James Axler - Planet Hate

Her long skirt brushing at her ankles, Domi took an aisle seat two-thirds from the back. She pulled her legs in to allow others to shuffle past, take the empty seats in the row—she was an interloper here and she wanted to keep a clear path for herself to the exit. Instinctively, Domi’s hand reached forward, brushing at her skirt for just a moment, feeling the blade sheathed just above her left ankle.

Domi sat and watched, listening to the loud chimes of the single bell as it swung to and fro. High in the rafters, Domi saw more garlands of flowers had been stretched, lining the walls and twirling like creeping vines down the rough stone pillars that held the structure up. It was strangely simple, beautiful in a naive way. It reminded her of some of the more simplistic outlander rituals she had witnessed.

The cathedral was abuzz with voices, no one person’s standing out but all of them together generating a low blanket of muffled words that seem to fill the theater with a sense of camaraderie, of joy. It was a celebration, an expression of the love of life by the living. Domi sat dour-faced, letting the noise wash over her.

A couple of rows ahead of Domi, a fresh-faced couple laughed, their hands intertwining as they gazed into one another’s eyes. The lad was perhaps nineteen or twenty, a thin blond beard barely tracing over his chin, while his girl looked a little younger, a circlet of flowers weaved in her lustrous black hair, shining pips of metal hanging from her earlobes. Their faces came close, noses brushing for a moment, and they laughed once more before kissing. Domi looked away, only to spy more couples—young and old—in similar joyful states.

At the meeting point of the aisles, just in front of the glass tube that held the swinging bell, a figure in a hooded robe strode to the altar area, rising up a small flight of steps to stand before the congregation. His hood was up over his features, his robe a creamy white with red braiding like lines of trickling blood.

In silence, the hooded figure on the podium held up his right hand, spreading the fingers like rays from a stylized sun, and the bell ringer stopped pulling the bell rope, ceasing its chiming with a final tuneless clang. For a moment the hall was still, the congregation falling silent in anticipation. Domi waited, wondering what would happen next. Nervously, she glanced over her shoulder, confirming that the arched doorway was still open, that she could escape if she needed to.

The cathedral remained silent for almost a minute, the robed figure at the altar standing there with his hand still held high, the red-filtered sunlight playing through his outstretched fingers. The congregation began shuffling just a little, a few of the children becoming restless as they waited for what was to come next. Domi watched, eyes narrowed as she traced the red lines that played across the hooded figure’s cassock like bloody veins.

Finally the robed figure spoke, his voice loud in the echoing chamber of the cathedral. “Friends,” he began, bringing both hands up to his head and pushing back the white hood of his robe. Beneath, he was middle-aged, a square face, clean-shaven with the hint of a tan on his balding pate, a ruddy redness to his cheeks. “Utopia is here, opening before you like a flower in the springtime, paradise on Earth.”

Domi turned her head a moment, saw the beatific smiling faces of the crowd to either side of her. The members of this congregation were pleased; they felt safe with these words.

“And what has brought about this utopia?” the man in the white robes asked rhetorically. “Not a baron, that’s for sure. We need no barons here, now that we have god. But what is god? you may ask.”

The priest left the question hanging in the air for a few seconds, and Domi heard the mumblings of several people around her as they whispered the familiar answer, speaking it quietly to themselves.

“God is love,” the white-robed priest announced, spinning around at the altar and sweeping his arms through the air to encompass every person in the vast audience. “This is god, this thing you feel here, among your fellow men and women.”

“And children!” a voice shouted from over to Domi’s right, and several of the audience members laughed with embarrassment. It was a child’s voice, a little girl, excited and restless at the communion.

“Indeed.” The priest smiled. “Children, too. We mustn’t forget them.” He turned, waving to the part of the audience where the girl’s voice had emanated from before turning back to address everyone. “I don’t think she’s going to let me forget them anytime soon,” he said with the faux secrecy of a true showman.

Some of the audience laughed at this, several applauding just for a moment.

Up on the podium, the white-robed figure was turning once again, raising his arms to indicate the rough-hewn walls of the cathedral. “God promised to bring heaven to Earth, and so he has. You are safe, well fed, you are loved. He demands nothing in return, your strength is his strength.

“Our love is rock, and a rock never breaks.”

Domi felt her breath catch in her throat. The rock god was the thing that had almost destroyed Cerberus, had killed her teammates and left Brigid Baptiste among the missing, possibly dead. His name was Ullikummis and his influence now stretched to whole villes, reshaping them to worship him. And such was his power, Domi realized, that now his people need not even speak his name. He was rock, and rock was love. Domi felt the cobra-creeping fear in her belly as she looked once more at the joyful faces of the congregation all around her. Ullikummis was in their hearts now, his bloody form of salvation sweeping them up like the tide.

For just a moment a breeze blew in from the open door behind Domi, and it seemed Arctic-cold despite the warmth of the June morning. Domi sank into her seat, listening to more of the preachings of this priest of the New Order.

Chapter 4

There came a warm sensation in Kane’s eye and his vision blurred for a scant second. When it cleared, a monstrous child-thing was standing in front of him, his lizard-slit eyes staring into his own. Kane recoiled and tried to pull himself away, but the thing with lizard eyes continued to stare, holding his gaze.

Kane studied him.

His flesh was dark and calloused, hardened like something hewn from stone. He stood as if uncomfortable, limbs held awkwardly, the shoulders hunched as though his back was in pain. He wasn’t standing in front of him, Kane realized with a start—he was standing in a tall square frame of glass, a mirror. The mirror was set into a wall carved of stone, the glass turning dark and smoky at its edges, a decorative affectation to the design. The wall itself was of a bright stone the color of sand, and a crimson band had been painted through it like the bloody slash of a knife. The wall radiated heat as fierce sunlight played across its surface. They were indoors, but it was still bright, with square, open windows lining the wall opposite the mirror.

Where am I? Kane wondered.

The statuelike figure in the mirror smiled, a frightful rending of the rock that clad his face, his primitive features turning him into something even more hideous. It took a moment for Kane to recognize it, or at least he thought that he did. Though a child, the creature was tall—towering even—yet he still carried himself with the awkwardness of a child getting used to the changing shapes of his forming body. The tall child turned from the mirror, trudging down a flight of steps and into the darkness. It was cooler here, as they went underground, away from the sun. Kane seemed to be seeing all of this, yet he was traveling with the monstrous child, as if he was a part of him, as if the thing in the mirror was him. It was like a dream, a vivid story that Kane was being swept up by.