Black Bird

Nettles frothed in boiling water. Somewhere the mechanic drank until his migraines stopped. The thermometer he checked twice- still over 90 degrees. He look out the road and tall weeds. Black birds compressed the power line. The oil in his love lines reeked. He finished work, scrubbed his palms clean, and drove home. The migraines blinded him but he stayed on the road. Once home he took pills and swallowed hard cups of water. Then he came to his machine. It waited under a cover in the garage. The exhaust fan he screwed in reached further than the grill. Ridges on his tools impressed his palms as he fixed his mistake, he worked slow, and tossed the fan to the corner. He stared into the hood like a puzzle with missing pieces. He needed new hub caps. The upholstery needed staples. He spilled his bottle of steering wheel fluid down the hood, and it leaked in fingers to the unstained cement. He dabbed it up with towels, then dropped them into the bucket with other biological contaminants. The sign he wrote on it read “Smart birds don’t shit the nest.” From there he examined his awards on the wall. Best of show: 2010,2011,2013. Runner up 2014, and 2016.

The car he took up ran on a soup can. A bar bridged the wheel wheel wells and obstructed view of the deeper workings. He sat his tools aside, painted over the rust and soldered borders. He used a amber brass color that devolved into shades of bruised squash. He ran his fingers through his hair, greasing his locks with lubricant. He looked through his car schedule- he didn’t miss a single day, but missed his six month mark. He worked on the car for over a year. Already changed the wheels the seating, the steering wheel, even the fuel gauge needles needed replaced. He dove into dark wells of auto mechanic libraries to for a manual on historical cars. The car rolled onto the floor in 1924. He’d been using parts from the 30s. He just wanted to get the car  running- and he knew the judges. Small towners who like their world local- they wouldn’t notice nor interfere with his infractions- but then he found the bulletin that his year, the Historical Car Society judged the show. He came to his computer. He invented five hundred words telling how he purchased the car for nephew Agette, who planned to fix it when he returned from Iraq, but came back in a box instead.

He found clip art of a young man’s farmstead homecoming, and and applied it all together to be printed onto a sheet of cardboard. It took some pretending. The mechanic never took step on stage, but he told enough lies to convey the story with pauses, and sniifs since he couldn’t force tears. The judges needed to see the tears. He tried thinking of losing his pets, his family, his old house, and old cars-  but only one thing tickled his sadness.

He took home another trophy- “semi runner up” it read. He kept in his closet. “Thanks, Agette.” He tossed in the poster with it. Of all the cars he worked on, and of all the cars he dreamed of- nothing compared to the car that ran him over as a boy.

He remembered, but it happened long ago. The hot rubber left tread over his stomach. His forehead seared to the grill, and the doctors told him when he awoke that they prepared to bury him.

Ever since, he dreamed of seeing the barron’s car roll into his garage. Ever since seeing the black bird dig its beak into his flesh, since seeing his blood drip down its iron feathers,  he decided he’d work on cars.

The land barron owned many cars, but as he aged into his hundreds, he only drove one. A classic from the 20s, with a black bird adorning the hood-its wings bore forward like horns. Each wing the length of a hatchet. It’s beak stabbed like a javelin.

He caught a glimpse of its engine one day- and salivated as he watched it spin. Helmet, gauntlets, lance, shield- a complete machine. Even when the engine sputtered it cried like a war horse. The smoke smelled sweet, the burning oil and incense.

One day the owner drove it into the pond. A banker came to collect from him, but found his home empty. The police searched for a missing person for twelve years, until the Mechanic as a small boy went fishing in the pond. He spun the reel, smelled catfish frying in butter, but he pulled out a slimy tuft of human hair. He kept it secret, but every year the summers got longer and the pond dried more and more. He kept the hair, and watched the leather holding it together crinkle to dust in a jar next to his piggy bank. The summers lengthened  and winters shortened. The city announced plans to drain the pond for dumping.

The mechanic watched them tow it out. He almost tore ins own heart in half when he saw his idol disfigured.  The ropes tightened, and the car struggled to break from the murky bottom. Fish scales and festering mud filled the air. The car rose to its nose, grime dripped clean from the black bird. The rope reeled,  and the car scrapped the bed surface, tilled the earth up the slope. Mud sloped from pockets and rust cavities. Fish bones and black water spilled out the windows. Inside they found the leather bound bones of the barron. Forty rubber belts strapped him to the seat and the steering wheel. His wife died fifty years prior and he never remarried, not conceived children.

Weeds conquered his property and the prairie absorbed it into the sea of tall grass. Except for the driveway and the gas pump he kept in the center of his yard. All the furniture stayed in the house as it rotted away to a square of bordered by sunken blocks. Nothing grew inside.

The mechanic stood after winning his trophy and inspected the grounds. The sun hadn’t risen yet, and morning chill soaked his socks and frosted the hairs on his knuckles. “But by noon the sun will bake the earth- and the humidity will be thick as gum.”

He woke at five am every morning. Exorcised, listened for the woodpecker, ate eggs, and drove down country lanes until his shift started. Across the road just as the sun stabbed over the horizon, he saw an opal flash in his mirror blinded him. “Another migraine,” he bemoaned, reaching into his pockets for medicine. The flash dimmed to speeding wave hurling over clouds of dust, it bowled towards him. He pulled his machine from the road, and he saw no mistake- the paint job might have  looked newer, the tires might have looked chromed, but he made no mistake when he saw the black bird.

The mechanic went to work without thoughts about it and went to bed that night concerned with what to do for his next project. Before he fell asleep, the black bird cawed. His heart chilled. He jumped out of bed and starting working in his garage. He tightened his vice, and bent pieces of metal into likeness birds. None of them matched, few even looked fowlsome.

The next morning he got up before the sun, and drove to the same road. He watched as the sky darkened with rain clouds. The sun did not appear. Low thunder crushed in the distance. The wind smelled like turpentine. He waited until thunder fell overhead. The car shook, and ringlets of rain rattled the windshield. He put the car into first gear and went down the lane. Slow with the cold air blowing against the windshield, then he saw it. The barron’s car hurled up the road, up alongside him. The mechanic tried to keep up with it. His needle climbed to 90 miles an hour, still the barron’s car slipped ahead and became a gnat bouncing on his windshield.

The machine stopped taking his medication, and let the migraines split his brain in half. The drills and spark showers hammered bolts into crown and down his spine. The pails of wasted oil churned his stomach. His boss asked him if he wanted to go home. “No. Just stopped taking my meds.”

“I can’t afford another accident from you. Take them or go home.”

The mechanic wore the same uniform for five years. He left it folded in the sink, with the pills dissolving on top.

He stayed home, looked for other jobs, but mostly looked for psychologists. He read about the phenomenon of people seeing aspirations, figments of imagination, and the manifestation of repressed sexual desires or reactions to trauma.

