Shadowman, page 28
part #1 of The Valiant Universe Series
Time seemed to stop as Jack perceived the appendage hovering above the werewolf that was just about to clamp down on the woman’s head.
Jack recalled the terrifying moment his psyche was subjected to the torture of Bossu’s image but began grinning in satisfaction.
So that’s how it is.
In an instant, Jack willed the appendage to constrict itself against the sprinting werewolf like shrink-wrap. Aided by the darkness, it completely halted the monster’s movements, forcing it to freeze in place.
Still grinning, Jack noticed how different the constriction felt on his psyche now that the Fear was removed; a numbing coolness pulsated through his veins, replacing the maddening itch he remembered.
The calming sensation enabled him to focus on the physiological signs of panic emanating from the werewolf. Jack’s eardrums became filled with the sound of the monster’s frantic heartbeat as it strained to draw breath against the squeezing pressure of the enveloping appendage.
The stunned monster was watching its prey escape when it sensed something in the shadows. As Jack approached, he could see it following his phantomlike silhouette with panic-stricken eyes.
Sensing a sudden rise in its massive chest, Jack intuited some kind of battle cry to be incoming and swiftly chopped off its head.
Still maintaining his remote surveillance from the shadows, Jack could hear the residents screaming with terror from within their homes as the Trojan horse–like Inicios fulfilled their sinister purpose.
But outside was no better.
The town was an infernal mess. The pack of werewolves was merciless in their slaughter. The chaotic manner in which the beasts handled the bodies, dead or alive, spread the remains in such a way that it was difficult to determine just how many people had been killed so far.
In addition, the werewolves were exceedingly cruel.
Dead set against leaving any human alive, they would hastily disable their current victims in order to pursue those who managed to flee. The beasts would then handle them in a variety of violent ways, all deeply injurious.
Jack saw one of the wolves seize its fleeing victim by jamming its claws into the top of his head, causing the man’s movements to come to an immediate halt.
With claws nearly knuckle-deep in his crown, the man was dragged back to the general area of slaughter, where the powerful monster whipped him around like a nunchuck. The velocity of its swinging increased until its claws became dislodged from the victim’s brain, causing him to be tossed like a rag doll.
Still not finished, the beast advanced on the corpse, squatted low, and began gnawing at the lifeless legs until they separated from the rest of his body in full view of those not yet dealt with.
Jack could hear people screaming what he assumed was the name of this recent victim, and quickly realized the man’s loved ones had been watching the whole thing.
Having thoroughly assessed his soon-to-be battleground, Jack suppressed his analytical mind, preparing for his emotions to set in. He quickly took roll of the crows that were in the vicinity to double-check the safety of his mother and the Abettors. Once confirmed, his emotions immediately took over.
And he was furious.
Holding the head of the slaughtered werewolf, Jack emerged from the shadows and into the area that had become a killing floor. His appendage revealed a group of townspeople trying to hide themselves nearby. Initially, the monsters were only able to make out his slight frame, but as he drew nearer, they noticed the head of their cohort.
The pack responded with a mix of howls and roars, creating a disturbing cacophony of fury that bordered on lamentation. Their collective echoes were still in the air as they suddenly bounded toward the shadowy interloper.
Jack took off with equal quickness, leading them away from the collection of survivors.
As for the pack, the immediacy of their reaction, despite the sudden and abnormal nature of the young hero’s arrival, was a testament to their combat capability. Though it could not be denied that they were exceedingly vicious creatures, Jack observed their nonverbal preparations for a coordinated attack and determined them to be monstrosities of a more disciplined sort.
Sensing their impromptu foot race along the deserted street was coming to a close, Jack noticed the monsters flex for the kill and did likewise, psychically gripping the sengese from the void.
The werewolf that had positioned itself directly behind Jack made the fateful decision to swipe at his ankles. Jack leaped into the air and tucked in his knees, ensuring his feet would be out of the path of the beast’s oversized hand.
As his momentum carried him into a front flip, Jack was given a clear view of his attacker still flying forward as a consequence of its missed attack.
He summoned the sengese as he rolled through his somersault, warping it into position beneath the airborne foe, and held it tight. As expected, the werewolf’s body forced the sickle’s tip into its chin and throat the same moment Jack landed his flip.
Jack pulled at the blade’s handle from an overhead position, acting against the beast the moment its weight had fully fallen. Drawing it out in a forward-facing arc, Jack surreptitiously returned the sengese to the void a moment after his follow-through.
