Welcome to Gaia! :: View User's Journal | Gaia Journals

"Show no mercy!" he ordered his warriors as they entered the vile village. A shrine devoted to Kyogre stood at the far end -- a shrine that mocked Groudon and angered Caelum. Whatever angered the God of Land angered his servant.
Caelum was the first to light a torch and throw it into a thatched roof. The flames burned brightly in the night but were a guttering candle flame to the anger and bloodlust that boiled within him.
The entire village was an affront.
"Kill them all!" he shouted, then set to using his two swords to show his men the proper way of slaying. From one end of the village to the other, he killed without hesitation. The blades swung in a pattern, a deadly arc, that ended the lives of those trying to fight him with scythes and forge hammers -- and those who did nothing but beg for his mercy.
Caelum knew no mercy. And he would show no mercy to the old woman hobbling from the shrine. He shoved her aside. Those within would die by his sword.
"Beware, Caelum," she called in her cracked, ancient voice. "The dangers in the church are greater than you know!"
He laughed harshly. He was the Warrior of Groudon and feared no one, no thing, especially not the feeble thrusts and blows from the acolytes within. His mighty blades began swinging, slicing, slashing, and killing, until he saw nothing but a red veil of their spilled blood.
And then there were two more bodies on the floor at his feet, fresh victims of his bloodlust. Caelum stared at them and screamed.
Groudon's callous voice filled the temple. "You're becoming all I had hoped you'd be, Warrior..."

~~~~~~~~~

The space he came upon was huge, open to a midnight sky and the cold shimmer of countless stars. There was light here, though: firelight. This firelight was the color of burning cities, and it shone from the body atop the mountainous figure of the armed and armored god before him.
A terrible icy shock raked his body and shook him like a dead leaf in a winter gale. His voice came out a whisper, a bare breath.
"Groudon...."
Gods always hear their name when called, even if only in the dream of some creature on the far side of the world. Caelum's whisper brought the God of Ground wheeling about like a thunderstorm spinning into a tornado.
"Caelum..." Groudon's voice grated like a landslide."I knew you were too stupid to run from me forever!"
And, now that the end had come, Caelum discovered he was ready for this after all.
"Run? From you?" Caelum shouted at the top of his lungs, throwing wide his arms to flourish the two blades he used his whole life. "You trained me too well -- I learned too much to ever run!"
Groudon took in a deep breath and roared with a sound like the screams of murdered children. His flaming body rained fire down upon Caelum as the god stepped forward. "You talk like a man, but you shake like a woman. Did your wife shiver so?"
All hope of restraint incinerated in the black fire of Caelum's rage. He hurled himself at the god with every shred of his super-human strength. As he fell, he drove the irresistible edge of the blade down like a spoke through the food of the god. The blade drove into godlike flesh to its very hilt--and Groudon laughed.
"I thank you, Warrior. Sand fleas had given me a terrible itch."
"I'll give you more," Caelum snarled, as he rolled himself across the god's instep. He leaped headlong up towards Groudon's knee, his sword raised to slice the hamstring--but the huge hand of the god flashed downward and slapped Caelum from the air as though the warrior were no more than a wasp or a biting fly.
Caelum hurtled through the air until he crashed into a wall with stunning force. The rock at his back crumbled, and he slid down it to the ground, trying to shake the blurriness from his eyes and the ringing from his ears.
The god had bladed him.Slapped him with the flat of his tail, as a father disciplines a naughty child.
Groudon didn't respect him enough to use the edge.
"And why should I?" said the god, as if he could hear Caelum's thoughts. "You would be no more than picked bones and crow s**t had I not saved you. Do you remember, Warrior? Do you remember falling to your knees with tears on your cheeks, as you begged me -- begged me like a whipped cur, like a slave --to save your worthless life? If one of your men had begged you thus, you would have killed him for dishonoring the Earth!"
"You should have killed me," Caelum growled. "My weakness dishonored Earth-- and all the world would be better today if I had died on that field."
"Your Earth honor means nothing to me. You begged. I answered. I arose from my bed of lava and descended upon that field to dry your tears. To fight your battle for you. To win where you had lost. To triumph where you had failed."
The god lifted one house-size foot, as if to crush Caelum like an ant beneath his foot. Caelum tried to dive out of the way, but the god was as fast as he was huge. The foot pinned Caelum facedown to the ground. Caelum tasted dirt and blood, and in that second he saw himself again, battered to the bloody earth by the immense weapon of the king. He heard his voice cry out to Groudon and swear eternal servitude.
"Do you remember what you said to me that day? the price you set for your worthless survival? Say it now, Caelum. Say it."
The pressure of the vast foot crushing his back increased.
Caelum felt his ribs cracking, and he could no longer draw a breath.
And he heard in his memory the words he had spoken on that day.
My life is yours, Groudon. I swear it.
But here and now, he could not make his lips form the words. He tried--he did try, telling himself that eight little words meant nothing, that to give the god his petty victory would mean Caelum might yet have another chance to recover the Red Orb and face the blood-mad God on equal terms-- but the words would not come out.
He couldn't even truly think them.
