Chapter 3: Soul Arsenal

Humans die all the time. Demons kill all the time.

For some strange reason, humans pride themselves in their “humanity”—their mortality, fragility, and fallability. Of course, many humans easily cast these things away. In a way, these “insane” individuals are actually the ones who are making the most rational choices.

All of life seeks to live, and demons are no exception, magical their origins may be. All of life trudges along the vastness of the void, on the hope that their spaceship earth does not get flung into another sun.

All of life seeks the power to survive no matter what.

Demons achieve this with the magic they are born with. They are stronger, more numerable, more diverse, and even smarter than their has-been livestock: the humans.

Humans survive by numbers and scraps of intellect alone—is what a demon would say. The humans know this, too. Millennia of defeat, and merely being farmed, has tempered their species to know a humility that demons cannot. Not that they would need such a thing.

But, there is another difference.

Humans have a soul.

When demons die, they stay dead. The same cannot be said of humans.

Humans knew this, even before the demons came—that there was something that remained, even after death; that there was something that humanity already had, that they could say was the closest they had to immortality.

Maybe the soul lived forever. Maybe it did not. They would seek the truth no matter the cost.

Humans pursued immortality, paving the way with self-inflicted atrocities. They created arts that even demons feared.

Necromancy. Reincarnation. Religion.

The demons say, that when you face 10,000 human footsoldiers, be prepared to kill 50,000 enemies.

The demons say, kill all the children, because one of them might be a great general.

The demons say, desecrate the churches, so no god may ever again walk the earth.

The oldest of the demons still remember the Age of Gods. Five of them, Godkillers each of them, spend their days in ceaseless training.

“Tired fools who wish to fight history’s shadows,” the demon lords say. “One of us, alone, can destroy a city in a day.”

But the Godkillers … the Four Horsemen of War, Pestilence, Famine, and Death, and their head, Fear Itself, pay no heed.

Among the demons of today, only these five know humility.

“You are a fool, Yrtarik,” Fear says. It looks at the demon lord, who takes the form of an old man with crystalline eyes, relying on a wooden staff to support himself. Perhaps this one would heed a warning, so Fear speaks. “The new generation of demons have their intellect stunted by their arrogance and pride. From that gap, a god will emerge and kill us all.”

Yrtarik bursts into laughter. Fear frowns, and continues towards the training field.

Fear is correct. “Humanity is regressed and can no longer mount a resistance” is wholly incorrect.

Fear meets his compatriots, the Four Horsemen. The moonlit field is empty, and the blood grass sways with the warm wind, carrying with it the scent of a fallen god’s tear. Amidst them, a shadow emerges from the ground, forming into someone—something—that knelt before them.

“The Arbiter of Sabbath is dead,” the shadow reports.

The possibilities crunch in Fear’s mind—humans that are too powerful for this era? or a disgraceful fluke? The Four Horsemen are loose on their feet, shuffling in nervousness and anticipation.

“It is in the wind,” War says, covered in armor apt for a battleship. “The demon lords indulge while a great battle is knocking on our doorstep. My Lord, we must—”

Fear raises his hand to silence him, before eyeing Pestilence, a chimera between a mantis and a locust.

Pestilence speaks. “If we must cull the humans, I can halve them now while the demon lords know naught. Once they hear of the Sabbath Arbiter’s death, however, they will be quick to point fingers if we move recklessly.”

Fear nodded, next looking to Famine.

“Culling the humans now will cause shortages in the Eastern Provinces,” Famine remarks, curt as ever.

Then to Death.

“None of the human nations know Necromancy.”

“It is decided.” Fear crushes a glass vial, letting its fragments sparkle in the moonlight. “We strike now.”

***

The moment the teleportation vial broke, the Arsenal already knew an attack was coming. They rightfully expected high-level demons, but they did not expect all the Godkillers to come.

Unfortunately, let alone a pantheon, the one goddess they had is yet even ready.

“Please. This way, Your Holiness—”

A young girl in glowing robes, and stricken with grief, refuses to come into the underground train. The guards accompanying her could do nothing to force her in. Young as she is, did any of them have the mental strength to shove a goddess into a train against her will?

“How could you!” she cries. “I can still save this city’s people!”

“If you are discovered, thousands of years of brewing rebellion will all be for naught.”

The goddess turns around, meeting eyes with another one of those white sagecoats, Dr. Leticia. She doesn’t like her cold-as-ever eyes.

“And there are five of them,” she continues in painful, logical detail. “They will kill you. Easily.”

Tears seep from the goddess’s eyes, and in that same moment, her glow brightens to an eye-splitting radiance, all from the thousands of souls per second being reaped above-ground.

“They will live again through you,” Dr. Leticia says. These words make the goddess waver. She knows that a human doesn’t stop being human, even after death. Even now, she feels each one’s death, an insignificant droplet, filling an oceanic grail inside her being.

That they are not suffering, at least, as long as they are within her, is juice from a bitter fruit for her.

Dr. Leticia, even with that cold gaze of hers, takes the goddess’s hands with a deceptively gentle touch, leading her into the train.

