- February 28, 2021
The Incarnations: Old Sins of Evil Chapter 3
Chapter Three: The Lightbringer
Evil is everywhere.
He’s on the plains of Earth, as one tribe takes everything that matters to another, and leaves them to die.
He’s on the lone planet, Timeo, where a planet full of sentient bat-like creatures are about to be wiped out by a black hole that entered their solar system.
He’s with his Regamorph consort, kept around merely for company, unable to mourn her species in his presence.
Since the loss of his magnificent wings, Evil is anywhere and everywhere at once, making things dastardly simple and inhumanely horrific to be equal on the scale of meaningless.
Yet, he is nowhere but his bedroom by choice. Evil does not go out and lay waste to the world. The world takes hold of him and drags him down to their level so he must see and draw power from their actions.
He once looked upon these disgusting mortals and the immoral choices they commit that lent him power. He once tried to fight it, the push and pull to be the kind of god who encourages and commits to actions that spread his name. At the same time, he once boasted of the prowess of his power, how it inseminated the world without a motion of his hand.
None of these things matter to him anymore. The hypocrisy has torn him apart, and left him vulnerable. When he thought he was at his strongest he was at his most vulnerable, and for that he was punished.
Now he is fallen, and he is about to fall further.
*****
Before he was only depressed, but anyone who knows him well enough will wonder if he will snap and sob or snap and destroy everything.
Lady Justice is not one of those who wonders. She is his Incarnal partner, as Madam Honor is to the Duke of War. She is the one who is meant to rein him in when he grows too extreme, as he is to do the same for her, though she won’t admit that yet.
She cares not for his loss nor for his need to wallow. Not now, not while his mess threatens to run rampant.
See, the Lady has a special power that almost half of her brethren have. The ability to know everything she wants.
And by all Creation she uses it.
The rest tend to mind their own business, and others have spent little time mastering it. This Lady is not one of them.
She has kept a watchful eye over the pair that watch over the mortals, in case they do something irreversible.
She did not expect to learn that her own partner would be the one who ruins everything, but his name is Evil, so maybe she should have.
When she found out what Madam Honor had discovered she wasted little time before going to King Evil himself to make him fix his mess.
She enters his realm under its night sky atop her faithful servant, Gerechtigheid, her right hand, the largest and most powerful of her direwolves.
The deep green of his fur coat makes them immediately standout more than their appearance. Seeing a wolf larger than a car is eye catching enough, but seeing one contrast against Evil’s whole world makes him impossible to ignore.
To say the Lady and her servant certainly clash with the style of the world would be beyond an understatement. His Majesty was very open and happy to inform all that his realm is modelled after what will be humanity’s greatest setting of evil.
A city during what they will say is the 21st century, a city with buildings that touch the clouds and house millions for tasks they will appear nothing but meaningless to us.
The demon servants of Evil reenact humanity’s future by behaving as they will, by driving vehicles they will call cars, and by going to work in jobs that fuel the pockets of a select few over the great majority.
The Lady is out of her element, not because the demons that come in a multitude of shapes and colors, but because they wear the fashion of the future. The demons range from all manners of red, with different assortments of tails, wings, horns, and some with none at all. They all look like devils while dressed in clothes they call suits, sweats, and casual wear. I fear what they will look like on the humans.
Lady Justice does nothing to hide her shining silver hair, almost platinum in color. Her attire is that of a hunter, striking fear into the mundane servants around her.
The skin of a wolf down her back works to make her look like a predator who hunts other predators. With its head being used as a hood over the sky blue of her irises, and the black of her pupils, a glance will make the servants cower and run away, leaving their cars unattended. Her gray wolf skin even appears as if a short cape, billowing as the direwolf proceeds forward, making her appear even larger.
And in the dead of night, they appear before car headlights almost as terrifying a visage as the Lord Dread himself. Almost.
At first, she walks slowly through the city streets as more demon denizens stop their cars in her way, only to run away, abandoning them.
In a quick flash of her eyes, she knows that they are a wasted effort. Respecting their roads serves no purpose.
She orders Gerechtigheid to stop holding back and he takes off. He jumps entire city blocks in a single bound, even bouncing off the two tallest towers in the city to be where King Evil lays at home. A trip that takes the demons hours by car, and many minutes even by wings, her servant crosses in seconds.
The Lady lands in front of his Majesty’s home, one of the tallest skyscrapers in the city, and dismounts from her beast before it.
The Lady’s eye is caught by all of the Majesty’s many servants in front of his home, seemingly waiting for something, or they were before dispersing upon her arrival.