The remaining wolves continued to enact their plan, assuming their adversary’s one-second flip to be nothing more than a flashy dodge.
The swiftness of their formation slowed as, one by one, they caught the scent of their fallen fellow’s blood. Halting in disbelief, they collectively examined its condition, beholding the clean split from its throat through the top of its head.
Jack quickly began to move against the four remaining monsters, forcing them to abandon their battle plan. Since they remained oblivious to how their fellow was killed, suddenly being coerced into defensive tactics did not serve them, as all their movements were accompanied by second guesses.
Now on the offensive against enemies that had no idea what to expect, Jack was able to make quick work of them. He warped the sengese in and out however he wished, sometimes faking them into thinking a blade was coming when he was empty-handed. The incensed youth swatted at them without ceasing until each lay thoroughly dismembered.
Dismissing the sense of victory, Jack hurriedly scanned the entirety of the town’s houses and gnashed his teeth at the copious amounts of demons already invading them. Despite the culminating regret, Jack felt a much-needed sense of relief upon perceiving his appendage resonating with each, revealing its capability to anchor itself to all of them.
Without hesitation, Jack pulled himself to the first Inicio, causing him to warp inside like a ghost. The demons within, sensitive to Jack’s scalding aura of fury, paused their acts of unspeakable wickedness to see the hero staring at them in wide-eyed disbelief. Before the demons could react, either to attack or flee, they were cut down.
Determined not to weaken his resolve by consoling the traumatized victims, Jack clenched his eyes shut and followed the quicker-than-thought impressions transmitted to him by his appendage.
He warped from house to house like a vengeful spirit, cutting down the demonic invaders while destroying the infernal beacons they had used to gain entry.
Having disabled them all, he at last entered his mother’s house. He found her, Alyssa, and Dox huddled together in his room, preparing for the worst.
He shifted off his mask as he spoke. “Mom!”
Helena turned and immediately ran to embrace him.
“My special boy,” she began, whimpering into his shoulder.
Already looking in his direction, Alyssa’s face immediately livened with relief. “Jack?” she said. “Jack!”
“It’s okay,” he replied. “They’re gone but I—”
“You have to go,” Helena said knowingly.
Her son nodded.
“So it’s true,” Dox stated. “Inicio is a gateway.”
“Yes.”
“My God.”
There was a desperate silence that temporarily filled the room before Jack moved to reassure them.
“Dad knew this was coming,” he explained. “And he knew he wouldn’t be able to succeed.” He looked at his mother. “But he knew that I could—”
Helena completed her son’s statement, suddenly remembering what her husband had said in the very same room. “Succeed where he failed.”
A warm expression of acceptance came upon her face as she looked into her young son’s eyes. “Go, my special boy,” she commanded. The woman grasped at Alyssa’s hand and held it tightly, stopping her from speaking. “Do what you have been appointed for.”
The beginnings of a smile began to form just before Jack’s stonelike mask reappeared, its coldness still unable to repress the warmth emanating from within.
Without uttering another word, he warped himself outside.
The stench of the demons invading the city was overwhelming but rather than breaking, Jack felt unwavering determination as he prepared himself for the task Fate had given him.
He seized upon his innumerable crows, inviting their feedback into his psyche. One by one, yet altogether, their individual fields of view swept across his memory, giving him a holistic and detailed vision of the city within moments.
Jack felt his anger achieve a new baseline as his mind recalled the presence of blockades that had been strategically implemented along the outskirts of the city.
The resulting isolation was due to what the signs declared to be a state of emergency, a ploy enacted by the human traitors to ensure the invasion would occur privately. Jack quickly deduced that all electrical forms of communication must have been disabled as well.
“Which was why Mom’s phone didn’t work,” he said, gritting his teeth. “Black Pearl was just their test run.”
His memorized vision of the city’s interior had provided him with his next priority.
The demon hordes seemed to be centralized in the French Quarter.
An ogre-like demon, no less than ten feet tall, had established something like a throne in the center of Jackson Square. Symbolically set atop a high mound of countless corpses, the lesser demons would transport the humans here, where they would be given their final destination based on the whims of the overseeing brute.
Its primary responsibility, however, was to guard the spire.
The crows revealed the spire to be an arcane piece of machinery that enabled the demons to cross over the space-time fabric while retaining their overpowered physical forms.
