The Gathering: The Damnation Chronicles, #3

To Lori for all of the support right from the first book. And for suggesting that I write the Storm of Light story into a novel, which is what kept this series alive. It was the missing piece that I kept coming back to but didn’t think I could use. Then it hit me... Why not?

To Wendy for not tiring of helping with edits on these books.

As always, to those I’ve lost along the way.

And you, dear reader. Without readers where would we be?

Contents:

Copyright

Dedication

Foreword

Part Five: The Rifts

Prologue

One: Retrospect

Two: The First Fracture

Three: Ascension

Four: A World in Darkness

Five: A Storm of Light

Six: The first tests

Seven: The Plan

Part Six: The Gathering/One: A Long Walk to hell

Two: The Storm Worsens.

Three: Intervention

Excerpts from The Damnation Chronicles Book 4: The Harbingers

Bio

Foreword

Ihope you will enjoy the story on the following pages. It has been building in my head for quite some time. Some of you may remember Storm of Light as a previous short story of mine, but its tale was directly connected to this one all along, as are other, as of yet unpublished stories. I had planned on writing that one into a novel to finish some things out, but something just didn’t feel right about it. And then I was writing Damnation Chronicles – a series that I had once thought would never actually work – and it all fell together for me. (Thanks to Lori who suggested writing that short story into a novel.)

Cain was always meant for greater things, and I knew this, but I had let his story go too early. The story of Marcus and Rose had also been left hanging but is soon to come to a close, though only partially in this book. Samael’s fall to human form, and absence of memory, will come into play soon in the books to follow this one. I can’t say much else, or I will give away too much of this story. I hope that those of you who have stuck with me this far will hang around a bit longer to see this series completed.

Part Five

The Rifts

The best-laid schemes of mice and men

Often go awry

And leave us naught but grief and pain

For promised joy

Robert Burns

1759-1796

"S ince many of you are about to die, I’ll be blunt and brief, as time demands. The very world around you burns. And though few of you are from this place, forces gather against us, just over that hill, regardless. The future is darker now than it has ever looked. And now, as we stand so close to the end, many of you are seeking answers. It is a search that will make you clumsy in battle. There are those among us who have tasted death, who have seen hell, who can tell you now that nothing is certain, nothing is final. There need be no search for truth when what waits for us on the other side teeters on the brink of winking out forever regardless.

You must have felt it late at night when your dreams would just halt suddenly, and all that lay before you was the abyss. Well, the abyss is coming. It’s just over that hill. It will have you if you let it. And you may end up in whatever afterlife you find yourself so preoccupied with for a short time until even that is gone.

What we do right here and now, in the next few moments may determine the events of the next millennium. So, give in to the encroaching darkness and have your sweet oblivion now for as long as it may last, or fight. Fight for forever and the promise that this, the last world, might go on after your passing because of what you did here today."

General Tiberius Cain to his soldiers at the battle of Sutton Mill just minutes before the six-hour siege that claimed six hundred lives, including his own, and saved a whole world.

THE ROAD TO WHERE WE’RE going is paved with all we’ve lost along the way; a scattered, winding path of death, debris, and memory.

And as we stand, looking back, in misery for all we’ve lost, not moving forth, an epiphany strikes us. That all we had and all we lost were trivial, and all that truly mattered still lies ahead, waiting for us to catch up to it in the next world.

Musings of a fellow traveler through the land of the dead

Prologue

It is a beautiful blue day, in a world that would seem perfect from a vantage point high above the ground; unless one were to take a prolonged look. The vast groves of pines trailing off into the mountains in the distance with a little stream trickling on nearby would look like something from a painting of times long lost to someone from your world. A family of deer lap up the stream’s waters, unaware of the hunters hiding in the bushes not far off, readying their bows. And this too would seem normal, were it not for the telltale signs of the sickness eating away at this world from every direction.

Rising higher in the air, I would show you something troublesome. Off in the distance, barely a shimmer that one might mistake for a mirage caused by heat on such a hot day, do you see it? Keep your eyes there, just past the church, the woods, over the hill. There it is again. Did you catch it that time? Yes, I thought you might. A quick shimmer of something; almost solid for a moment and then gone. It is a type of building alien to this world, but one you might recognize. And it is just one of many pieces of a larger puzzle that if not assembled correctly, could mean the destruction of not just one world, but all. Many will play a part in this final tale and the battle to come. But we can only follow a few. There is only so much time, after all. Rifts are tearing away at this and many other worlds constantly, eating at the very fabric of reality that holds them together. And while entire worlds topple into the abyss, lost forever in chaotic destruction, the beings who started it all, laugh and grow in power, absorbing the energy of creation that had once belonged to gods and growing ever closer to that status themselves.