Her eyes flash as she learns how they wait for him to turn on the lights. The city has been in eternal darkness since he returned from the Incarnal War, and many of the demons have jobs that cannot be completed in the dark.
The Lady loses interest in these cowering demons so she stomps up the carpeted stairs. When the doors open for her automatically, she is admittedly surprised.
Justice enters the brightly lit lobby and finds many demons staring at her, something she’s growing used to, something she expects at this point. She walks with her servant trailing behind her through the lobby, and all of the demons separate to let them through to the elevators, all except for one.
Onheil, my less… my son’s right hand.
“I have business with his Majesty,” Lady Justice states as she walks past the golden statue of his Majesty in his full glory.
Her trembling voice makes her rage all more clear. “Everyone does, if he doesn’t give them the time of day and he’s not going to give it to you. ”
The pink demoness, Onheil stands ready for combat rather than accommodation, which is a bit ironic. She doesn’t wear armor, she doesn’t even ear her hair up. She looks like she walked out of business office with her tee-shirt, suit jacket, strangely hemmed pants, and shoes with high foundations at the heel.
How does she expect to fight in those? Wouldn’t they destroy her feet? Maybe I should take an interest in fashion to understand these things. Death has mentioned on an occasion or too that I should wear more than just one thing.
When the Lady appears unintimidated, Onheil outstretches her wings. They are similar to most other demons in how they resemble a bat’s, but hers are a deep black most others aren’t.
“I wasn’t asking permission, servant,” the Lady tells Onheil.
When the Lady aims to walk past the servant, the right hand of Evil does the unthinkable, and challenges an Incarnation above her class.
Onheil summons her sword in her left hand, a devilish blade with serrated edges to make a shark squeamish. The second she holds it in the Lady’s way, by her neck, the servant overstepped.
The Lady narrows her eyes and summons her bow into her left hand, the Lawbringer. Before she counters, she tells the servant, “I always knew that your reputation as a servant beyond the rest was well earned, but I never realized it was because of your openly repugnant stupidity.”
Onheil grins at the Lady’s overstated insult, and responds in kind. “Thanks, I appreciate you taking the most roundabout way of calling me a bitch. I’ll skip the fancy dressing though, and tell you now.”
She encompasses her blade with blue flames, a trademark of the demoness nicknamed the Hellfire Queen.
“Leave now, and maybe you can still make an appointment at the front desk, otherwise, you can face me and a demon horde,” and without further ado, Onheil calls the Lady, “cunt.”
The Lady only raises her brow at the demon’s vulgarity. “I see you take after your King.”
“He asked for some goddamn peace, so I’m sick of watching douchebags and assholes like you try and keep it from him,” Onheil openly admits in her growl.
Some part of the Lady is touched by the servant’s fervent loyalty for her Majesty, but that part doesn’t make decisions on what is just and true.
The part that retaliates does.
Thum!
Lady Justice snaps her fingers before the demoness, sending her sliding several feet back. In the same motion, she takes her bow into position as her quiver appears on her back.
She taunts the demoness purposely, “If King Evil did not commit actions deserving of punishment, then maybe he would deserve peace, but alas, he does not.”
The Lady lets loose an arrow that magically appears in her hand, never needing to waste the time to draw it from the quiver. Onheil sees it coming and ducks her head as it flies into the behind her.
Onheil leaps forward before it explodes, trying to outpace the smoke.
She truly tests her might against a Lady, as if she wouldn’t struggle against a Duchess.
Lady Justice doesn’t twitch.
Onheil flies straight towards the Lady with her flaming sword, ready to sever the other’s head.
Of course, the Lady has planned ahead, and knew that the servant would fail to use the smoke in any strategic way. Strategy seems like too much for Onheil to consider if you ask the Lady.
When the Hellfire Queen is about to removed Justice’s head, the Lady expertly leans backwards to watch the blade and the flames fly over her face. With reflexes fit of someone with unlimited amounts of power, the Lady moves faster than the blink of an eye, and slams her leg against the demoness’s back to send her flying into the wolf’s jaws.
Chomp!
The Lady is a strategist, and it shows in her results. The draft boost of the explosion and the well placed kicked all worked to throw Onheil flying into Gerechtigheid who had his jaws open and ready.
The direwolf sinks his massive jaws into the demoness’s shoulder, prompting her to scream in pain. She attempts to tear the beast off of her as he pulls and twists on her shoulder with her trapped on her back.