As he left that morning for his car the weight of such a discovery settled on his shoulders, and pooled his soul until he felt nothing but the ocean of foreordination pulling him deeper with cold tides. He drove to a diner with warm lights glowing.

Only one person worked this early. The kitchen man grumbled about the waitress always being late. The retired farmers congressed with their coffee. The mechanic asked for a cup, and the kitchenman poured it for him. He asked for food too but the kitchman told him at the grill needed to heat up first.

The mechanic sat and listened to the fan spin. The farmers gave him odds looks. The kitchen man thought it strange that anyone came in before the sun rose, let alone the mechanic because he seemed too comfortable to be up at at the break of dawn. Once held his coffee stopped caring about them. He’d drink it and leave.

The old farmers conversed. “See it every morning. Down by highway 2.” The mechanic overhead and stared at the steam but all his attention vacuumed onto the old people. “Its a model T or something. Got a big chicken riding on the hood.” The mechanized chugged the steaming cup, stood at the table, his throat burning and tongue whipping, “It’s a  Studebaker Special 1924.”

He took his coat and walked out. The kitchenman called on him to close the door, but the Mechanic already vanished in the herbicide mists stirring between bean fields.

That night a storm struck. Lightning whipped across the plains and heavy pendants or rain dropped. By five am, the rain stopped but the creeks flooded. The roads shined by sun up with a gleaming film, but once out of the light the water flowed transparent and clear. He waited by the highway. The clock hit the same time as usual, and the blue flash appeared. The mechanic watched it sped down the road and turn to the highway. This time  he only followed its ripples.

The floodwater rose above the highway pavement by a razor width. His tires gushed forward, tearing through slime film, his own ripples stirred muddy fog under his carriage that rolled into the marble still pools, breaking covers of floating leaves, and obscuring the road before him. He slowed more and more. The barron’s car curved off the road and into the pink flood plains. The sun dropped under binds of harsh clouds, and a red ring burned underneath them, but they broke apart into dark chains. Splashes from the barron’s car foamed like pink mist, and its wrinkles carried the debris choked from its tail pipe layers. Collided into the mechanic tires.

The Mechanic pulled the car into the gravel of a country lane, and the mud sucked the up the front tires. The wheels hurled mud. The car moved forward, and the mud slushed beneath the car and devoured the back tires. The car bulldozed, wine colored water spilled from the hood rifts. He let his feet relax off the pedals. The engine lights glowed like the horizon. The engine rupturing stopped. He thought about the silence of cold mornings spent hunting for mountain lions in the west. Instead he looked over the archaic trees bordering the road and heard soft choirs rising from the collapsed husks of tree.

Pagan Pioneers claimed this land and when they settled here, they planted this breed of tree exclusive to Saxony. They called this rare strain “Irminsul” trees, and they planted them along every farm and country lane in their dominion.

The day before the storm  each one looked healthy and green, but the Mechanic noticed them now like never before. The leaves drooped, dripping with water, pink and yellow. The mechanic reached out to pluck one, but once he held one and felt itt squirm in his palm, he heard the leaf crunch... looked closer to see hives of pink and yellow needle points- each one a mites chewing on the leaf. Crunch…. crunch….

The branches stripped of leaves snagged out like infected blood vessels over the sky. Black birds perched on them. He listened to the birds, but they made no sound. But more and more flew in from the remaining clouds to mount the bare limbs. They pecked the leaves off the tree, and out of the water to eat the leaves.

The Mechanic knew how to find the car.

Once the sun came back the roads dried up again. He returned only one time to the road of tainted arbor to confirm a suspicion, and when he found the car he trapped there he almost missed it, because the roots of the trees wound through the door windows and out wheel wells. Bird tracks dashed the hood and roof. Fuzz and slime sealed farm debris to every inch. The fallen trees remained planted over the gravel. Mounds and bushes spilled into the road. Yet beneath the broken lumber and tangles of undergrowth he found the same impressions drawn down the road. Rubber scars still remained.

He went back to the car to take his toolcase with him, then he chased after the tracks. The deeper he went, more ribbons of smoke spiraled into the sky to dissolve in the sunrays. Yet no shacks nor trailers appeared down the road. He skipped further down, stepping over the obstructions left behind by the storm, frost crested on top of the fence posts. He shivered and huddled her arms to his chest. Cream overcasts gathered and sank over the land. The black birds huddled together on top of the Irminsul trees. Snow gathered in the ditches. Pink moss covered the lower trunks. The ground still felt wet.  

The Mechanic spent his whole life living in this county.  He heard all the lore from oxidizing farmers still wearing their Veteran hall hats, rambling about the 1919 burnings, how most don't remember Dennison anymore, “but only we know about what happened here… and the only reason we know is because we are still afraid to trespass down their roads.”

When the last of that generation settled into Lutheran Cemetery, no one lived to tell about what happened to the intruders that cut their trees down. But as the mechanic hopped over one, her pressed his hand onto its trunk, and as he lifted himself over the tree, he felt the raptures of a beating heart. When he looked into the gasping hollow, he saw large boens concealed within. He reach in and tugged one loose. It felt heavy, but flat. Rough, sandy curfacee clung to his clothing. Pieces of tree broke from the tree with the bone. The rings went on for only one hundred years, but it didn’t peel away. He hurled it at the flock of blackbirds watching him. The bone went over their heads, and they sat and stared at him.

Weeds grew over his head. Power cords fell into the dirt and never rose again. A gas pump stood on a cement pedestal. Further into the weeds, along where old crops once vibrantly flourished, old relics formed of corn husks and wheat stalk clutching long lost rag dolls. The mechanic thought about the crosses on the highway that always distracted him.

Sweat dripped down the weed blades. Despite the cold caving in on top of them, the ground still radiated warmth. Slabs of haze obscured the fields beyond the trees.  He saw only waving shadows. The mechanic ignored the whispers and chants calling from the fog in foreign verses never heard by him before- nothing Latin, something far more ancient.

The haze strengthened to walls of fog rolling against each other.  The rope of a well wound, whined, and twisted. Something on the other end scraped against the walls. He heard it so clear, but saw nothing, but then he smelled the fumes of hot grease boiling out over a steaming engine. A tail of gas rose from an isle of darkness. It hurt his nostrils. Red dust coated the snow banks as the smoke settled back down. The cinders of burning steel. The mechanic pulled nearer. A small row of building rose from the fog.

The ground hardened and clacked under the soles of his shoes. Frost crystals fell from his hair. He saw five sunken buildings. The walls of the theatre hummed. Pale faces beckoned him inside but hid in the dark when he looked towards them. Across the fissure in the road, he walked under the torn awning of a candy store. Dry postcards sat bleached in the rack and open wrappers littered floor revealed by the window. He squinted to see through the film of sediment over the glass. In the reflection he saw the row of dark, silent buildings. The sun slipped under the Irminsul branches. But one building teamed and glowed in the glass. The mechanic turned around to see  a sliver of light under a garage door. The chimney plumed from its roof. Red dust covered the pavement and building rusty calcium over the windows.