They seek to topple what they claim to be a false god by becoming gods themselves. And to do so, they’ve sought out an old enemy of his; the only one to have ever come close to killing him. Too weakened to destroy him at the time, the false god - or The Maker as he preferred to be called - cast his enemy to the earth. It was one of many earths, even then. And there he had been lost to the rest until nearly ascending through a series of unforeseen events which brought him immediately to the attention of all once again. With no memory, whose side would he take? All were surprised to find that his concerns were not for such lofty goals this time, however, but for a mortal. Even rising as far as he had, he had not yet uncovered even a tiny hint of his true identity. The enemies of The Maker thought they could use this to their benefit.

One:

Retrospect

1

Marcus sat quietly atop one of the spires on the far side of the castle like a gargoyle. And a gargoyle was what he felt like; those grotesque creatures that had once been carved from stone and placed high upon castle walls to frighten away evil spirits and other possible dangers. ‘Is that what I’ve been reduced to?’ he wondered. What was his purpose now other than to sit here, watching out for dangers to the castle and Kinna? For a short while, he’d felt full of purpose for the first time in his life, and then it had all been stripped from him so quickly. Not that he’d have done things differently, given the choice. First, there had been the desire to help his sister, and then caught up in that possibly admirable goal it had all moved so quickly and with such force that he’d been helplessly swept away. Despite his best attempts - or maybe because of them - it seemed no matter what he had tried to do before he arrived in this place, he’d done nothing better than destroy and upset all that he touched. As they say (largely due to Steinbach, but rarely properly quoted to the original author) the best-laid plans of mice and men—Or in this case, Gods, men, and demons. If his collective life experiences thus far had taught him nothing else, it was that he should just stay the hell out of things. Still, he wondered though. Even if he had been given advanced knowledge of all that would happen, would he stop, or would he have just tried a different approach to fixing things? Had he not gotten involved with Frank, his sister would have eventually gotten her heart transplant anyway, and he wouldn’t have had to hunt him down in a failed attempt to get back the deed to the house his parents had left him and his life savings. He also would not have ended up crossing over into the underworld, and all that followed would have been nothing more than a bad dream for some author out there.

His mind drifted for a few moments over everything that had transpired to get him here, and he felt a sense of unreality wash over him.

It all seemed like a weak TV show plot now, written by lazy drunk scriptwriters for a failing network. Had he told someone the story - of crossing over into another world through a cellar door, being chased by hell-hounds into a dark underworld where a shape-shifting demon had trapped him and escaped in his place, only to start killing those he was close to in his name - he doubted anyone would believe it.

From there, however, it just got stranger. As if the first part wasn’t hard enough to believe, he’d escaped that underworld by stripping part of the souls of two police officers. And, in his haste to flee that dark place, he had unwittingly allowed the escape of a powerful demon who released all of hell upon the earth. And then, after stopping the apocalypse, being made into something like an angel by a God-like character called The Maker, fighting nearly to the death with another demon, he had finally become trapped in this alternate reality: Surely people didn’t dare to write such convoluted, cross-genre, bullshit fiction. And yet here he was. For him, it was an undeniable reality.

His power had been stripped after he’d given it up to save his sister Madison once again from a situation in which he’d accidentally left her. And as if he hadn’t felt bad enough about that, she’d gone through hell and back and not been able to return to her world.

From the brink of death, he had returned to full strength over the past six months. Over that time, uncertain of his purpose, he had sought to try and right things here for the woman who had nursed him back to health.

Physically unaltered from his previous angel-like form after his fall back to being mortal, Marcus had built up his stamina for long flight over that time and he and Kinna had developed a relationship of sorts, but it had not gone much beyond friends. He still wasn’t over Rose. This Kinna woman had done so much for him and he helped her in every way that he could. But he couldn’t fake what he didn’t feel so he just remained her guardian. She was beautiful, and he knew that some of the friends he’d had back in his world would have called him foolish. That is if they didn’t run screaming at the vision of him with large feathery wings and pale white, almost glowing, plaster-white skin. Kinna told him he was beautiful that way, but she didn’t know the whole story. He thought she might react differently knowing that he’d been in a dark place not far from hell and that he had come within a few short steps from becoming a demon.

He also didn’t know if the disturbances in the distance meant a possible way back to his world, and as long as he had some doubts about staying, he knew it would be bad to allow something to start here with her.