“If they find you—and kill you—this city’s souls will find no place to rest.”

With those parting words, Dr. Leticia steps off the train. Before the goddess could reach in to pull her back in, a flood of guards enters the train.

“See you soon, Doc,” one of the guards says as the train doors close, and the train leaves.

The train is fast, taking them scores of miles away from the city within just a few seconds.

Somewhere between the G-forces of the train’s acceleration, and the inferno cast upon the city they are leaving behind, she feels a familiar soul rest in her embrace.

Just when she thinks she is used to it, a lone tear seeps through the corner of her eye.

“We’ve reached the relay station! Get Her Holiness out of here!”

Events are a blur to her. She is ushered out of the train and made to stand alone inside a frame of floating rings.

“Two signatures closing! Three seconds!” “—teleport in one!”

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And she is elsewhere now, welcomed by more guards and white coats.

“You’re safe,” one of the white coats says. The man smiles at her. It’s an affable smile that should calm her, but it doesn’t. She can’t react. Don’t they care about the others?

They put a blanket on her—less to keep her warm, and more to keep her radiance from blinding everyone in the room. The chatter in the background continues.

“Relay station 119’s been destroyed.”

“No contact from Eluria.”

“Storovtun reports an attack—wait, I’ve lost touch.”

Why are the demons doing this? The thoughts in the goddess’s head … might not be her own.

“Damn them all!” “Kill the demons! Kill the damn demons!” “My family! You monsters!”

The souls in her bossom shout as so. They are praying for a choice—to be born anew, and take revenge, but theirs are not the only prayers.

From north to south of the Human Reservation, people about to die plead for help, or at least, a more beautiful next life.

Helplessness. Tiredness. Vengeance. Humanity wishes for many things, and all at once. Should she grant them? Or should she carefully consider them, and make strategic choices instead?

A white coat and a guard approach her and bow.

“Your Holiness. Please, follow me,” the white coat asks. The goddess follows, half her mind still preoccupied in staving off millions of crying prayers.

She enters a chamber, and stands on a pedestal before a horseshoe-shaped table. The table is but a small part of the floor; she eyes the many adjutants and staff running to and fro ancient screens and monitors in the background of the table, many voices expressing emergency, but steady and professionally.

Those seated around the horseshoe table—some monarchs, some generals, all of them sovereign—all together stand, then kneel.

“What is it … that you want from me?” the goddess asks.

“We pray,” a man with gray, wolverine hair spoke. “We hope, and we … wish.”

She can already hear the prayers of each one, though unspoken:

“Strength to defeat the demons.”

“The new reign of humanity.”

“Rebirth of a better world.”

… But the words that are actually spoken?

—Struggle with us.

Behind each word are a thousand thoughts, and she hears each of them.

The old man asks her not to be a weapon, but an ally.

He asks her not for victory, but hope.

He asks her not for power, but for simple, immortal will.

This old man’s name—the name of her believer streams to her consciousness.

“Marshall,” she starts. The divinity of her single-worded address forces everyone in the room to silence.

If they were not her believers, they were, now.

She felt their faith surge through her, all their hope and desire intensifying her already-blinding glow.

The last shackles of her mind came off.

Information struck her all at once. She is a goddess made flesh, the burning needs and desires of the Arsenal and humanity as a whole, carefully cultivated and made manifest, once descended upon an otherwise ordinary child in her mother’s womb.

This is no accident. The Arsenal knows how to create gods, and they did so. It only takes a few million humans’ worth of faith to make one, but it needs to be cultivated, channeled by ancient magical arts that had a mind of their own—they could not choose who would become a god.

Yet, those chosen take on a new mantle. Their soul is inscribed with purpose—a calling that they would swear has always been there—and they would accept their mission as a matter of their nature.

A god is not a mystery. They are a person with a singular calling, empowered by millions to enforce it.

“I know … I remember my purpose,” she says, but shaking in her heels. A gentle look from Marshall, like that of a grandfather, helps her steady herself. “I am … the Goddess of Souls and … Reincarnation.”

But a god is no all-powerful Hero. Kill every believer, and burn every church—no doubt, easy for the strength of demonkind—and they will no longer have power, altogether ceasing to exist.

But the Arsenal has done well to spread this one singular belief: There will be a next life. There is no human alive that does not believe this. Marshall smiles.

“Until the time is right, we will keep the demons from discovering you, O Goddess.”

“Until the time is … right? But the souls, they …”

“They will rest in waiting.”

Waiting?

Waiting.

The souls will be waiting.

They will see the world again.

But the demons? Oh no, the demons.

The demons will be waiting to send them back to me again. They shouldn’t! They shouldn’t—

In that moment, her purpose seizes her with a rainbow veil, and none can look directly at her.

The girl forgets her former name. She forgets her former needs and wants. She is her purpose, incarnate.

Then, she speaks in tongues.

Return to the world to be thrown
Unto the hated demon foe
Before you tread alone
Allow an etch upon your soul

Indomitable will, undead fervor
And love for the suicide order
Fear not your shortest time
For I am Arsenal, and you are weapon

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