The tracks ended at the garage door. The wood panels broke and bent inwards. Black paint smudge the damage. The mechanic took the handle at the bottom and forced the door to lift but chain links snapped, and he stopped with the door to his knees. The odor of bubbling motor oil made his mouth water, and tears spill from one tingling eye. The smoke stopped flowing from the chimney. The last tail floated into the air for the moonlight to consume.

The Mechanic slid the tool case under first, then crawled in after it. Snow and frigid air blew under the door. His  palm cut against forgotten screws. The cold of the ground numbed the tiny lacerations, and since the chimney stopped burning, the platinum furnace cooled down, and the place sank into darkness, but he heard the flocking of feathers, the beating of wings, and the howl of a predatory bird that rings out over doomed rodents. As he stood his boots slid on sawdust over the floor. He took his case and shield the way ahead. Sharp tools and tetanus barbs leered around each stack of chopped combine parts. The wings beat like an falcon fighting to escape a poachers trap. Claws scraped against steel. Something brushes against a heavy cage hard enough force squares of air out. Papers littered the floor of a small office on the other side.

Around a desk he found a box with four buttons on them. He pressed one, and id did nothing. He checked the wire and found found it unstripped and in tact. He pressed the next button, and the third when he pressed the four a swinging fluorescent popped on. He saw the soft glow against the cage walls.

At  the rear, under a hanging light bulb,  a car cover collected dust. The bird cried beneath it. Blood dripped down his nose. The reek of tarnished effluvium possessed his senses. He grabbed the canvas. Dust poured between his fingers. It crunched as the fibers shifted. The crying ceased. He flung the cover to the floor and coughed into his sleeve. The cloud of dust dimmed the light, but the mechanic still saw the black bird ornament mounted on the hood.

The dust cleared but a gale still hung above the light. The mechanic kept coughing until knots broke loose in his throat and lungs. He hacked until a pin drove into his temple. The pin if pain magnified, and he lost vision in his left eye.

The car revved up. The migraine drove bolts into his spine. He set down his tool case and took out what he needed. Before he began,

He looked over the notes he kept in the case. The crank hung beneath the grill. The hood opened from the side port, and only one cylinder spun inside. Two six in tires on the front heavy suspension bars scraped the ground, footlong tires on the back. A wood wagon seat sat instead of a trunk.

He  closed the toolcase. The mechanic never saw an exterior and undercraft so pristine in his life. Even the engine turned like a snake shedding it skin. He wiped the blood from his lip.

The potential to win first place awards in car shows around the country provoked him to re examine the machine. White scars mained the glass, but he stored spare frames at home. He knew of the interior. He looked closer, when he heard scraping nails against the glass. Within, cheekless smiles greeted the Mechanic. mud gobs from from under the jaw bone.  The swollen remains of the Barron sat bound with forty rubber belts. His fingertips scraped at the windshield.

The mechanic opened the case, and worked through each item in the box to remove the black bird. His screwdrivers bent, his chisels split, hammerheads shattered, hacksaws dulled, his channel locks broke in half, and his vice grips fell apart in his hand.

He scoured the garage and came back with cobweb jammed tools. He started by taking the hood off, then working his way around until the engine ran exposed. He slid blocks underneath, and took the front wheels off. Then he worked his way to the back and worked off the rear wheels. He took apart the rear seating plank by plan. He removed the grill and the filter. The fan nearly cut his fingers off. Then he looted the frames and dragged the outside for him to claim later. The Black Bird still stood on its perch on the suspension, but he had everything else he needed. The barron still smiled at him, worms swelling from his eye socket, and the engine still spat exhaust. He reached inside, and twisted the knob. The engine stopped, and the barron turned to dust. Once the belts fell loose and the dust poured over the leather upholstery to the cracks in the cement beneath, the garage chilled enough to frost the engine parts. The black bird fell down crashed into the floor. His migraine went away.

He picked up the ornament and hauled it across the garage floor before stopping to relax his shoulders. Night fell since he first came. More snow fell, and shoe prints dashed the streets and sidewalks. He saw no one, and heard only the snowflakes melting under his boots.

At home, he collapsed , peeled his boots and socks off, and slept on the front porch and awoke when the sun rose. He went straight to bathroom to treat the bleeding from the boot cutting into his ankles, and washed everything from his hands. He made coffee, and drank three cups. Then he took the black bird and welded it his entry project. He went right to his network and entered the next show.

He spent every day until the show sitting the the car watching the ornament. When the day came, he just sat still and let the car start itself. The engine worked just fine now. The tires too. The black bird knew where to go, and it drove him sixty miles to city for the show.

The black bird stopped for nothing along its way. Fall branches became paper under the possessed vehicle. Deer bounced off, but pieces of fur stuck to the iron beak. Halfway to the city, the mechanic saw the blackbird drive on towards a semi turned over on the road. He grabbed the door and prepared to hurl himself out, but all the cuts on his hands hurt too much and instead braced for he car to ram the trailer. Instead the black bird drive them up and over the trailer, then hovered a bit before setting back over the road.

Over five hundred entered the car show. The black bird parked in an obscure arm of the showcases. That year four car bombings and one hundred car fires chased the judges from the competition. Hundreds went to the hospital. Only the Mechanic's car went unscathed. There, he planted Irminsul seeds, and carried enough to plant them wherever the black bird drove him. He entered more shows.

Cobain/Claymore pt 4

Prologue

This here are the important details following our story told so far. We’ve read many stories, some likes this one, some not at all, and there’s so many more that I can’t recall. Of all these stories gone, and of all the stories to come, I don't know all, but I know some.

Now sit and listen and Ill let you know about the Claymores Kurt and Hendrix, and why after a long ten years, the story of Kurt and Hendrix evolved into legend. Even log sheltered swamp snails heard about the two Claymores responsible for the death of Johnny Cash. Demondom and humankind fear many similar things, butt these two survived without the heroin blood of King (or as you call him -“Elvis”).

Some say mortals fled to deserts and mountains to escape them to this day.

Others believe they each slayed a procession of Demon Princes, leaving hordes of knights lordless and landless.

If these are facts I cannot tell, but what I do know is that in the first year, no demon feared them. No demon believed a warrior capable of killing Johnny Cash. Myths, rumors, smoke and fog, and in the second year many of Johnny Cash’s enemies remained unthreatened, and smaller lifeforms such as dogs and antelope roamed his territory. Some still didn’t believe it, and ventured into the desert to recover remains. No one wanted to say it, but once one demon did, one by one, they believed that Johnny Cash died. The ones that still didn’t believe it climbed onto stallions and promised to take the spine of whoever or whatever killed him.

