eyes as he twists in a circle to get to his feet.

In an instant, it is over. Ruktis felt the concussion of the bloody explosion an eye blink before the gore hit him. As he lowers his arm, he stood watching a dozen feet away as Mars opens his right hand and drops the head of the bull creature, all that remains of the trio of animals. Something in Ruktis snapped. He slowly stalked forward as Mars stood there ready, smiling through the gore covering him.

Ruktis feigned a big round house right with Mars easily dipped his head back to avoid. What Mars didn’t see was Ruktis’ left leg shoot out and into Mars’ right knee. Ruktis heard a satisfying grunt of surprise and pain from his opponent as he waded in with unusual combinations of elbow and forehead, short strikes followed by spinning back fist or snap kicks followed by shoulder charges. Mars was able to avoid or block almost every move but it didn’t allow him a chance to take the offensive. Ruktis moved mechanically interrupting illusionary combos to make a straight shot; Jabs to the jaw or hook to the kidney. Ruktis listened with satisfaction to the quicker and harder breathing his opponent began to exhibit until it became hyperventilation. Ruktis suddenly backed, holding his arms up defensively. He was prepared for Mars’ misstep to the change in tempo and came in with a huge full body cross strike to the side of Mars’ head which sent the larger man stumbling to his knees facing away from Ruktis. Ruktis sprung at his opponent, but too slow.

Ruktis felt rather than saw the boot heel mule kick back and strike him in the chest. He felt the crushing pressure on his sternum break the bone in two and snap it from the attaching ribcage. He felt both of his lungs collapse and his heart stop as the kinetic impact of a two ton car moving at sixty mile and hour hit his chest in the area of a size thirteen boot. Ruktis sailed almost unfeelingly backwards, so far beyond bodily shock that he began to peer out the other side of the red haze that has become his existence these last several minutes. He closed into himself as flashes of his organs appeared before his mind’s eye, each a catalogue of damage in need of repair. Liver shutting down due to adrenalin poisoning, kidneys dying on the brachia due to red cell blood clogging, heart with a torn aorta and right ventricle…septum between the ventricles stretched and beginning to leak, Superior vena cava venting oxygen deprived blood into the cardiac cavity while more than eighty percent of the alveoli flooding with fluids of one sort or another, both of the primary bronchia crushed ensuring that no new air would reach anything past his esophagus. Ruktis saw this all with high definition clarity before he reached the apex of his terminal flight.

As Ruktis began his downward arch, he felt the familiar vice grip on his pattern of the universe deciding gravity should be another direction but he ignored it and let his personal connection to the awoken world, the place that existed out of time and space in a place that could never be in this fallen world…he grabbed on to that strand of a better, more pure reality and felt its truth of will over reality flow through him. He felt ‘dead on arrival’ damage repair itself in the unperceivable breath of the truth of everything. He felt Stygian doors close before he arrived at their threshold. As his momentum towards the ground continued to carry him Earthward, he felt the equal pull going parallel to the ground but physics isn’t so easily denied as Ruktis’ arm slid along the ground away from Mars. That simple friction was enough to help Ruktis continue his flip and dig his boots into the ground and unleash one of the most vulgar affronts to the placid universe he could conceive of.

Ruktis knew the history and had once jokingly had a research competition with Bertram over who could get it more right, the Apostate or the Mysterium. As the tip of Ruktis’ heel dug into the ground, struggling to find purchase in the slick cold sodden ground, his boots exploded along with the rest of his clothing as the fabric lost its battle to contain the rapidly expanding flesh beneath it. In the space of a breath, where once stood a man shielded by dense flesh and bone stood eighteen tons of overly dense muscle almost sixty feet long. Covered in pebbly leather skin and scales, the prehistoric creature far outstripped the area that gravity had been altered and as it dug its fourteen inch talons on its feet into the mud, its backwards fall across the world ceased. Ruktis looked down with his suddenly strange binocular vision to see true shock and surprise on Mars’ face followed by sheer terror as Ruktis began bounding towards him shaking the night with a roar the Earth had not been privy to in nearly ninety million years. Mars was certainly faster, by far, than the man Ruktis but against the thirty feet strides of the monster that pursued him, he was a turtle crawling away from a chasing crocodile.