It seemed to function as a beacon, drawing the demons’ essence to it as they were transported through the fabric and enveloped in the protective shield of Inicio’s energy, meticulously designed to temporarily negate any inherent properties that resulted specifically from Samedi’s spectral signature.
As such, the baron’s enchantment that had devastated the demons’ overall capabilities upon crossover from the Deadside was undone.
This doesn’t feel like it comes from Lwa, Jack thought. It feels scientific and more . . . human.
Having observed the process in detail, Jack intuited that this counter-equivalent energy was the product of a mind that naturally resonated with this kind of stuff but was also obsessive in its pursuit for perfection.
Naturally, the spire’s tactical value was evident even to someone as inexperienced as Jack, who immediately resolved to destroy it.
Jack willed one of the many crows already monitoring the square to get closer to the lounging brute, planning to use the distant summoned creature as an anchor for his appendage.
Confirming the summoned bird had reached a more suitable position for his surprise attack, Jack slingshotted himself to the distant location and straight toward the slouching mountain’s face.
With frightful agility, the brute stood from its slouch and threw a punch at the speedily arriving Shadowman, Jack just happened to block it.
Jack’s surprise was visible as he eyed the changed position of his staff’s edge. The sense impressions of his appendage triggered a reflex at the last second.
The ogre’s follow-up was backed by a force Jack estimated too much for him to stand against outright. He tried to vault over the attack but its momentum kept him pinned, stifling his attempt to tumble away.
As Jack struggled to orient himself, he considered how surprisingly strong this monster was. I could only imagine how many people lost their lives trying to play hero against this thing.
Although its body type suggested clumsy and cumbersome, the reality was different. Not only was the ogre able to detect the subtle repositioning of Jack’s crow, but it reacted fast enough to strike him from the air the moment he appeared.
Bossu used this as an opportunity to break his conspicuous silence.
“Why did you doubt, whelp?”
Taken aback by his Lwa’s sudden speech, Jack dawdled in his recovery from the grazing blow, allowing himself to be sent into the church positioned right in front of the spire.
Careening through the building, Jack seized the former crow anchor with the surrounding rubble still falling around him and, without exiting the Liveside, slingshotted himself back to the brute.
The ogre once again proved itself an exceedingly skilled combatant by deflecting Jack’s blitz with another blurry counterpunch.
Jack had surreptitiously arranged more crows to act as disparate anchor points, hoping to catch the monster from an unexpected angle, to no avail.
In terms of both its footwork and striking, the ogre was just too quick.
Like shadowboxing an obstinate hornet, it reacted to Jack’s zipping to and fro by swiftly pivoting its body and throwing inhumanly precise jabs to parry the repeated attacks.
“Why are you fighting like this?” Bossu asked, abrasively curious. “Attacking it in a straight line while not even utilizing apertures to throw off its timing? It is too strong for that kind of attack to work. Can you not see?”
As if timed to prove the Lwa’s point, another ogre appeared as a bolt summoned by the lightning rod–like spire.
“ENOUGH!!!” it roared.
Barely missing Jack as he zipped by, the agile mountain began swatting as many of the sneaky standby birds it could reach, bringing that method of attack to an end.
“Do not permit yourself to be disheartened, whelp. Most certainly, this is the Deadside-equivalent overseer, beckoned to defeat you once and for all. We shall dispatch them both at once straightway.”
By now, most of the lesser demons in the immediate area had taken notice and began gathering to witness the impudent terror of the Deadside finally meet his doom.
As Jack pondered how to respond to his shady Lwa, the other ogre struck him and sent him crashing into the local museum.
“The time of your race . . .” Having sprinted inside, the second ogre was upon Jack before he could react, batting him deeper through the building’s infrastructure. “Is over.” The monster started raining blows on Jack who, despite acute awareness of what was coming and how to counter, did not.
With his mind filled with doubt toward his Lwa, Jack could not help but suspect the timing of his renewed speech and put an inordinate amount of focus on monitoring his inward thoughts against intrusion.
The ogre stood over him confidently, continuing its boasting. “Your women,” it began, winding up for a kick, “are ours.”
These words got Jack’s attention, just in time for him to receive the faster-than-expected kick to the gut, sending him through the floors above and rocketing through the roof.
The overwhelming pain from the spine-breaking foot seemed to fuel Jack’s outrage at the demon’s words, but the overwhelming uncertainty left the emotion with no outlet.