By the third year, around dark campfires, starving Mortals hiding from pounding hooves told stories of two Claymores that took over one thousand demon swords. Mortaldom avoided the rumbling of the ground, because by the fourth year, when they heard the clashing of swords, they found ringlets of blood in the grass, then watched stoned as cyclone gusts towered over heaps of dead warriors.

Five years ago, the mortals and demons came and begged to make a pacts for their souls.

Skip James recruited cursed mortal to ensnare them into damning binds, but the Claymores never formed pacts. Skip did see however, they survived from extract from wildflower seed. When Skip told King. King admitted for the first time in one thousand years, “I didn’t know that.”

Three years ago, King summoned Skip to his dark tower. “Do you know where they are right now?” King asked him without turning his back, the candle light galloping over his suit, the great broadcast tower nearly completed, hidden under the void of souls.

“Yes.”

“Good. Next time you see them, ask which of them killed Johnny Cash.”

Two years ago, Skip found the two. They drew swords and asked him what King sent him for.

“I’m here on my own, to find out which of you killed Johnny Cash. I already know what happened, but I can only hear it from you two. Why did the rogue die?”

Skip returned to king one year later.

“What did you find, Skip?”

“They both claim to have killed the rogue- Johnny Cash.”

“I don’t think you have much more time, Skip.” King let himself smile. “Some of my friends tell me that they’ve agreed to fight each other- to the death. This should be good news for you, Skip. You’re job is an easy one. All you got to do is wait. But I’ve decided – since you brought them into our service, you ought to see this through to the end.”

“Yes, they both must die at my hand.”

I

Starving mortals carry loved ones across the snow. Demon knights steam in snow fall. They follow bloody footprints. The mortals hurry, but they are sick, hurt, thirsty, and freezing. The horses are armored. The lances are heavy. But the mortals are withstanding. They sink into a murky creek, where fog and branches conceal them from the snow. They hold onto ropes, and pull animals through half thawed creek beds. They wind around narrow paths, and ascend ancient stairs to the top of a bluff, where they rest within the ruins of what they think is a palace- a ski resort.

Here their leader burred their slave collars, and swore that mortals would never know the cruelty of slavery ever again. Then the dogs of the mountain howled and the smell of burning trees clouded the night sky. Cindering veins spread below the mountain slope, into the swamp.

He assembled everyone, and told them what he saw.

“They’ll be here in a few days, if they decide they aren't in a hurry to cross the marshes.” They debated what to do. The old wanted to commit suicide rather than give up to the knights. The young wanted to charge into the slaughter rather than be caught. Again. The leader told them he’d have his decision in the morning. Meanwhile they played their ancestral song on their oldest treasure, a stereophonic record player from the old world. But someone else held the sacred record. The mortals watched in terror as a heel crushed the record.

Skip James took the pieces and they melted into his hand. The black fluid dripped between his fingers, but bound back as the melted goo reshaped into a new record, that looked better, newer than before.

“This is how you will kill the Demons.” He told them. He slid it into the record player, but did not place the needle down. “Better hurry and find a way to make this loud enough. If you want to survive. and when you’ve killed those demons, I will return for the record. Because I have instructions I expect you to follow.”

The leader asked him what he had in mind.

“You will kill all the Claymores.”

“Impossible.”

“Not so. They’re a dying breed- and the time has come for them to join the rumored dead. Try it, and you will see that I do not mislead you.”

Skip vanished into the dark. The mortals convened, and their bravest volunteers assembled, and put the needle to the record.

They played the record all night long, confused, waiting for a secret word or sound new sound, but it just sounded like keys tapping wires. They played it into the morning, and noticed the fires below stopped spreading. they took turns turning the crank to keep the record spinning. The fires steamed. Snow fell. They went into the march, to discover fifty suits of black armour with smoking skeletons within.

“Its a trick- its coincidence” many debated with the leader. He scoured the palace halls, until on its roof he discovered a broad disk pointed to the sky.

“That demon told them to chase us up here. He knew this machine was here,” he explained to his young son.

“what is it?”

The leader adjusted wires, and watched the stars. He looked over the valley, and realized he stood on the highest platform between the horizon.

Skip James came back three days later but watched far from hearing distance, impressed with their progress.

By spinning disks over the roof, playing broadcasts into them and projecting them over the valley, dark rivers of demonfolk evacuated the mountains and scattered. Rivers of low tier demons slithered from holes in the ground in vain attempt to escape, as larger, stronger demons experienced involuntary, blasting inversions of the flesh. Some burst into flame. Some heads exploded. All within the range of their valley wide broadcast.

Skip appeared to the Leader one night when they shut the broadcast off to engage in secret conspiracies. Demons flew from the clouds, landed in camp, and tried to run off with the record. The leader scoured their camps for his young son. A talon gashed his forehead. The leader rushed him to the shamans. He took him home safe, and before we went to gather his best men and women, he collected the rope the boy made from dog hairs.

They ventured back to the marsh to loot armour and weapons from the dead knights, and defended the record and its sound enhancers with layers of fence, and rings of vengeful sentinels. The leader paced atop the palace. Before he ordered to replay the broadcast, Skip appeared for him.

“Its like a disease,” he suggested.

“A drug. Every last neuron in their brains is firing seventy- six thousand times the maximum amount of daily serotonin, but like all things we cherish, the more its around the more they will get used to it. You’ll have to change things up if you want to kill the Claymores.”

“Its you that wants to kill the Claymores.”

“No. King wants them dead…The last thing I want is for them to die.”

“Why did you come here?”

“To offer you and all your mortals and kin blood for the rest of time- a pact.”

“Demon, we will never need help from you.”

“I understand…you’ve been through a lot. But make no mistake, you just initiated a great metamorphosis. And should the time come when - you should - rather reconsider

“I don’t trust you.” The leader told him, clutching the dog hair rope until it broke apart and blew into the valley.

Skip’s eyes spat red sparks. “You mortals are too smart, sometimes.”

II

Ten years ago.

Kurt tasted blood. He spat, rinsed in lime covered creek water, spat again, but still tasted it seeping between his teeth. his blade glimmered with green sanguinary of their attacker. He uttered for Hendrix, who nursed his ankle. Sharp canine teeth remained in his thigh. He pried them out, while covering the gash the Demon bit from him.

The demon stood twelve feet tall, wore a truck as its cuirrass. It wielded a two hundred pound halberd, but dropped the axe in confusion. “Impostors. You cannot be the Claymores I’m looking for.”

“Kurt,” Hendrix said. “Id do anything to have my old life back. I remember every day- and never goes by a single moment when I’m not wishing for just one more moment, one more chance.”

The demon knelt to take off his braces and rubbed grass into his cuts.