The room and the crushing weight of the god all vanished behind the vision, the waking nightmares that had turned his life to an ocean of blood and suffering.
He had served Groudon not only with his sword arm but with his whole heart, his mind, and every scrap of his gift for unstoppable brutality.

The army of Earth and Sky became invincible. Opposing warriors quaked in fear to see Caelum's soldiers take the field; at the first javelin cast, they dropped their weapons and ran home to tremble behind their mother's skirts. The Fist of Groudon gave no quarter. Fleeing soldiers would be cut down, to a man. Parties suing for peace were brutally slaughtered. All the world trembled before the battle cry of the soldiers when Caelum stood at their head.
No quarter. No prisoners. No mercy. It was his Father's motto and Caelum adopted it well.
Many were the princes who pled with Caelum to accept their surrender, to save a remnant of their army and their city, even if it meant slavery in a Earth kitchen. He refused to hear such pleas.
Surrender was never granted. Victory or death in battle were the only acceptable outcomes -- Caelum expected no less from his own soldiers.
Caelum told his soldiers that he killed because Groudon commanded him-- but in truth he killed for his own pleasure. He killed because slaughter was his gift. His passion. Because he loved nothing more than the smell of blood, the screams of the dying, the sight of an army of corpses rotting on the battlefield.

"And if that were true," rumbled the god who now held him pinned in the arena, "you would still be the Fist of Groudon on earth, and the world would still quake at the merest rumor soldiers marching out to war. It was because you did not love me enough, Caelum. Because your heart still held close that Queen--"
"No..." Caelum croaked out with the last of his voice. "No...."
The visions took him wholly now: He saw himself on the very last night he had served the God of Land.

"The villagers presume to kneel first before Kyogre! Before Kyogre! This place is an affront to Groudon! Burn it to the ground!"
Caelum grabbed a torch and sent it spinning through the night to land atop a thatched roof. The tiny sparks became a fire and then the entire roof collapsed, devouring the hut in minutes.
With a battle cry, Caelum led his horde of savage murderers into the village. The few villagers coming out to defend their homes were armed with shovels and planting sticks, without hope of resistance against his battle-hardened warriors. Caelum strode through the melee, hacking and slashing, killing without effort, without even noticing whom he might be slaying...until he came to the village church.
The temple of Kyogre. And the wizened age-crabbed old witch of an oracle who though to bar his passage...
A knot formed in his belly. The stench of burning meat combined with wood and thatch as house after house was reduced to cinders. The temple looked deserted. But some dark foreboding gave Caelum pause....
But...
It was a shrine to Kyogre. Its existence was the reason for this massacre. How could he leave it standing?
"Everyone out!" he shouted, rapping hard on the thick wood door with the pommel of his sword. When no one answered, he stepped back and used the blades to reduce the door to splinters. A small, hunched-over dark-skinned woman shuffled out. She wore a shining green gown marked with the symbol of Celebi on the front.
"Sacrilege," she said, shaking her finger at him. "Beware of blaspheming 'gainst the gods, Caelum! Do not enter this place!"
Caelum backhanded the old woman, knocking her to the ground. "Never presume to give a Paladin orders."
He kicked open the door and rushed into the temple. Two priests came toward him. The blades flashed and delivered fiery death to both men. Caelum roared in rage when other supplicants in the temple stirred. He rushed forward, not needing to even see his victims as he cut left, right, left, and then plunged ahead. There was no thought of restraint, no need for caution; there was only blood and death and triumph. Caelum in his element....and so he did not heed the last of his victims, and he did not hesitate to slaughter the last two supplicants in the village temple: a woman, and her younger daughter....

If only he'd had the wisdom to heed her words...
And the massacre of the village temple replayed in his mind once more as it had every night for ten long years: the murder of the priests, the slaughter of the Kyogre worshipers huddled there, and the final twom a woman and a girl, only silhouettes against the fires he had set to burn the temple and every building in the village...those last two silhouettes, who didn't fall to their knees, didn't trust to run away, didn't beg or plead for their lives....
Caelum again felt his blades sear through their flesh, and he knew when their souls fled, sent to the afterworld as he had done to so many others. He had killed too many for too long not be an efficient soldier. Too efficient.
His final two victims had not fallen to their knees, had not tried to feel, did not beg or plead for their lives because Caelum's wife and his daughter could not believe their husband father would ever hurt them.
Caelum again felt himself fall to his knees, and then it was he who begged, who pleaded, who wished he could flee what he found there. Once more he was haunted by the sight of his beloved wife, his precious daughter, lying in the pools of their own blood, slaughtered like lambs by his own hand.
"My wife....my child...how?" The words had choked him-- a final, fatal question that he asked no one, because he was the only living creature within that burning church.
The flames of the church had answered him--in the voice of his master.
"You are becoming all I'd hoped you'd be, Caelum. Now, with your wife and child dead, nothing will hold you back. You will become even stronger."
On that night, Caelum realized his true enemy was the god he had served all too faithfully. Upon the cold bodies of the only two people on earth he had ever loved, Caelum swore a terrible oath. He would not rest until the Gods were destroyed.