His Lwa let out a gravelly sigh. “And so?” he asked. “For that reason, you will let this overconfident excrement kill you? Have its way with your kin?”
As Jack reached the top of his ascent and began free fall, the ogre’s twin appeared behind him and clobbered him back down to the earth. The shock wave of his crash landing brought great joy to the onlooking lesser demons.
“EVEN WHEN YOU HAVE THE ABILITY TO RIP HIM LIMB FROM LIMB!?”
Jack could see shards of his newly broken mask embedded in the ground as Bossu’s enraged reprimand echoed in his head. Drowning out the pain, it rekindled memories of their past conversation.
“Remember whelp: Your anger fuels your strength, your strength fuels your violence. That’s what it will feel like, but the truth is they are one and the same. Therefore, control your anger. Do not stifle it, but control it. Listen and understand, as it must not be indulged unless necessary.”
“Why?”
“Because when they see it, they will fear.”
“Good.”
As Jack felt himself get kicked toward the spire, he sensed his body engage in recovery against the momentum of his flight. As he did so, he could see the same ogre sprinting toward his flying body, preparing to strike once more.
The agile mountains were so annoying.
Feeling the elusive outlet for his rage finally fall in line with the swelling geyser already primed within, he thought back to his conflict with Jamal and recalled his father’s prophetic advice on engagement, given for such a time as this.
The young hero could make out the ogre hesitating in its advance as his discernment began to speak to him, somehow reciting the instruction in the voice of Josiah.
Go nuts.
Suddenly, it was as if the wall he had first sensed against Jamal that kept his rage nonexistent had been breached.
To Jack, it was almost like Providence had predetermined Bossu to be the key needed to dismantle it, though they had not even known each other.
Nevertheless, here Jack stood, a slow burn of fury sizzling just beneath the surface. And judging by the changed demeanor of his demonic opponent, this volatile emotion was outwardly visible.
Apparently affronted, the monster attacked quickly, sending thunderous blows to Jack’s partially exposed face. Each one was so loud that the audience of undead fell silent. The mountain’s twin finally touched down and gazed from afar, awaiting the cue for its turn.
However, what it could not see was that its partner’s mighty shots were being shrugged off. The broken mask revealing portions of his altered skin tone, Jack’s seething expression remained unchanged as his head returned from each strike progressively quicker.
Jack recalled the terrifying moment his psyche was subjected to the torture of Bossu’s image but began grinning in satisfaction.
So that’s how it is.
In an instant, Jack willed the appendage to constrict itself against the sprinting werewolf like shrink-wrap. Aided by the darkness, it completely halted the monster’s movements, forcing it to freeze in place.
Still grinning, Jack noticed how different the constriction felt on his psyche now that the Fear was removed; a numbing coolness pulsated through his veins, replacing the maddening itch he remembered.
The calming sensation enabled him to focus on the physiological signs of panic emanating from the werewolf. Jack’s eardrums became filled with the sound of the monster’s frantic heartbeat as it strained to draw breath against the squeezing pressure of the enveloping appendage.
The stunned monster was watching its prey escape when it sensed something in the shadows. As Jack approached, he could see it following his phantomlike silhouette with panic-stricken eyes.
Sensing a sudden rise in its massive chest, Jack intuited some kind of battle cry to be incoming and swiftly chopped off its head.
Still maintaining his remote surveillance from the shadows, Jack could hear the residents screaming with terror from within their homes as the Trojan horse–like Inicios fulfilled their sinister purpose.
But outside was no better.
The town was an infernal mess. The pack of werewolves was merciless in their slaughter. The chaotic manner in which the beasts handled the bodies, dead or alive, spread the remains in such a way that it was difficult to determine just how many people had been killed so far.
In addition, the werewolves were exceedingly cruel.
Dead set against leaving any human alive, they would hastily disable their current victims in order to pursue those who managed to flee. The beasts would then handle them in a variety of violent ways, all deeply injurious.
Jack saw one of the wolves seize its fleeing victim by jamming its claws into the top of his head, causing the man’s movements to come to an immediate halt.
With claws nearly knuckle-deep in his crown, the man was dragged back to the general area of slaughter, where the powerful monster whipped him around like a nunchuck. The velocity of its swinging increased until its claws became dislodged from the victim’s brain, causing him to be tossed like a rag doll.
Still not finished, the beast advanced on the corpse, squatted low, and began gnawing at the lifeless legs until they separated from the rest of his body in full view of those not yet dealt with.