“Cash told me the same thing.”

The demon unhinged the car doors and let his suit peel from his scales.

“I know about you too, Kurt...”

“I know too. And I promise you, Hendrix, as sure as this sword is connected to my blood, I will never revert to who I was. Never.”

The demon took its helmet off and let its jet ink hair unfurl. With nails like pitchforks, he combed it until it shined like brass.

“Then we can no longer work together....”

“We could go separate ways- but just to meet again. Why delay the inevitable?”

“Because we’re famous again.”

“How long can we be famous for?”

“Don’t know. Could be until fifteen seconds from now, or could be until the end of time.”

“I say twenty years at the most. By then someone will either kill us, or out dare us.”

“Ten. Ten good years.” Hendrix asserted.

“Why ten?”

“That’s longer than any Claymore has lived.”

“Ten years?”

“Ten years from now... Only of us will live for another ten. Agreed?”

“Where at?”

“Where do you want to die?”

“I’d like to die near water.”

“I want to die near home. There’s a crossroad between there and the ocean.”

“You’ll take care of my sword if you kill me?”

“If you do the same for me.”

“I’m looking forward to killing you.”

“As am I.”

Kurt cupped fresh water from the stream and Hendrix drank from it.

Kurt examined his split ribs, and tried to figure out which organs were his and which he grabbed from the ground by mistake. The sutures across stomach and gaps where they tore his ribs out needed replaced already. Eyes sparkled in the trees. Snarls and hisses emerged. Thousands watched. Both grabbed their weapons and tried to stand. “And the wildflower- I get to keep it if I kill you.”

“Of course, and if you want to know- I can tell you who Francis was- before you die.”

“No. Anything that had to do with past- I want nothing to do with it.”

The demon knight caught notice, and tied his hair up. He snarled at them. Kurt and Hendrix said nothing to each other. Both held their swords with bloody palms.

“And you have to stay alive until then.” Kurt said.

“I get to kill you and Ill have it no other way. That’s how its meant to be, I always said so.”

The creature roared, stabbed its halberd into the sky, and sucked in the moisture from all the leaves to refill his lungs. All of them.

Skip mused as he watched from the shoulders of his behemoth in the clouds. “Both of them understand, for things born of the natural world- There are no places to hide…. And whence there’s no places to hide, things become unnatural… and if they don’t understand it, then either they change forever, or die at my hand.”

When the creature dropped its weapon an earthquake sunk the trees into a smoking crack. The Claymores leap to opposite ends. The demon stepped back, as they neared he stepped back even further. He even had to adjust his front foot. He swung the halberd, and the force it created created a a wave that blew the top soil to the clouds.

Hendrix shuffled over hurdles of sand with his sword in hand, the flat side forward, closer to the knight. The closer he came he noticed it not even an average knight, to thin legged, didn’t carry enough equipment to show off with him, no jewels, no tearra or horns, yet still he never charged forward at one like this before. Just as he never charged into the grasping distance of a demon knight before, he never liked the other Claymores. Yet he didn’t kill the demon knight, nor did Kurt. When together they struck its armor, the ringing against their swords sounded like wind over a frozen pond, and when that sound rode up the suit of armor, the demon smeltered inside.

III

Ten years later.

The Mortals still struggled to accommodate, but despite setbacks The leader and his best met every morning and discussed construction development.

. The circle told the leader that the towers along southern mountain ridge needed to be repaired, and that one of the twelve they build around the outer mountains, only six kept still ran.. He examined the entire map. They cleared seventy thousand square miles in six months.

“We should name our country... All countries had names-”

“Shut off the broadcast.” The leader said.

Silence struck.

“No… never…. we’re not living without this. Are you insane?” they all told him in turn.

The eldest of them stood up. “If we shut it off, every demon out there will flood in to kill us. We already lured some in, now they’re wise to it. What good can shutting it off do?”

“I want to discuss peace with them.”

Jaws unhinged.

“I think we should vote in a new leader.”

“This isn’t a democracy.” He told them. “We didn’t vote to leave the mines. I tore us from them, promised my son, my father here, and everyone else that we’d never be slaves again. As long as we have that record, whether or not we play it, our descendants will be here.”

“You said, ‘no one’ would ever be a slave again.”

“I stand by it. But can we put the burden to liberate the whole earth onto our children if we can’t accomplish it ourselves?”

“We don’t know what we can accomplish yet.”

The leader dug his fingers into the dirt. He still smelled the cinders that crumbled from Skip’s shadow.

“If we don’t find a permanent solution now, everything we accomplish will be for nothing.”

“Do you think you can get King to come here?”

“We don’t need King. We don’t even know if he’s real. But there are few that every demon fears… if we can get them, then we get peace.”

Far away at the same breathing moments, another Claymore rushed across the land. He tried to find every single Claymore he knew, and told them to meet him in the dried gulf. He waited there for one week. He proposed to one hundred, and only ten said they'd show up. Only three appeared.

The Claymore based his hammer into the earth. The three in turn all drew their weapons, and stabbed them to the ground.

Randy Rhaodes spoke first, “tell us your plan.”

Then Richie Valens asked “Didn’t you ask Lennon? didn't you ask Mercury? Morrison? Joplin? Gaye?”

Hank Williams tipped his hat. “You got something to say?”

“We can kill the mortals and I know how.” Tupac responded.

Rhaodes said“Killing them won’t be enough. Their broadcast needs to be demolished.”

“That gives us two options. And Ill let you three choose which. One, we play our own broadcast to them. Or two, we make pacts with them.”

Hank raised his hand. “Pact.”

Rhoades reached for his sword, but Valens saw it first, and already had hold his own weapon

when Tupac took hold of both pommels and forced the swords back into the sand. “We’re going to listen to what he has to say.”

“Thank you for the welcome, but this whole damn thing reeks of King and Skip. I don’t know what they’re planning, but it can’t be good for us. If we make pacts with these punks, I’ll betcha we get out of this with some scratches and a missing boot.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought too.” Tupac said. “What do you two think?”

Valens spoke “We don't know what the plan is- they may be trying to kill all the mortals at last. If that’s the case and we make a pact, then it’s over.”

“How can you three even be considering making a pact with mortals?” Rhoades screamed so loud that moths fled the silk weeds.

“They aren’t going to stop putting up towers.” Williams said. “they’re gonna keep at it until they have one hundred in the ocean and one on the moon.”

Rhoades pulled at his hair. “We have to kill them, not make friends with them. There’s got to be a way we can block their terrible magic.”

“Well,” Williams sighed. “There is… a third option.”

“No,” Tupac interrupted. “If we ask Kurt and Hendrix for help, they’ll be famous forever. If that doesn't happen and they die, then we lose our best hand.”