Ruktis flexed muscles that weighed more than the entirety of Mars and leapt five feet in the air landing with a ground shaking impact on the fleeing Mars, crushing him below Ruktis’ ten feet long foot under a kinetic impact that just barely surpassed what Mars had delivered to Ruktis moments earlier. Mars showed himself to be a contender for biggest bad ass in existence with his continued struggle against what Ruktis could see to be a broken back, hips and legs. Mars, face almost completely pressed into the frosted mud pulled with his arms against that mud to try to free himself in vain. Delicately, almost gingerly, Ruktis bent his immense body downward and concentrated on not biting too hard and lifted Mars up in his mouth. Even with his caution, he tasted new blood as one of his nine inch teeth punctured Mars’ torso. With a swiftness that defied his mass, Ruktis whipped his head to the left, releasing Mars who sailed at highway speeds into the side of the Siderite sheathed second story of the school, dropping to the lawn below. As Ruktis’ form melted down into a form that enabled him to think more clearly, his keen vision saw clearly that Mars wouldn’t be getting up for a few minutes…or hours…maybe days. Most importantly though, he was still alive and that brought a slight smile to Ruktis’ lips. “Primum non nocere” was the oath he took as a doctor and he did his best to live by it. Sometime the best he could do was not to kill someone.

Ruktis turned back towards the house and began running towards his Home in the distance. The fact that he could even still move beyond the exhaustion, the pain and the fatigue a testament to the marathon four minutes miles he had been running without mystical augmentation for months and years. He endured more than any sleeper could hope to. He pushed through barriers that were iron cages to those that lived under the yoke of the Lie. It frequently frightened him. He prided himself on being a human being…more than asleep but more than someone who fancied themselves a god also by showing some humility for the things that mattered. It terrified him that Art aside; he could do things that dwarfed even the best that humanity could offer. In the distance, he saw two figures exit his damaged Home. One walked with elegance, the other dragged a burden.

As Ruktis pushed his speed upward until even his muscles balked at the buildup of lactic acid, unable to push enough APT though each cell of his leg muscles to produce the speed he so desperately needed right now. For not the first time in the night, he cursed every single mother fucker that was even remotely involved in the debacle in India and the fall from the building that shattered his body and Gypsy’s Consilium and Reaganomics and Boomer for getting groceries and Ohanzee for getting himself killed and WTChance for being a bastard and Klepto for being a fucking thief and…Ruktis saw the collar in Pythia’s hand and the back of the pajamas with the ‘Sponge Bob’ print and his Son’s left knee dislocate as it fell off the third onto the second step badly as he was dragged. Ruktis’ world froze to a still frame.

As if floating somewhere over the entire scene, Ruktis saw flickering light. It reminded him of all those years ago when he was at Medical school and working the projector at The Wolly…the old Wollaston Theater on Beale Street. The second and third hand prints they received used to skip as they got up to speed, the clattering and clicking…the dark and flashes of light. Ruktis’ life became those long ago memories as he saw the terror of that room and all the blood in Beirut. Looking out the window of the hospital alone and afraid, finding the Old Man dying. The explosion of shrapnel as the side of the Bradley was hit by a tank round. Seeing Lucky bleeding and being rushed into surgery. The smell of burning flesh and hair as he ran towards his truck, knowing if he so much as turned his head, the Fearful would catch him. Hitting Serendipity at ninety miles an hour in his old dodge truck. Waking up to a note from her that said nothing more than ‘’bye’. Running his car off of the Pensacola dock, trying to avoid a showdown with the bounty hunter after him, Lucky…his wife. He saw the images tumble over him and knew he was seeing his life flash before his eyes but it didn’t stop at the right now…no there was one more scene that the Lady decide to show him. A simple glow rising in the air. As it faded from his sight, Ruktis felt something he had never known before in his existence. The closest had been when he stood on the shores of that far ocean, the waters of the Abyss itself and he spoke to the Oracle of the Mighty’s Tower. Even learning with finality that it all meant something paled before what he felt well up within him. Time crested the Dam and wended its path as it chose.

