Worlds War One

liii [Ji]

She was a force, as otherworldly and unconventional as the existence of Angels or the impressive array of alternate dimensions like the Forsaken Land and She'ol. Lieutenant Badia Robinson had the First Blade Bowie knife in one hand and her SIG-Sauer in the other, running directly at the precipitator of all this death, a banshee wail carrying across the entire empty expanse of this underworld. Like a slow but inevitable impenetrable shield, Drill tried to keep up with her offense, two steps behind her. In her initial attack, the lieutenant mowed down five, ten, fifteen zombies. Drill picked off the undead stragglers as he came after her. Quest and Fox covered her flanks. It was a berserker attack as impressive as anything Ji had ever seen. Even Mot, who had previously appeared eternally unperturbed, registered concern.

But Johnny Rotten kept his most potent corps of corpses nearest him, and the undead Angels and zombie Golems of his inner circle would not be so easily defeated. As the lieutenant made her way through the outer ring of rotting Humans, a complement of possessed Angels fanned out from Mot to confront her. Lieutenant Robinson stopped, standing her ground, Drill catching up and planting himself beside her. The battle in Arcadia had been one-sided in favor of Mot, but that had been a fight enjoined without the support of the hulking sergeant now standing at Lieutenant Robinson's side.

Drill picked up the first undead Angel that came within arm's length. He picked up an Angel! Maybe the undead Angel was already suffering the deleterious effects of being a zombie, or perhaps Drill Sergeant Camilo Cabello was some sort of Wider World wonder that they hadn't encountered yet, like superheroes were real. Clark Kent was no less fictitious than George Washington or Santa Claus. But Drill lifted the winged creature above his head, took one of six wings in a fist the size of a sledgehammer, and chopped the feathered limb from the seraphim's body with his enchanted Bowie knife.

Yet the attacking Angels outnumbered the Humans two-to-one and could drive the soldiers back. Drill took a supernatural sucker punch meant for the lieutenant in the side of his cinderblock head, stunning him but not stopping him. He shook it off after a second, but Lieutenant Robinson realized that the enemy had overpowered them.

She signaled for retreat.

A host of undead Angels and various zombie entities chased the squad of Humans back through the carcasses of Golems sacrificed to make hovels for Rotten's offspring. His skeletal city. His rotting family. Lieutenant Robinson and her squad had managed to slay a fourth of the army protecting Mot, and he sent half of the rest after the four soldiers, leaving him with less than forty protectors surrounding him.

Maybe the secondary squad had a chance.

Ji led the attack on Rotten, Saanvi on his three, and Penina on his nine. There were still a half dozen Angels among Mot's protectors, and Ji had little delusion that his strike team would not suffer casualties. All three of them were never going to make it out of She'ol alive. So be it, as long as Rotten was among the casualties. Ji wanted to see Mot dead before he took his last breath.

Ji-Sung imagined what would happen if they failed. Johnny Rotten would march on Earth again. Maybe this time, he would take all the population for his new undead society. Ji pictured Mot visiting his father, his sisters, and they would stare, stunned, unable to compute. They thought they knew everything, and the Way Things Really Were would cripple them in that moment of truth. They would die confused and uncomprehending. Their last expression would be quizzical and make them look stupid. Ji didn't want that for them. He wanted them to learn the Way Things Really Were, so they could someday face an honorable end.

He wanted to show them.

But he wanted Mot dead even more. If Ji had to die to make it happen, he would make sure that Johnny Rotten met his end as well.

An Angel reached for Saanvi, and Ji protected the princess with a magic spell, firing an ensorcelled slug from his enchanted SIG-Sauer. Penina dodged another attacking Angel, and Ji spied an undead Ghost approaching her right with his frankensteined eye. "Duck," he called out, and the Golem avoided the Ghost. A grizzled bear with a bottom jaw so decayed it hung off its skull by a thin rope of gristle swiped a deadly paw at Saanvi's midsection. Ji kicked out with his Golem leg, extending the appendage six feet long and kicking the bear over before its claws disemboweled the princess.

An Angel appeared before Ji, towering over the nephilim, six sets of wings extending to either side ten feet in both directions. It was beautiful, ethereal, and absolutely terrifying. Drill had plucked up a smaller Angel, the runt of the batch, but this one towered over Ji and seemed the Angel of death itself.

"You're Raziel's son," the Angel said, a dead voice coming from a divine source. The undead kept the memories of the host. Like someone new moving into a home, the previous occupant left the pictures on the wall and the diaries on the nightstand. "If it is any consolation, your death will cause Raziel no grief. You are but one of a thousand of the Angel's bastards."

"There might be a thousand of us," Ji replied, "but I'm the only one who's going to stab you with a First Blade. I'll see your heart pierced right through."

Ji drove the First Blade right through the center of the undead entity's chest. Ji had to use his entire nephilim strength to push the point through the seraphim's almost-impervious skin. The Angel smirked. They clutched the handle of the blade and pulled it out of their body, staring at their celestial blood dripping from the point.

"You missed, half-blood," the undead Angel said.

"I know," Ji answered.

Then the point of Penina's sharpened limb stabbed from behind right through the Angel's midsection like the Spear of Destiny pierced into Christ's side. The Golem hammered it through the Angel's tough hide by making her other hand into a mallet. The appendage that skewered the Angel was the arm made of Arcadian soil, able to wound the seraphim mortally. Right through their heart.

The undead Angel decayed into dust before Ji's eyes, crumbling into ash right at his feet. The other Angels took note, eyeing Penina's deadly Arcadian arm.

"Stand down," Saanvi told the zombie Angels. "We just want Rotten."

Callie Golden stepped forward. "You want Mot? You have to go through me."

Ji moved to confront her. She was a Misfit and one of their squad. One of Mot's offspring had hijacked her body. The obol still contained her soul. They needed to reunite Callie's spirit with her flesh. Ji had to stop her without harming her.

"Give me that body back," Ji demanded.

"You're asking me to kill myself," the creature inside Callie said.

"You need to return what you stole."

Callie pulled her SIG-Sauer from her holster and aimed it at her head. "You want me to kill myself."

"No," Ji cried out and rushed forward.

He had fast Angel speed and Magi hands and a leg made of marble to launch him forward. Callie's finger started to pull the trigger. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Rotten nodding. Ji was too slow. As he grabbed Callie, the undead entity inside her finished pulling the trigger. The sound was both loud and muffled and hard and wet. Her head snapped back, and Ji felt the weight of her lifeless body in his arms. One of Callie's hands went limp, the pistol clattering on the polished surface of She'ol. Her other hand fell back, her fingers letting go of the thing she had plucked from Ji's finger at the moment before she'd pulled the trigger. His ring. The Seal of Solomon.

Ji was left unprotected from Rotten's power.

Then Ji-Sung left. Gone.

And only Ji-Mot remained.