The Lady walks over to the servants as they struggle against each other. She summons an arrow into her right hand, an arrow that if stabbed into someone would explode and eviscerate them.
By the time Onheil struggles to bring her flaming blade towards Gerechtigheid’s head, the Lady stands over her.
She threatens, “Don’t be stupid, I’ve beaten you in two moves, and if you don’t surrender,” as she dangles the arrow over the demoness, “my third will be the last.”
Onheil stares up at the Lady with only defiance and pain in her eyes. She has a heart that won’t stop beating and certainly not one that can accept defeat. She’s made it clear to the Lady that she’d rather perish than fail her Majesty, so she ignites her blade further, burning Gerechtigheid’s face.
The Lady calls her one word, “Fool,” as she brings down her arrow towards Onheil’s skull-
Thamp!
-but when she tries to bring it down, a decidedly human looking hand closes around the arrowhead.
An explosion rings out between the fingers of his hand as it holds the Lady back from killing the servant.
Smoke escapes from it, but only for a millisecond before the hand clutches the Lady by the throat, and a black dress shoe kicks the direwolf off the demoness.
The Lady is raised above the ground by the throat, while her companion slides across the floor with only his jaw touching the ground.
The Lady looks down and sees the face of King Evil staring back at her, his eyes pure white as the skin around them crackle and bleed flames.
His attire actually exists for once, likely because he doesn’t wish the feel the breeze atop the scars on his back.
Lady Justice is defiant, and even makes demands. “Unhand me, Evil.”
My son abides in a way. He lets her go when he punches her across the face, sending her flying to and through the nearest reception desk.
She tries to climb to her feet immediately, despite her daze. She barely making out the taunts he throws her way.
“Maybe people should be more specific when they tell someone to let them go.”
The Lady growls as she slams her fist atop the counter, not amused by his meager quips.
As his Majesty pulls his right hand to her feet, he holds Onheil to him by her shoulder. He heals her wounds and his eyes transform back to their normal blue.
He asks her, “My dear Onheil, are you wounded?”
Somewhat confused, she reminds him, “You just healed me, dimwit.”
With a smile, he clarifies, “I mean your pride, you were just the dog’s chew toy, I can’t heal that kind of embarrassment.”
His teasing of the demoness only earns him a jab to the shoulder, so only more actions to fuel his immature cackles.
Once the Lady is back to her feet, with several hairs on her head out of place, she holds in her rage. She takes a deep breath and thinks to speak before attacking again.
Before she can, in a flash of fire and light, his Majesty is before her with his hand clasped around her mouth.
“No,” he warns to her, “you don’t come into my home, trash it, and get the first word. Good would beat you to pulp for less and I’m the one they call Evil.
“So, if you want to be able to say anything without losing your jaw, you’ll tell your dog to wait outside.”
His Majesty is no fool, his eyes glow, telling the Lady that he does try to know ahead as the Lady does. So she decides she will twist fate and blind them both.
“You think you’re being clever,” Evil tells her, as he finds himself blocked from the future as she hinders them both. “Cede.”
When she nods her head in agreement, he releases her to order Gerechtigheid to stand down, but she does not do that. Instead, she releases her hold on the future and he knows before its too late.
She takes him by the neck for equal measure and flies him down against the base of his golden statue. As he is forced against it, she summons an arrow into her other hand and holds it ready to stab him at the slightest threat.
He holds his hand up to stop Onheil from coming to his defense, but then lights each finger with fire and points them at the Lady.
Lady Justice hisses to him, “Manhandle me like that again, and I’ll make a new King who knows his place.”
A copy of his Majesty appears behind the Lady, two Kings existing at once, and the second wraps his arm around the Lady’s neck to squeeze tight. Gerechtigheid growls and moves to pounce but Onheil steps between the wolf and the Incarnations with her flaming sword.
As the laying King points his hand of flames at the Lady, and the standing King holds her neck in his arm, he mutters his threat into her ear.
“I’ll say this once more, you’ve come into my home, and you’ve smashed it into pieces. You are not just, you are not the law here. The rules will not change for you, because I make the rules.”
A third King appears in a burst of flames and snatches the arrow from her grasp. It safely explodes in his hand before he disperses the smoke.
The laying King dissipates, and the only one left is the one holding her by the throat. He squeezes her neck as she clutches at his arm. She sticks her fingers between his arm and her neck to pry his forearm away, but it’s a futile effort.
The Lady tells him, “I am justified, it is your fault that the world is at risk, and I refuse to be guilty along with you as your partner!”