Rhaodes hollered “Doesn’t matter who gets remembered now, if we don't kill them now there will be no Claymores to remember them. And if we just make a pact, then we’re only going to be remembered for giving up.”

Tupac considered his words, and stepped out of the circle. “Okay, lets ask a new question. Two options. If you think we should go with Kurt and Hendrix, pull your weapon from the ground.”

And They voted.

Kurt and Hendrix counted the days. When the time came, they set out without saying a word to each other, when a high wind sweeps in the sound of the mortal broadcast. They cover their ears and ran away. The distant towers obstructed their path forward. The distance thinned the broadcast to its dimmest volume, but one one drove rails into their ears.

Neither wanted to die another place, but before they agreed to change the plan, the broadcast changed. They listened, because the music changed to a voice.

“Claymores, give up your weapons and come meet with us. Kurt and Hendrix- Come meet with us. Give up your weapons, and no more Claymores nor demons will be harmed. The broad cast will be shut off for three days.”

In that three days, Kurt and Hendrix journeyed for the mortal hideout when the four Claymores found them. Hendrix and Kurt met them with cold stillness.

Tupac made their intention clear, that if Kurt and Hendrix get nearer to the mortals, they’d fight to the death. Kurt told them, ”I have no intention of making peace with them. Once I’m there I'm stabbing their leader in the heart.”

Hendrix said nothing, but told the Claymores to disarm and asked for long they'd been following.

Tupac took his chance, and instead explained his plan: “We record can their song and play it backwards to them.”

IV

The mortals sat in circle on the third day. They had word that the Claymores agreed to meet with them. They set out food for them, waited to greet them.

As they waited, a sound came from outside. Too distant to notice, but black arrows in the sky swooped towards them. Brown feathers floated down. The vultures cried with a distinct saxophonic moan. The mortals heard of these creatures but never saw them so close. The creature swooped closer, and with them came a horrible, shrill call, dropping lower and lower. Microphones in place of mouths.

Metal snapped, babies cried, and other terrors shrieked into rapturing sound waves. The music went faster and louder until people began to drop to the dirt. Mortals dove to catch the falling, but the sound stirred dust into the air, and a blind panic collapsed over them all. The sound dropped on their heads like like spikes. The leader and his wizards hurried to get the towers playing. Every moment they waited, another mortal collapsed holding their skull, fighting to maintain bearing on the real world.

The record spun in the player, the wires and probes ran to the first tower, than out to the others.

The damage they counted exceeded the leader’s worst fears.

Their broadcast came back on, and the signal got stronger until the vultures flew away over the horizon.

The sound waves collided, and the longer they pressed against each other, the brighter, more defined they became until the sound created bright bands of neon light to ignite in the sky, beneath it cyclones of sparkling neon dust spiraled. Everyone around watched in terror. Nothing like it had been seen before. The two forces balanced, and voided a space where only light and storms existed. This wall of power shifted back and forth like curtain tails, popping and howling. The energy within became smashed molecules together, and projectiled shrapnel of malformed atoms that whistled like wasps.

The Claymores all sat together and watched the phenomenon with great pleasure.

V

The mortal leader demanded more towers be built. Not one more, not three more. “I want five hundred towers playing all day long.” he commanded. The mortals assembled and begged him to reconsider, but he already marked on their maps where he wanted work to begin.

“Son,” The elder spoke with him alone. “Its not possible for us to build that many towers.”

“Wrong. Remember when the demon knights forced us to build fortresses and citadels all along the east coast along the poison sea? I never thought we’d do it either. Many died. But we got them made.”

“We were slaves being worked to death!”

“Slavery is the only thing that can save us now.”

The leader recovered what remains he found and buried them. He sent his son into the dirt.

When he came back, he told everyone his plan. Six hundred towers in six months. The mortals, he noticed, grew lazy. They didn’t want to build one hundred a month, so he had those people tied up with instructions to either have them march beyond the wall of light and wind, or have them build towers until it killed them.

Building the other towers proved challenging. They didn’t have sophisticated tools, or resources to build sufficiently tall towers. They scrapped old towers if they didn’t know know to start them, and the discs and bells they set at the top to broadcast the song ran out.

The satellite dish at the palace powered through generators used to heat the building. They didn’t have enough power to keep all the towers they already had, and keep warm for winter. He didn’t even know if they could feed everyone.

The Claymores came together out side of the wall of light and wind. The vultures flew in cycles.

Tense, they unbelted their sword, but did not unsheathe them as they dug them in the ground. No one doubted the mortals still survived, but no one know how.

“This isn’t good. We just gave them a barrier to build more towers in. That wall is going to keep getting pushed until it kills all of us.”

They captured more recording vultures, but noticed that each time they sent one up, two or three would fly south. The birds joined arrows of other vultures and disappeared over the horizon. The wall became louder, and drove outwards. The Claymores retreated more and more, each time losing more vultures without replacing any. Soon, their sound became neutralized by the waves of the wall.

The humans build their towers on he bones of their fallen. One came up every day. Behind schedule, blasting at full power. The leader told everyone that he had enough power to keep everything in their country moving. Too much power even, as he scratched names of his munitions list. The more people that died building towers, the less he had to feed and house. Then he had an idea- and reduced his power usage, and pushed more mortals into manual cranking to keep the song moving The cranks sophisticated into wheels pushed by dozens of people, hastened by whip cracks.

The wall moved out, despite only having three towers build when he wanted forty. With more to come, he relaxed knowing that things came together.

The Claymores tied ropes to the vultures to keep them from flying away. Some ropes broke nonetheless. The creatures lifted the Claymores from the ground and landed them hard enough to sink them into the dirt. Rhoades tried riding them, but they tossed him into the air each time.

The tied the ropes down to prevent the birds from escaping, but by the time they solve the problem- the wall moved twice as far as the day before and they already lost most of their aviators.

Tupac took their record, and took it into his forge, where he worked for three grueling weeks hammering the perfect record. Williams, the only one strong enough to hold it, carried it to their equipment, and the only one strong enough to withstand the power of the song due of hearing loss, Rhoades the player started the track.

This time, they played the song through an amplifier, in small doses that they layered together. Not even Tupac knew the power they created. When the vultures broadcasted the song, one by one, the shifting wall slowed, and halted, then began to shift backwards.

“What do you mean destroyed?”

We put everything into the southern towers like you wanted, and the wave destroyed them. The wave is closing in around us. What do we do?”

The leader paced back and forth. The lives lost, the energy spent, the time, precious time- gone forever. Just like his son.

“Why is this happening?” he asked.

“We think they playing new music- more powerful music.”

The leader looked at the spinning record. Listened to it, then remembered the searing pain in his head, and the binds around his neck. Old wounds reopened, old voices returned, and a gaping hole opened to swallow him. In all that chaos, the sound he heard came at first like music. Just for a the first two notes, before they transformed into explosive wreckage. Every whip crack, every chain shaking, he heard them all, every fear and torture appeared before him. But those two notes, he listened to the record.