As Ruktis swiftly approached he saw the woman he began to see as the leader look back and take a step back up the stairs, oblivious to Ruktis’ running through the torrential downpour. He saw Pythia look back also as Deeohgee is barking and dragging himself through the front door, his left rear leg lamed by a foot and a half of wood shard sticking out of his hip joint. Ruktis watches as the leader pulls out a handgun of some sort. His heart freezes as his legs push past their limit when he hears the four quick reports of the pistol firing. He closes the distance in the rain and racket swiftly and he asks the Tao to forgive him for violating his Oath of two decades.

Beyond the Omphalos Tower and the Ocean Oroboros and through the Ecstatic Winds, the Tower of pulsating stone, the backbone of worlds and the home of spirits beyond the fallen world’s comprehension hears the call of a predator. The deep resonating cry of a hunter, a killer; the call of the sire and head of the pack, roaring its challenge to those that would endanger its pack and offspring. The Book opens its Stone pages and the adrenalin in the moment of the fight flows from the Primal Wild, ripping past the Abyss into its momentary champion. From the right and from the left, above and within, the pure rage of the Beast fills Ruktis and he knows only rage. The cold knowledge that only one thing comes next.

As Ruktis closed the final feet between himself and Pythia, bone erupts out of his left arm; rigid, sharp pieces of dense spurs flow through his hand and create razor blades from his fingertips. Pythia turns forward as Ruktis’ left foot hits the first step. Time seem to stand still a moment again. Pythia stared at Ruktis with a startled look of shock on her face. Ruktis’ medical opinion placed her at her mid to late thirties. Her mouth opened and closed three times like a goldfish as she tried to speak or maybe breathe. He watched as she looked down to the torn place over her left breast in her shirt. Half of Ruktis’ upper arm protruded from her chest and a look of confusion briefly crossed her face before Pythia’s eyes rolled back and her legs collapsed in death. The slow sucking noise as she slid off of his arm was completely unheard by Ruktis. Instead he bent a little with the body and grabbed with his other hand for his son Alexander.

“Gotcha” was all he heard before looking up for a second to see the leader of his adversaries gently place the tip of her index finger on his blood and gore encrusted forehead. Then the world went black.

~~~~~~~~~~

Boomer had felt antsy ever since leaving to get some basic supplies at the store that evening. Since she was used to paying attention to her intuition, she had asked Klepto to come along. Between Seers, Banishers and all manner of weirdness lately, it was simply good sense to move in pairs off the property, but the feeling just wouldn’t leave her. As she pulled the truck into the drive the paranoia ratcheted up off the charts as the conspicuous absence of the vague sense of vertigo that usually accompanied the crossing of the wards didn’t wash over her. She immediately slowed and looked at Klepto.

“Something isn’t right…be ready.”

“Yeah, you noticed too?”

“Uh huh.”

Visibility was trash in the thunderstorm but Boomer could swear she saw a reddish blue flickering glow off in the distance of the house.  Just as she began to push the accelerator down on the floorboard a bit more she watched as her headlights slowly picked out something before her…something big. She kept the truck inching forward as the first thing she noticed was the dog, Deeohgee. One of his hind legs was splayed out beside him with a huge sliver of wood in it, the other splayed out the other with minced meat over all of the joints. As the light continued to reveal, one of his ears was missing and there looked like a hole in his short haired chest bleeding a rivulet of red into the copper colored mud at his feet. His fore paws the only thing holding him up with the most miserable face a huge stupid dog could produce in Boomer’s opinion. Deeohgee began to howl sorrowfully. Boomer threw the car into park and hit the high beams.

Several steps behind the dog familiar stood Sasquatch. Half of the flesh seemed to be missing from his chest, blood seeping slower into the pelt below it that a true physical creature could manage. His massive arms were before him as if the parody of someone’s hairy uncle was holding a new born. Boomer’s stomach dropped into her canvas Chucks as she sprinted forward, tears already streaming uncontrollably when she saw the limp and bloody arm drop between the great beast’s hands.

“RUKTIS!”

~~~~~~

In the destroyed medical lab, the canister of Oxygen hissed a sibilant note, fueling a rapidly spreading fire. Under an exam table, an old T-shirt burned away to ash.