The Great Fall

Chapter Twelve

Julius was thrown against the tree, and he heard Haxa scream, so he assumed that the same unfortunate fate had befallen her. Lights flashed behind his eyes, which he had closed in a brace for impact, and the back of his head throbbed. There was a strange gurgling sound that he supposed came from the two disfigured men. He opened his eyes and saw that the larger one was standing face to face with him, and the smaller was struggling to keep Haxa from casting spells, pinching her lips closed and attempting to bind her arms. Julius thought it strange that she did not use any spells requiring only her mind. Maybe the adrenaline was barring her sensibility.

Julius looked into the eyes of his disfigured assailant and head butted him, hard. The man, if it was indeed even human, reeled back, clutching its face, as if to say that Julius had broken something and made it ugly. Julius hoped that he had broken something. He jumped to his feet and threw a bolt of flame through the man's chest. Once more, their eyes met, this time both filled with rage, and the being fell to the ground in a pile of smoldering ashes. The smaller of the two men looked at Julius, both horrified and enraged. He let out a screech and dropped Haxa. His sole focus was Julius. Maybe they had been brothers. The man charged at Julius, faster that should have been possible for a man of his... girth. He slammed into Julius with the force of a bull and threw him clear out of the clearing. He slammed into a tree, but he did not slide down as would have been expected. There was a sharp pain in his abdomen.

Julius looked down and saw a fairly large branch protruding from his stomach, slick and black with his blood. He should have been thankful that the stick did not pull any important organs out with it, but at the moment, he was in a considerable amount of pain. He felt week, and he could see more and more blood soaking through his shirt. He did not have the strength to scream, so he just groaned. He felt as if he would slip away, but that was before an enormous arm was pressed up against his chest. The man smiled evilly at Julius, and a branch could be heard snapping. There was a sickening squelch, and more blinding pain, now in Julius's shoulder, and he felt as if he were pinned to the tree. His vision went dark, and before he fell under, he saw Haxa, holding a sword far too heavy for her, standing behind a now headless man. She looked different. Like someone else was inside of her. A tall, blonde man, robed in white. Death brought strange hallucinations, it seemed.

***

In and out of consciousness, a slab of wood against his back. Minutes, hours, days passed. Voices surrounded Julius, sometimes speaking in unison, sometimes contradicting each other's statements. One voice cried. The other did not. One voice confided in Julius that their mind might be lost, that they lost hours every day, and woke up places she had not gone to sleep. One voice grumbled about a failing host, and blamed Julius for his foolishness. One voice called him Malum, and made him want to sleep forever, just to get away. One voice called him Julius, and begged him to come back.

A day? Two? Ten? Julius did not know. He opened his eyes and saw Haxa, sleeping in the corner, and he saw someone else, occupying the same space. That man, the one who had been there at his death. Was he dead? He did not know, but he felt as if he were alive. He got up from the table he had been lying upon and walked over to Haxa and shook her by the shoulder. Her eyes opened slowly, and she looked up at him. She gasped, and threw her arms around him. He could see the man scowling from within his friend. He hugged Haxa back, returning the man's scowl when his friend was not looking. He looked around the tiny room in which he stood. He was not in the house in Casas. He looked outside, and surely enough, he was in another village. His room appeared to be on the second floor of an abandoned house. He assumed it was abandoned. It seemed empty enough, and the outside was in poor condition. People walked around outside, one child even stopping to look up and wave at Julius before his mother ushered him along. He turned back to Haxa, who stood behind him with tears in her eyes and a smile as wide as the desert on her face, trembling. The stranger stood in her place as well, trembling, though he doubted that it had anything to do with joy.

"How long have I been out," Julius asked. Haxa's face sunk to a somber stance at his question. "Three months, roughly. I did not think you would ever wake. You really are a fool to have chased the girl down." Curator. He had been suspicious that the strange man had been the angel, but he had hoped that it was not. He had wanted him to be glorious, covered in a heavenly glow, but the angel looked to be just a normal man. "Malum, do you have any idea what you have done? In the absence of your highness, the demons demolished most of your pathetic empire. You are to blame and all because you chased down your little friend instead of leaving it to me!" Curator raised a hand to Haxa's head and sighed. Haxa's face returned to how it had been before, though horror quickly replaced that face when she noticed that she had moved. Curator must have been less reluctant to allow her to know of his existence, though it seemed that she had taken the strange happenings to mean that she was insane. It was comedic, almost, that the second something unexplainable happened, instead of admitting that there may be more to life than can be explained, people seemed to assume insanity. A world of skeptics.

Julius did not know what to tell her. She would truly go insane if she continued to believe she was, yet she might think the same if he told her about Curator. He decided that now would not be an ideal time to tell her about angels, demons, and wrathful gods. "Where are we, exactly," he asked. Haxa replied, but her voice was nearly inaudible. "A small town at the far north end of the empire, Tutum. It's mostly refugees from cities that the demons have levelled. It is scarcely populated, as could be guessed from the nature of its people." Julius nodded and once again walked to the window. The people he saw were clothed in what was but a step away from produce sacks. He had been taught many things by his father, but the first and foremost had been compassion for the people he would have ruled over. It sickened him to see his people in such a state. "Show me to the door please, Haxa," Julius said. Haxa did as was asked and they walked out onto the streets, but not before Curator once again raised his head. "The way to help them is not to give them clothing, Julius. Many have died, and many more will. Clothing will not change this. You must kill Malhechor. What you have done has disrupted all of the plans of the Creator, and the human race will die off if you do not fix this." Julius stopped in his tracks. He sighed heavily. "Go and retrieve some horses. I doubt that we will find Malhechor in a city full of living humans. I assume you know where he is, or how to find him?" Curator nodded Haxa's head and went off to find steeds. Julius sat down on the side of the streets and cradled his head in his hands. "Three months. How many, I wonder, did I fail to save while I slept?"