Jack could hear people screaming what he assumed was the name of this recent victim, and quickly realized the man’s loved ones had been watching the whole thing.
Having thoroughly assessed his soon-to-be battleground, Jack suppressed his analytical mind, preparing for his emotions to set in. He quickly took roll of the crows that were in the vicinity to double-check the safety of his mother and the Abettors. Once confirmed, his emotions immediately took over.
And he was furious.
Holding the head of the slaughtered werewolf, Jack emerged from the shadows and into the area that had become a killing floor. His appendage revealed a group of townspeople trying to hide themselves nearby. Initially, the monsters were only able to make out his slight frame, but as he drew nearer, they noticed the head of their cohort.
The pack responded with a mix of howls and roars, creating a disturbing cacophony of fury that bordered on lamentation. Their collective echoes were still in the air as they suddenly bounded toward the shadowy interloper.
Jack took off with equal quickness, leading them away from the collection of survivors.
As for the pack, the immediacy of their reaction, despite the sudden and abnormal nature of the young hero’s arrival, was a testament to their combat capability. Though it could not be denied that they were exceedingly vicious creatures, Jack observed their nonverbal preparations for a coordinated attack and determined them to be monstrosities of a more disciplined sort.
Sensing their impromptu foot race along the deserted street was coming to a close, Jack noticed the monsters flex for the kill and did likewise, psychically gripping the sengese from the void.
The werewolf that had positioned itself directly behind Jack made the fateful decision to swipe at his ankles. Jack leaped into the air and tucked in his knees, ensuring his feet would be out of the path of the beast’s oversized hand.
As his momentum carried him into a front flip, Jack was given a clear view of his attacker still flying forward as a consequence of its missed attack.
He summoned the sengese as he rolled through his somersault, warping it into position beneath the airborne foe, and held it tight. As expected, the werewolf’s body forced the sickle’s tip into its chin and throat the same moment Jack landed his flip.
Jack pulled at the blade’s handle from an overhead position, acting against the beast the moment its weight had fully fallen. Drawing it out in a forward-facing arc, Jack surreptitiously returned the sengese to the void a moment after his follow-through.
The remaining wolves continued to enact their plan, assuming their adversary’s one-second flip to be nothing more than a flashy dodge.
The swiftness of their formation slowed as, one by one, they caught the scent of their fallen fellow’s blood. Halting in disbelief, they collectively examined its condition, beholding the clean split from its throat through the top of its head.
Jack quickly began to move against the four remaining monsters, forcing them to abandon their battle plan. Since they remained oblivious to how their fellow was killed, suddenly being coerced into defensive tactics did not serve them, as all their movements were accompanied by second guesses.
Now on the offensive against enemies that had no idea what to expect, Jack was able to make quick work of them. He warped the sengese in and out however he wished, sometimes faking them into thinking a blade was coming when he was empty-handed. The incensed youth swatted at them without ceasing until each lay thoroughly dismembered.
Dismissing the sense of victory, Jack hurriedly scanned the entirety of the town’s houses and gnashed his teeth at the copious amounts of demons already invading them. Despite the culminating regret, Jack felt a much-needed sense of relief upon perceiving his appendage resonating with each, revealing its capability to anchor itself to all of them.
Without hesitation, Jack pulled himself to the first Inicio, causing him to warp inside like a ghost. The demons within, sensitive to Jack’s scalding aura of fury, paused their acts of unspeakable wickedness to see the hero staring at them in wide-eyed disbelief. Before the demons could react, either to attack or flee, they were cut down.
Determined not to weaken his resolve by consoling the traumatized victims, Jack clenched his eyes shut and followed the quicker-than-thought impressions transmitted to him by his appendage.
He warped from house to house like a vengeful spirit, cutting down the demonic invaders while destroying the infernal beacons they had used to gain entry.
Having disabled them all, he at last entered his mother’s house. He found her, Alyssa, and Dox huddled together in his room, preparing for the worst.
He shifted off his mask as he spoke. “Mom!”
Helena turned and immediately ran to embrace him.
“My special boy,” she began, whimpering into his shoulder.
Already looking in his direction, Alyssa’s face immediately livened with relief. “Jack?” she said. “Jack!”
“It’s okay,” he replied. “They’re gone but I—”
“You have to go,” Helena said knowingly.
Her son nodded.
“So it’s true,” Dox stated. “Inicio is a gateway.”