She summons her vast amounts of power to release it in a pulse. This pulse releases her from his Majesty’s grip, and she spins around as she summons the Lawbringer and an arrow to point directly at his Majesty’s chest.
His Majesty had released her, but he had not budged. He stands where he stood before as she points an arrow directly at a button on his shirt. He stands with his hands in his pockets where his fingers curl, itching to kill her.
As they start to produce smoke, he shows to her how he is staying his hand. Her death not worth the ire it will earn.
He asks her in a way that sounds like a demand, “What do you mean I put the world at risk?”
The Lady lowers her arrow and bow. She steps so close that her mouth can spit directly into his if she wishes it. “Your Sins are-
“-have escaped,” Evil finishes as his own omniscience tells him what she was going to.
“Excuse-?” the Lady snaps as she pulls away from Evil as he rudely interrupts hers.
“Just realized I didn’t need you to tell me shit about my own Seven Deadly Sins,” Evil mocks her. She doesn’t need omniscience to know that his question was rhetorical.
That doesn’t stop the demons in the room from gasping at the mention of the Sins.
The Lady struggles not to go back to fighting and points her finger straight at him. “They’re your responsibility to fix, not the Madam’s or the Duke’s, yours.”
“And now yours, it seems,” he says as he tilts his head, raising his hand to wipe down his face, covering his mouth and all that his expression might reveal to her.
Having acknowledged the situation at hand, he orders Onheil to stand down.
“Onheil, there is something the Lady and I must discuss.” Onheil turns her head back towards her Majesty, and away from her opponent. Lady Justice takes note of the sympathetic expression the servant holds for him, and the violent turn of malice Onheil sends towards her.
Onheil stops fueling her blade with flames, and asks my son, “Your Majesty, are you sure you want to handle this?” His Majesty responds with an angry expression, and grabs the Lady to dissipate into the fire with her at his side.
Onheil finds her question answered, and herself left to clean up the mess. The demoness turns around to face the direwolf, who has been abandoned by his master much like her.
Instead of sympathy, she warns him, “You piss on the carpet and I’ll incinerate you.”
King Evil takes Lady Justice to the skycraper’s top balcony to speak alone.
Immediately, she sucker punches him across his face. “I told you not to manhandle me!”
In response, he snaps his fingers and sends forth a gust of fire to push her back a few feet.
He wipes his chin as he looks at her with the same judgemental and condescension that she does him.
He sticks a finger in her face as he yells back, “Listen, I’m a dick, I’m a very rude person, I’m the kind of person who’d put out a cigarette on your couch, and somehow you’re topping me on asshole-meter.
“You came into my home, and starting smashing up the place, attacking my people no less, we kill people for less… just about everywhere!
“So stop acting as if you are owed something like respect or pampering, because let me tell you, you’re nothing but a colossal bitch!”
In kind she walks back up to him to call him names. “Me? As if you are anything more than an immature ingrate!”
“Oh my god, take a look in the mirror you stuck-up, overused douchebag!”
“Look at yourself, you’re a vain, selfish princess hiding in a tower!”
They go on for a few more insults before they both end up screaming in each other’s faces.
They find themselves audibly breathing with nothing but beat red faces and glaring eyes. Naturally, the more breaths they take, the more they calm down. The more they calm down the more they realize that they have more important things to be doing, all far more satisfying.
King Evil eventually twists around to dig his fingers into the metal bar of his railing. He has to swallow before asking Lady Justice, “Get on with it then, what are the Sins doing?”
Lady Justice crosses her arms and looks at him with confusion. He should just know.
“What?” he says. “You so clearly want to tell me.”
She sees that he is currently under the influence of drugs he makes to keep his mind at ease. “You’re high right now, of course you are, no wonder you have no idea what’s going on! The only time you seem to use your power of knowledge is to piss me off!”
“Spare me the lecture,” his Majesty snaps at her as he summons a cigarette to his hand. “Believe it or not I have some things that I would rather not think about. It’s really quite difficult to ignore everything when you have the power to know anything at all. There comes a point where all the noise just needs to stop.”
He wipes his hands down his face, revealing bloodshot eyes that are in need of rest.
The Lady withholds the little pity she has for him, and his Majesty can see it in her eyes.
“What?” he asks her rhetorically. “Do you hate me and my existence so much that you can’t show a little bit of fucking remorse?” The way she bends her neck says it all. “You hate me? Well guess what, join the club. They meet weekly at the corner of fuck-you street and kiss-my-ass boulevard.”
When he finishes ranting he squeezes the railing into scrap metal, and the Lady does nothing but stare at him with disgust.