His dreams would not let him be either. For months now, he had the same one over and over each night of a group of people led to him from different places and times and the destruction of this world. Some of them had already begun to arrive, but there was one in particular that he knew he was supposed to be waiting for. A man named Cane. The groups who had already arrived were at work fixing up the old town near the castle. They took turns guarding the entrances. Soon there would be more for them to do. Either that or he was crazy and their arrival was mere coincidence. Forget that they had seemingly come from different worlds. Then again, so had he. But what could he do? How could he lead them? In his current state, he was no better than any of them except for the wings. Being able to fly had its advantages. And what was he supposed to be leading them into if this world was going to be destroyed? All signs pointed to some kind of war, but he was clueless at the moment as to what that war was, what they would be fighting for, and where it would take place. So, he kept his distance, spoke only when necessary, and bided his time. They all were looking to him for some sort of guidance and he gave it the best he could. There were warriors among them. And he let the best of them do the training.

He hoped like hell that he wasn’t crazy. That there was some way out of this. Had The Maker sent him here only to let him die in a world that was headed for destruction? With all that had happened over the last couple of months, he thought not. But he had to wonder if maybe that was it exactly. When The Maker had told him that he was giving up everything, he had assumed that he would die right then. Instead, he’d awakened weak and nearly fatally wounded. Kinna had slowly nursed him back to health. Maybe he hadn’t been meant to survive that. But then, just maybe this had been the plan all along and he would die here with the rest.

‘Or maybe you’re overthinking it,’ he thought. Maybe there was no plan. Maybe we’re all set on a course, and no matter how far we stray from it or how closely we follow it, nothing is set in stone to happen one way or the other.

In his heart, he thought he knew that was true. But what if The Maker hadn’t known about all of this? What if he hadn’t been all he’d pretended to be? Marcus wondered about that regularly.

He thought back then to the first group and how he had found them.

He had been flying to the ruins of a nearby town. There he had scavenged quite a bit for him and Kinna over the past months and he enjoyed looking through the place at the things its people had left behind. On one hand, it had been a desolate place, depressing and full of death. On the other, it gave him insight into this world; a world not dissimilar from his own.

On this day, however, things were quite different. He was so used to walking the streets here, knowing that nothing lived except for the wildlife that had overtaken the place, that he at first didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary. And then he had caught the vague scent of cooking meat. He realized that he had been smelling it for a few minutes now and his stomach was growling. His skin began to crawl, ice water flowing through his veins, and he knew that he was being watched.

He stopped and turned slowly in a full circle. He spotted them immediately but pretended not to take notice. They were barricaded in. Why he hadn’t noticed the new boards in place over the long-destroyed windows, he didn’t know. But he did know that there was an even more important question than how he hadn’t noticed. The real question was why they were hiding in a boarded-up building. Whatever they were trying to keep out, it wasn’t him. Of that he was certain. Had someone found their way here since he’d been in this place last, only to be hunted by some of the mutant creatures known to these parts? He knew that he must be a sight, dressed in a home-spun white silk dress shirt with plate armor over his chest and arms with two big white feathery wings out to either side.

Before he could ponder the thoughts for a moment longer, something ran at him from between two of the buildings to his immediate right - Five more from different directions. They were like the mutants that came out at night near the castle, but different. Those things couldn’t come out in the day like this.

Marcus unsheathed the sword which had been a present from Kinna and sliced the first one in half, diving to his right just in time to avoid being bitten or clawed, but only by a millisecond. Their bones were indeed just as brittle, and their skin just as disgustingly thin and jelly-like as the diseased, mutants, but these were something else. They were on him in seconds. More poured from between the buildings then. An army of creatures; Slimy, dark green, almost reptilian skin, covered in warts. Their eyes glowed a soft unnatural green, even in the considerable light from the mid-day sun. He hacked and slashed at them the best he could, eventually rising into the air and taking to swooping in at them until they were mostly gone.

And then an arrow had come from nowhere, luckily only hitting him in the wing, but it had been enough to take him down.

One of the things was standing in the alleyway between the nearest set of buildings and it was holding a bow and arrow. It knocked another one and aimed.

Marcus grabbed the nearest creature and threw it toward the demon archer, catching the next arrow in mid-shot, but it stopped the creature’s progression before it could collide with his new attacker. He dodged easily between the oncoming monsters then, letting this new one take the others down. When there were only a few left he ran at him.

As he closed in, the bastard let loose another arrow and he dodged to the right just in time to keep