“Yes.”
“My God.”
There was a desperate silence that temporarily filled the room before Jack moved to reassure them.
“Dad knew this was coming,” he explained. “And he knew he wouldn’t be able to succeed.” He looked at his mother. “But he knew that I could—”
Helena completed her son’s statement, suddenly remembering what her husband had said in the very same room. “Succeed where he failed.”
A warm expression of acceptance came upon her face as she looked into her young son’s eyes. “Go, my special boy,” she commanded. The woman grasped at Alyssa’s hand and held it tightly, stopping her from speaking. “Do what you have been appointed for.”
The beginnings of a smile began to form just before Jack’s stonelike mask reappeared, its coldness still unable to repress the warmth emanating from within.
Without uttering another word, he warped himself outside.
The stench of the demons invading the city was overwhelming but rather than breaking, Jack felt unwavering determination as he prepared himself for the task Fate had given him.
He seized upon his innumerable crows, inviting their feedback into his psyche. One by one, yet altogether, their individual fields of view swept across his memory, giving him a holistic and detailed vision of the city within moments.
Jack felt his anger achieve a new baseline as his mind recalled the presence of blockades that had been strategically implemented along the outskirts of the city.
The resulting isolation was due to what the signs declared to be a state of emergency, a ploy enacted by the human traitors to ensure the invasion would occur privately. Jack quickly deduced that all electrical forms of communication must have been disabled as well.
“Which was why Mom’s phone didn’t work,” he said, gritting his teeth. “Black Pearl was just their test run.”
His memorized vision of the city’s interior had provided him with his next priority.
The demon hordes seemed to be centralized in the French Quarter.
An ogre-like demon, no less than ten feet tall, had established something like a throne in the center of Jackson Square. Symbolically set atop a high mound of countless corpses, the lesser demons would transport the humans here, where they would be given their final destination based on the whims of the overseeing brute.
Its primary responsibility, however, was to guard the spire.
The crows revealed the spire to be an arcane piece of machinery that enabled the demons to cross over the space-time fabric while retaining their overpowered physical forms.
It seemed to function as a beacon, drawing the demons’ essence to it as they were transported through the fabric and enveloped in the protective shield of Inicio’s energy, meticulously designed to temporarily negate any inherent properties that resulted specifically from Samedi’s spectral signature.
As such, the baron’s enchantment that had devastated the demons’ overall capabilities upon crossover from the Deadside was undone.
This doesn’t feel like it comes from Lwa, Jack thought. It feels scientific and more . . . human.
Having observed the process in detail, Jack intuited that this counter-equivalent energy was the product of a mind that naturally resonated with this kind of stuff but was also obsessive in its pursuit for perfection.
Naturally, the spire’s tactical value was evident even to someone as inexperienced as Jack, who immediately resolved to destroy it.
Jack willed one of the many crows already monitoring the square to get closer to the lounging brute, planning to use the distant summoned creature as an anchor for his appendage.
Confirming the summoned bird had reached a more suitable position for his surprise attack, Jack slingshotted himself to the distant location and straight toward the slouching mountain’s face.
With frightful agility, the brute stood from its slouch and threw a punch at the speedily arriving Shadowman, Jack just happened to block it.
Jack’s surprise was visible as he eyed the changed position of his staff’s edge. The sense impressions of his appendage triggered a reflex at the last second.
The ogre’s follow-up was backed by a force Jack estimated too much for him to stand against outright. He tried to vault over the attack but its momentum kept him pinned, stifling his attempt to tumble away.
As Jack struggled to orient himself, he considered how surprisingly strong this monster was. I could only imagine how many people lost their lives trying to play hero against this thing.
Although its body type suggested clumsy and cumbersome, the reality was different. Not only was the ogre able to detect the subtle repositioning of Jack’s crow, but it reacted fast enough to strike him from the air the moment he appeared.
Bossu used this as an opportunity to break his conspicuous silence.
“Why did you doubt, whelp?”
Taken aback by his Lwa’s sudden speech, Jack dawdled in his recovery from the grazing blow, allowing himself to be sent into the church positioned right in front of the spire.
Careening through the building, Jack seized the former crow anchor with the surrounding rubble still falling around him and, without exiting the Liveside, slingshotted himself back to the brute.
The ogre once again proved itself an exceedingly skilled combatant by deflecting Jack’s blitz with another blurry counterpunch.