“Change it match whatever they’re doing.”

He put his best wizards to work trying to find ways to respond to the changes of the Claymores. No one else had the practice to tamper with demon music records. Though the music did not hurt them, one wizard stabbed the record with a needle, and the small scratch he inflicted in turn blinded him and erased him memory so that he forgot how to speak.

Holy shit, they, mix- they play one song over the master record. But as they dragged him away, they found what he did to the record.

They put it into the record player. The satellite dish lit up, and the lazes shot to all their connected towers, which began playing the same song. The mortals all held their breath. Fires started from huge explosions in the sky. The ground rumbled and the grass died, turned yellow, and blew away. The wall stopped. The wizard merely played other songs over the original. They only had enough power to play it over five towers. But the wall stopped.

Over the next expanse of time, they made small modifications to their records. The wizards cast spells, Tupac spend weeks in his forge hammering out new records. The Claymores roped all their vultures together, each one played its own record. The wall rumbled, and dug further into the ground. Stalagmites spiked into the air. Chimneys of black smoke erected. Fumes and spirits escaped to the air.

Kurt and Hendrix watched the Claymores work, each one with a role, each one trusting the other, and they took no direction.

But no matter what they did, no matter how hard they worked, the wall stayed in pace, became taller and deeper. Earthquakes crashed and plates of earth sank. The clouds blew away and the sky burned red.

Tupac came from the forge one day, his hands broken, his hammer clutched in his teeth. “I can’t make more until I heal.”

Kurt reached for his hammer.

“No,” Tupac protested. “if you touch my hammer, the soul within will be absorbed. You will pact with it.”

Hendrix heard this, and he remembered the agreement he made with Kurt to keep his sword after he slew him. But his own sword, since they agreed to fight the mortals together, those weapons remained sheathed in the dirt. He realized that any demon that wanted their blood may strike at them now. The demon knights, he understood, are obligated to attack the unarmed.

Dust from all directions filled the sky as the hooves stormed towards them. Waves of black armor, jet black stallions, flags and banners of clans from across Demondom. They brought wagons, processions of demons, palanquins. They assembled before the Claymores and formed four great wedges. They set up camps, and sent their best demons to the Claymores. The demons presented their banners to the Claymores, and said: “We came to see the five Claymores stories tell of.. We are no longer loyal to the King- but to you five. Take these banners, and fly it from the highest peak. When you do, it will strike fear in the heart of the mortals.”

The procession of knights knelt one by one, and offered them banners, weapons, horses, everything in Demondom became open for their use. Rhoades tied the banners to the vultures, so when their wings spread out and they flew over the land the banners unfurled.

Hendrix watched alone, standing in the center of the sword circle. He watched the vultures and the wall, and looked over the demons. Some he recognized. The master's they slew in the past decade left roving bands of unmastered warriors searching for clans to join.

Kurt told them all to go home, but they already started digging holes and trenches to sleep in. Hank Williams greeted old friends and they showed each other scars and stories. Valens listened to them plea with him that little home remained now for the demon knight. In the last decade, they explained to him, Kurt and Hendrix killed every demon that challenged them, and each of them lead great clans that now rummage through old land fills for food. “Start your own clans.” Kurt dismissed them, but they implored him further. “Since the mortals began the cursed air, other mortals have learned as well, and all across the world, they are broadcasting to purge Demondom.”

Kurt told Rhoades to watch over Tupac. His own demons waited for him to die. Rhoades stood by, and kept them from eating him. Tupac instructed Rhoades how carry the rinal track, then when Rhoades left, and the demons flocked Tupac’s body and devoured him.

Rhoades entered the heat of the forge, but found no record.

Kurt found Hendrix alone in the circle of weapons. Every demon that came added their own swords and lances, cratering layer after layer of rings that jingled when grains of dust smashed into them, and they cut the wind into white streams. Water dripped down the blades, and it sustained over he clouds. Hendrix held both he and Kurt’s swords. The record hung on his back. He confessed thus: “We won’t survive this...” Hendrix produced the wildflower seeds. “look at the land…. Nothing will grow here for another five thousand years. Anywhere we go, King will do the same.”

He dropped the seeds into the dust, and tossed Kurt his sword.

“We may never get another chance. Sell your soul to me, Kurt.”

“Don’t be a fool. We already did.”

“You sold two souls that night. And you know exactly who...”

Kurt cut himself with the cut and let the blood drip down the blade. He felt it grow into his wrist, into his spine, into his brain. Noises and voices, faces and forms appeared behind foggy veils.

Skip knows He watches from his place hovering over them.

Hendrix rose his sword to the starlight. It glowed like lightning and Hendrix’s flesh glimmered like a waterfall as his tattered battle gear fluttered.

“Out of the question.”

“Francis was your daughter, Kurt. And you- you were a worthless poser.”

“What does that make you?”

“Something worse.” Hendrix put his sword into the ground, knelt before Kurt, and hung his head so the vertebra in his neck bulged. “I changed my mind, Kurt. Killing you will bring me no peace.”

Kurt looked into the blood on the blade, and searched within all the cells and viruses for the soul within the sword. “Is that the voice I hear? Did I have a daughter in the past? Could if be you, Francis…?”

“Kurt, If you don’t kill me, I’ll see to it that the mortals wipe you all out.”

Skip heard this, and whispered into the night: “Is this is, Kurt? Will you keep your sword polished? Or will you steal it away from us?”

Kurt stabbed the ground. “No. There was never a Francis.”

“Yes there was. You sacrificed her to make that sword.”

“How? I didn't know she’d be born then! How could I’ve known that? It was five years before anything was going on in my life, and god damn it, I was sick of living under bridges. Sick of being called a lowlife, sick of being called a bum- How did I know?”

“You knew Kurt. We all did.”

“Go ahead. If you want to leave, go ahead. I’ll kill you with the rest of the mortals.”

VI

The mortals saw it through the wave, and knew that the Claymores no longer worked alone. The leader told them to count how many banners flew in the air, as he went to the bowels of the palace to check the power supply. In cold shambles he came to the roof. And he told his best men and women. “Someone is stealing our power.”

He told them they had power for the year, now he told them a month at most. They turned off heating to keep the towers running. Snow started to fall. The last wizard’s hands burned off, and the pain shocked him so much that every vertebrae in his spine splintered. No one wanted to work on the records after the death of the last wizard. He told his warriors to make the workers produce double the amount. They no longer had time to dig proper graves, so they dropped them into smoking chasms, and never told the families back at the palace of the deaths. The leader assured them that they lived in a paradise, free for ever, that it will stay that way forever, but it only got colder and colder.

