C. E. Murphy - No Dominion - A Garrison Report

That didn’t bear thinking about. I watched the golem stumble over uneven ground, edging toward me with its head still on backward. They really did use their eyes, unlikely as it seemed. I flung the frag, collapsed to the ground, and tried to breathe around shooting pain while I waited for the explosion. Noise and smoke billowed after eight seconds, but it took another minute and a half to get back to my feet. The golem didn’t make it to me in that time, so I knew I’d done it some damage.

Quite a lot, it turned out, though it wasn’t dead yet. It was like the robot in that old sci-fi movie, pulling itself along by one arm and its grinning jaw. I didn’t have an industrial metal crusher handy, so I just shot it in the eye. It died. I didn’t dare sag to the earth beside it, because there had to be a creator-demon around here somewhere, and I didn’t think I could get to my feet if I went down again. So I just waited. The air cooled off as the sun started sliding into the west. I could still smell boiled fish, and the frothing lake down below gave me something to focus on while I waited. Demons did not beget golem protectors just to run away while somebody went through the golems with a bunch of hand grenades.

Although now that I thought about it, that seemed like a very smart thing for a demon to do. I wondered if I’d been had. I slumped to sitting and awkwardly searched my bag for some snack bars and the rest of my water. I put the water on a rock while I ate, which hurt more than I thought it would. Light refracted in a bubble rising from the bottom of the water jug, and then in another.

By the time I realized the water was in fact boiling , Asag was just about on top of me.

I unloaded a clip into him, naturally. Sparks pinged off him where the bullets hit, and he rolled back, but I hadn’t done any real damage. One for the notebooks: silver didn’t stop demons any more than it specifically stopped anything else. I had, though, been counting on the bullets be as reliable as always, and they weren’t. That was unfortunate.

He rolled forward again, having given me a chance to see what I faced but having lost almost no momentum. I expected a gorgon, something to freeze me in my tracks as well as boil water. I was a little disappointed: he was ugly, but not ugly enough to turn me to stone. He was round and multi-limbed, with a hide that looked as hard as the golems I’d blown up. He had eyes everywhere, protruding from each of his three arms and legs. They were all of almost equal thickness, so he could cartwheel in any direction. I wished I had an elephant gun, but I didn’t even have one of those in the Caddy’s trunk. I’d never met anything a bullet didn’t at least slow down.

I had one grenade left, but my aim was too bad to risk using it unless he was on top of me, and I’d done that once already. I was still trying to work out a line of defense when he rolled over the last chunks of stone between us, and bloomed into a Lovecraftian horror.

The hide was just that: a protective outer covering. Within it lay a silently screaming mess strewn by faces of the dead which were marked with pox and stretched long in pain. Greyish-white intestines pulsed as they strangled the dead, and tentacles popped back in from looking out of the hide, every one of them ending with a red staring eyeball. The entirety of Asag’s innards dripped with acidic slime. The stench was overwhelming. Tears flooded my eyes. I coughed and threw my arm over my face, afraid the air would become toxic, and nearly fainted as the action pulled my ribs.

One of his arms unfolded. They weren’t thick and stumpy after all, but multi-jointed, long, and very thin. Folded up they had to be strong as a bundle of sticks to support Asag’s weight, but extended—

—extended it lashed at me like a whip, scoring a slice across the arm protecting my face. Acid burned so deeply I couldn’t even cry out. All I could think was I’d have lost my eyes if my arm hadn’t been in place. I could fight a demon, but I couldn’t fight it blind. I curved my spine and rolled backward, narrowly escaping another lash, and waited for adrenaline to kick in hard enough to let me push past the pain in my ribs.

The crunch of hitting the ground did the trick. I’d been sitting, so it hadn’t been a long fall, but it didn’t need to be. Endorphins flooded my system, burning pain away so fast I knew I’d pay dearly later. But it was the only way there would be a later, so I was willing to pay. I rolled to the side, pulled a knife from a thigh holster, and braced myself for the next hit.

Ichor spurted from Asag’s arm when it met the knife. A clean cut, severing the end, which fell to the ground lifelessly. The silent faces in his belly screamed aloud. I drew another gun to open fire into the tender flesh.

This time the bullets had an effect. He staggered back, reeling from one thick leg to another. Both his other arms unfolded, snapping at me almost too quickly to be seen. I tried firing once, then stopped wasting bullets: I was a crack shot, but they were slim and speeding. The knife was a better weapon against them.

The third time an arm lashed at me, I dropped the knife—I had another—and grabbed it. My hand went around it easily, and it wrapped around my lower arm like a lover’s embrace. An abusive lover, because it pulled me back toward the demon’s body, knocking me against rocks and yanking my feet out from under me. Still, I needed to be close if I was going to inflict the most possible damage. Letting Asag reel me in was a more likely avenue of success than trying to dart in on my own.

When I got close enough, I shot what would be a kneecap on a human, but the bullet lodged in the stony overhide. Wrong angle, or not enough exposed flesh on the legs. I didn’t have time to try again. The arm shoved me toward one of the gaping mouths. I wished I dared detonate the last frag, but there was no way I could get out of range before it went off. I shot the screaming face instead. Acid muck rained everywhere, scalding my arms. Between boiling lakes, dry pipes and the distance to the nearest hospital, I was going to come out of this one scarred.

Scarred was fine. Dead wasn’t. I shot another face and came up empty on the second squeeze. The faces screamed again, but this time in triumph, and then the whole demon folded shut again.

Around me.

It was not how I’d planned for this mission to go. I didn’t dare breathe. My ribs began to throb, adrenaline or no. I squirmed an arm back, trying not to think about the burns scoring my arms with each move. They’d gone beyond pain already, reaching a dull red state that would later burst into flame. Later was all that mattered.

I fumbled, tugged, and found it: the switch that activated my space blanket. Solar power radiated out, heating Asag from the inside.

He’d been defeated by a god of healing and sunlight, back in Sumer. Maybe I was smart after all.

Five seconds passed. The rotten fish stench changed to cooking rotten fish, permeating my nostrils even when I held my breath. I gagged and bit my tongue to keep from either vomiting or breathing. Ten seconds had gone by. Normally I could make it for three minutes, maybe four, without breathing, but that was with preparation, and without cracked ribs. I figured I was good for thirty seconds, maybe forty-five, and then I was screwed.

At thirty seconds, a howl vibrated through the demon, and he erupted. I flew into the air like a geyser was propelling me, coming down hard on pointed rocks. Agony ripped through my back muscles, spasms tugging at my ribs and taking away any chance of drawing a comforting breath. I couldn’t even whimper. Teeth ground together, I stared at the sky and thought hoo-ah, hoo-ah, hoo-ah, until a spasm released me and I could suddenly move my toes again. Nothing critical was broken, then. I was going to have a bad night exposed out here on the mountain, but at least I’d survive.