Jack had surreptitiously arranged more crows to act as disparate anchor points, hoping to catch the monster from an unexpected angle, to no avail.
In terms of both its footwork and striking, the ogre was just too quick.
Like shadowboxing an obstinate hornet, it reacted to Jack’s zipping to and fro by swiftly pivoting its body and throwing inhumanly precise jabs to parry the repeated attacks.
“Why are you fighting like this?” Bossu asked, abrasively curious. “Attacking it in a straight line while not even utilizing apertures to throw off its timing? It is too strong for that kind of attack to work. Can you not see?”
As if timed to prove the Lwa’s point, another ogre appeared as a bolt summoned by the lightning rod–like spire.
“ENOUGH!!!” it roared.
Barely missing Jack as he zipped by, the agile mountain began swatting as many of the sneaky standby birds it could reach, bringing that method of attack to an end.
“Do not permit yourself to be disheartened, whelp. Most certainly, this is the Deadside-equivalent overseer, beckoned to defeat you once and for all. We shall dispatch them both at once straightway.”
By now, most of the lesser demons in the immediate area had taken notice and began gathering to witness the impudent terror of the Deadside finally meet his doom.
As Jack pondered how to respond to his shady Lwa, the other ogre struck him and sent him crashing into the local museum.
“The time of your race . . .” Having sprinted inside, the second ogre was upon Jack before he could react, batting him deeper through the building’s infrastructure. “Is over.” The monster started raining blows on Jack who, despite acute awareness of what was coming and how to counter, did not.
With his mind filled with doubt toward his Lwa, Jack could not help but suspect the timing of his renewed speech and put an inordinate amount of focus on monitoring his inward thoughts against intrusion.
The ogre stood over him confidently, continuing its boasting. “Your women,” it began, winding up for a kick, “are ours.”
These words got Jack’s attention, just in time for him to receive the faster-than-expected kick to the gut, sending him through the floors above and rocketing through the roof.
The overwhelming pain from the spine-breaking foot seemed to fuel Jack’s outrage at the demon’s words, but the overwhelming uncertainty left the emotion with no outlet.
His Lwa let out a gravelly sigh. “And so?” he asked. “For that reason, you will let this overconfident excrement kill you? Have its way with your kin?”
As Jack reached the top of his ascent and began free fall, the ogre’s twin appeared behind him and clobbered him back down to the earth. The shock wave of his crash landing brought great joy to the onlooking lesser demons.
“EVEN WHEN YOU HAVE THE ABILITY TO RIP HIM LIMB FROM LIMB!?”
Jack could see shards of his newly broken mask embedded in the ground as Bossu’s enraged reprimand echoed in his head. Drowning out the pain, it rekindled memories of their past conversation.
“Remember whelp: Your anger fuels your strength, your strength fuels your violence. That’s what it will feel like, but the truth is they are one and the same. Therefore, control your anger. Do not stifle it, but control it. Listen and understand, as it must not be indulged unless necessary.”
“Why?”
“Because when they see it, they will fear.”
“Good.”
As Jack felt himself get kicked toward the spire, he sensed his body engage in recovery against the momentum of his flight. As he did so, he could see the same ogre sprinting toward his flying body, preparing to strike once more.
The agile mountains were so annoying.
Feeling the elusive outlet for his rage finally fall in line with the swelling geyser already primed within, he thought back to his conflict with Jamal and recalled his father’s prophetic advice on engagement, given for such a time as this.
The young hero could make out the ogre hesitating in its advance as his discernment began to speak to him, somehow reciting the instruction in the voice of Josiah.
Go nuts.
Suddenly, it was as if the wall he had first sensed against Jamal that kept his rage nonexistent had been breached.
To Jack, it was almost like Providence had predetermined Bossu to be the key needed to dismantle it, though they had not even known each other.
Nevertheless, here Jack stood, a slow burn of fury sizzling just beneath the surface. And judging by the changed demeanor of his demonic opponent, this volatile emotion was outwardly visible.
Apparently affronted, the monster attacked quickly, sending thunderous blows to Jack’s partially exposed face. Each one was so loud that the audience of undead fell silent. The mountain’s twin finally touched down and gazed from afar, awaiting the cue for its turn.
However, what it could not see was that its partner’s mighty shots were being shrugged off. The broken mask revealing portions of his altered skin tone, Jack’s seething expression remained unchanged as his head returned from each strike progressively quicker.