“You want to know something, I don’t hate you. I think you exist only to hurt everyone, and that disgusts me.” The Lady drags out the word like something she uses to scrub her bow.
“I already said your vain and selfish. I didn’t mean to only to insult you, but let you know that day to day life is only bad for you because you force that life upon yourself, and others suffer for it.” She points over the ledge to the demons below.
“If you don’t believe me, look over the edge and see the subjects you absentmindedly hurt because you think life is hardest on you. Guess what, the truth is we all suffer and we all have to live through it, but the rest of us don’t turn off the lights so no else can see.”
His Majesty looks over the railing down to the people below, waiting for him to turn on the lights. “They’re just servants,” Evil mutters, “what difference does it make if they wait on the one who made them what they are?”
“You’re not God, Evil,” Justice tells him.
Evil turns towards her with eyes of fire. “Here, in this land, my word is law, I create and I destroy. Life itself bends to my will.
“Here, I am very much God, as Dread is God in his land, and War is in his, and Desire in hers. A God like you who doesn’t realize that will end up like dear old dead Gratitude.”
The Lady’s silver eyes appear white under her hood, and they only brighten the disgusting shock on her face. It all combines with the back of her hand hiding her mouth so she may look as if he had slapped her.
She thinks she sees Evil for what he is, which is strange because she thought the same thing this morning. Each day she seems to peel back a layer and say she’s done before she’s reached the core.
“Sometimes a dark, depressed, and lonely man has no demons,” she says to him, “at that point he will act as if he does, until he makes them himself.” His Majesty turns to hold her gaze before she finishes, “This is you.”
His Majesty turns his back to her and seeks to stand in silence until she is finished. From experience, he stays quiet, for women like her won’t let their complete thoughts go unheard without a fight.
When she doesn’t say a word, he merely asks for her, “Tell me what has happened with the Sins.”
“What hasn’t happened yet? Their power collects and rages against the walls of Death’s Hell,” she begins to rant. “They rip holes to Earth and release long decaying souls. Madam Honor and the Duke of War do their best to protect the mortals, but it is not their duty to fix the source of the problem.”
She moves to stand beside him, close enough that he must look at her. She points directly at him and states, “It is your responsibility to stop them before they break out.”
King Evil grows that devilish smile that unnerves us all. “And then it is also yours.”
“Yes,” she responds. She stands straight and says again, “Yes it is.”
My son stands to look out at the horizon of the night sky. “Then it is time to prepare, to go into Hell and do what needs to be done.” Lady Justice turns her head to stare at him sideways, anticipating that he may actually have something planned. “We’ll kill them of course,” his Majesty admits to her, “I have put that off far too long. Before I was too sentimental, but now I don’t have much sentiment left for anyone.”
“We’ll see,” the Lady doubts, “who knows, knowing you, you’ll fail at the last moment and develop some kind of sympathy for them. You’ll make up some reason, that it’s the Evil thing to do.”
Feeling his fiery eyes upon her, she crosses her arms and asks him, “Am I wrong? Do you, as the humans will say, not just ‘go with the flow?’”
Evil looks away.
“Ah, yes, that’s what I thought. The mortals may be slaves to the rest of us, but you, Evil, you are a slave to them, and what the forces of Evil will do to you.”
For curiosity’s sake, she asks, “But do tell, what do you plan to do?”
King Evil turns to gaze into her eyes with a blank expression. He tells her, “I gave them my love, my power, and my time, then they turned against my wishes and drove me further away from the world.”
He turns back towards the sky. “For that, Pride will go first,” he states randomly.
The Lady does not understand at first. “What was that?”
“Pride, will go, first,” his Majesty repeats. “He was the one who first turned from me, who then made the rest follow.”
As he speaks, my son’s hands and eyes begin to burn, and smoke begins to rise. “I will gut him and sew his bowels into their memory, and then I will see how the rest will beg for my forgiveness.”
Listening to him talk about punishing a group of the wicked makes the Lady almost believe that there is something like her in him.
Almost.
“Then we should go as soon as possible,” the Lady recommends.
“Then we should go now,” his Majesty corrects. “Let’s grab Onheil and your wolf, we’ll need assistance where we’re going. I simply need to do one thing.”
Before he turns to leave with the Lady, King Evil holds his hand out towards the night sky. His hand forms a ball of fire and light.
He mutters, “First, I must bring my people light.”
He shoots the ball straight towards the sky. It travels so fast that everyone missed it, even when it exploded, and the realm knew sunlight again.
“Now we go.”