Disease spread through the palace. All the shamans and doctors went to the towers to facilitate the health of the workers and warriors. When he sent his best man to go bring a doctor, the man did not return, and the tower shut down, and restarted a new broadcast voiced by the man he sent out: one calling for the demons to liberate them from him.

Construction of new towers ceased. One by one they dropped off, and the wall started bulldozing the land, pushing mounds into hills and hills into mountains. Rivers of soil flowed as the old mountains sank into the earth. Craters glowed where deposits of the wall gated underground and exploded.

Skip James appeared at last to the leader. He fed him an apple.

“It feels like a cat bite, at first. Its small, you don't notice it if you don't think about it. Once its in your blood though you’ll never feel the same. It hurts, it gets cold, then it feels funny and tickles every muscles, before you just feel like a heavy, linen cape is draped around your shoulders, and when the time comes, you’ll be called upon, but that can take one million years.”

“You can do it for everyone here?”

“Of course- the more the merrier. But I don’t expect you jump on the saddle- here.” He gave him a syringe with heroin blood. “When you’re ready, just use that. On yourself, on anyone. I don’t waste paper writing up contracts. I trust you mortals- You’ll do the right thing.”

The leader assembled everyone that that still hadn't left. Some too old, some loyal but with ticking patience. All of them, he even said to record his words sot ht hey may play over the towers. He said, “Things have not gone as we hoped. I failed to crush the Claymores, and I failed to stop the demons. Our power will run out in a matter of days. When it does, the wall will collapse on us and we will all die.”

Silence met him. He pulled out the syringe.

“But there is still hope. If we sell our souls to Skip- if we make a pact with him- we won’t save our souls but we will save our lives and the lives of our descendants.”

Then Hendrix stepped through.

“Don’t bother reaching for your weapons. I can kill each of you a different way without my sword. As for you,” he pointed to the leader, and sliced his sword down his chest. The leader stood for a moment, confused, not sure why his ribs felt so cold but his flesh felt so warm and wet. Hendrix took him by the chin and flung him down the slope to the river of soil. “You’re music doesnt make my happy. It can’t hurt me.”

Hendric held out the gold record. “But I know how to hurt them. When we play this, the Claymores will all die.”

The leader only fell for two seconds, and tumbled the rest of the way. Branches, roots, and jagged rocks caught him into those moments before the ground loosed and he fell further he saw Skip waiting at the next place he’d collide and stop. When a root wrapped around his feet, he slid, slow enough to speak. But they said no words, Skip handed him the syringe with a titanium needle. The leader took it and missed the first time, spilled some of the heroin blood on his skin. Ghosts escaped, but Skip caught them and devoured them. The leader tried once more, and the needle slid under his skin, and the serum inside pined every nerve in his body.

“As we agreed. And Since you gave me permission, I can now claim the souls of every mortal on this mountain. As for the Claymores, all I have to do to kill one is snap my fingers since they already sold me their souls long ago.”

Skip left him clinging onto the cliff side and reentered the shadows. He needed to work fast. But too late.

“what happens now?” he begged.

Skip stopped walking. “King will claim them all and use them to power his own tower.”

Hendrix demanded they show him how they made ther records nad how htye broadcasted them. At the record player, Hendrix told them all the stand back. As he approached the record player,

the Claymores gathered one last time.

The leader saw King tower over the valleys with all the souls filling into his mouth.

In the ritual square of his dark tower, King absorbed all the souls, and each made his tower come to life. Skip felt bad, but not too bad. “I told you half the truth,” he said walking away from the remains of the Leader. “Once the tower is going, King has all the souls.”

When Hendrix set the record in the player- All the mortals within its immediate vicinity heard the music ring like pipes blowing, stacks bellowing, a wave crashing, a meteor smashing into the earth- Then in flashes of blue and golden dust, a cry rang out over all the towers, power on or off, and behind it Hendrix heard the laughter of King, and realized the mistake.

King watched from his roof as the great tower glowed white with energy from both the Claymores and the mortals. The more it absorbed the louder it projected- souls cycloned into its arms, whips of lighting snatcheds spirits from across the land. As king planned, the towers built by the humans across the earth played his anthem.

Skip only saw the mountain smoke. So thick and voluminous he thought it would take decades to clear. He rode the behemoth, taking great, slow steps, blinded, but smelling the ashes, tasting them, chewing on them. No trees burned, no gas ignited. The fires he saw glittering below belonged to the mortals. He dove into the smoke, kicked over charred arms and hands, until he found Hendrix’s sword. He hung it over his back, and hopped back onto the shoulder of the behemoth. The monster stood back up, and they walked to where the Claymores camped.

It looked like graveyard of swords and spears, but down among the floating grains of demon ash, Kurt still crawled. Each beat of the anthem tore his brain in half, but he saw Skip on the behemoth stomping towards him, and his sword still glimmered in the dirt.

Kurt dragged his knees further, as the ground rumbled so long that the though a crack would open. He took a deep breath. Pain liquefied in organs. He thought he saw his sword, he he also saw dragons and walking speed limit signs.

An eye fell out, and when he felt crawling gain momentum, he looked behind himself and found his legs became red strings. The muscle and bone blown away.

With each step, he saw more and more of Skip, his glowing eyes, a whip in one hand, striking the behemoth over and over. Gobs of black blood rain and extinguished the flames. The behemoth knelt. Skip leap from the shoulders to the garden of ashes and blood.

Kurt pulled his torso. His fingers snapped, his teeth rotted, his heart ran like a jet engine, but his lung took in no air. He reached for his sword. The blade shaved a wisp of his fingerprint.

Skip walked fast with few steps, nearer, floating over the bodies, covered in gray and back clouds, amber and cindering rock, melting earth- and the toxins spilling from beneath lays of unbreakable ground rock, Kurt ran his fingers up the blade.

He thought he felt the handle.

He thought he felt the pommel.

Skip was close, he could smell his suit, hear the smacking of his throat muscles. He just needed t squeeze, tighten his hand, and just alike all he times before, rise.

Skip raised his hand, and coiled his fingers, touched his thumb and with delicate steps, s]as Kurt flexed his muscle around the handle of his sword, skip snapped his fingers and Kurt exploded. Yellow hairs rained down. Skip took the sword, and sighed in heavy disappointment.

Epilogue

King watched his tower fire bolts of energy of towers around the world. When Skip arrived, King lost his smile. “Don't feel bad, Skip. I know you wanted them to keep on living. But you know as much I do, that with the Claymores gone- The Illuminati can’t stop me. Get over your sadness, Skip. This is just the beginning. The beginning of a perfect world...this time, Skip. This time.”

King pointed to the stars-“-And since the Illuminati can’t stop me, there aint much protecting you anymore.”

King turned and faced Skip. “There will time for stoicism. Sometime or another. But Now, tell me at last, what is your favorite song?”