Penitent
Chapter 79: Praise the Divine

Michael could hear the screams of Bayle and his friends as he ran at the portal. His body was screaming at him with fear as he leapt, but he was more worried about whoever had been crying out. The transition from one end of the rift to the other was immediate, but felt like he’d broken through a wall of glass, as if there had been something slim and fragile between him and the other side, but the force of his momentum had broken through it.

He landed with his sword and shield raised and took a quick look around, just enough to assess the situation. He could see a half dozen people tied up around a tree with a jet black trunk and bright red leaves. The sun in the sky was enormous, but oddly dim, giving off soft red light. Just a few yards from the bound people were four massive forms crouched around a roaring fire that gave off smoke heavy with the scent of cooking meat. One of the forms at the fire turned its head to look at him. It was enormous, with curled horns on either side of its head, pale gray skin, eyes like charcoal, and sharp teeth between which Michael could see charred meat. In his hand was a human leg. He wore a simple gray tunic belted at his waist with a light leather strap, and a chestplate made up of rectangular hunks of metal layered over one another.

Michael kept his momentum and ran toward the one that had turned toward him. It leapt up, and tried to grab a weapon on the ground next to it, but Michael was too fast and slammed his sword into the creature’s chest with enough force that it fell backward and Michael wound up balanced on one knee on its chest. He ripped his sword from it, and it tore away with dark green blood, and chunks of metal.

The other three horned creatures stood and began yelling as they grabbed their own weapons to react to him. He recognized that they were speaking, but he couldn’t identify the words. He didn’t care anyway, even if they were trying to reason with him, there wasn't anything they could say that would calm him.

He leapt toward another one that managed to catch his first strike on its forearm. It tried to strike him with a massive fist and Michael caught it on his shield, whipping around with the momentum of it and slashing across the lower part of it’s stomach, causing it to spill out green blood and viscera over the ground that it tried in vain to keep inside as it fell to its knees.

Another of them swung a massive club interwoven with an intricate metal pattern of spikes and reinforcements. Michael caught the strike on the center of his shield and was thrown back and over the fire by the sheer force of the blow. Once behind the flames he kicked at the fire from the bottom with his boot, throwing burning sticks into the creature’s face before he moved to stab it in the chest.

His blow was stopped by the fourth of the creatures and he was forced onto the defensive as they both began a coordinated series of strikes against him. He found himself moving quicker, and returning blows far more easily than usual, even though his opponents were far stronger and larger than him. He parried one blow and batted another away, getting pushed back, but not far. He then followed up with a quick slash of his own, managing to cut a deep gouge across the knee of one as he slammed his shield into the hip of the other, pushing them back.

All that wrongness he’d been feeling had faded completely, and was replaced by something new. Righteousness filled him, burning inside him like a fire as he pushed the horned creatures back away from those tied to the tree. He could feel the heat in his hand rising unbidden, but becoming hotter, more ferocious, the edge of his blade actually began to flicker with small tongues of flame, as if the energy from his hand was beginning to spread onto it. He could see fear in the creature’s black eyes as he pushed them back, but very suddenly a new shape appeared, wearing the same shimmering armor as him, and knocked into the side of one of them with his bulk shield first, knocking him back. Behind him, an elegant swordsman flowed and sent out a slash at the other creature’s arm, forcing it to drop its weapon as he carved a deep rend in its forearm. As those knights took up a position in front of Michael, a shot rang out, sending one of the beast’s brains out of the side of its skull, and the other was struck by a bolt of lightning that threw its body onto the fire, causing embers and sparks to go flying.

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Bayle appeared right behind the others, taking quick stock of the situation with Crick close behind him. He looked at Michael, there was anger in his eyes, but he just pointed at the people that were tied up.

“Get them loose, we need to get back through quickly. The rest of you watch that path up ahead for any reinforcements.”

Michael obeyed and walked over to the Tusinian villagers. He raised his sword and chopped quickly through the thick rope that had held them all fast to the dark tree in front of them.

“Get through the rift!” he yelled at them, and they were quick to respond, though one woman approached the limb that one of the creatures had tossed aside and started to weep as she grabbed it and clutched it tightly to her chest. He saw the crying child follow her, clinging tightly to her leg as she weeped.

Michael approached them, aware of how dangerous things got every second they were on that side of the rift. He reached for her shoulder and the image of Sara holding his own hand weeping in the same way flashed in front of him for a moment. He knelt next to the woman.

“Come on. He would want to be buried where you can visit him. He’d want you and your daughter safe there.”

She didn’t stop crying, but she did force herself up, with Michael helping her to walk slowly to the rift, her daughter holding onto her leg. Michael could see Davi, Pyotr, Ollie, Marcus, and Crick following close behind and watching the distance. Bayle was just a few yards behind them and catching up quickly. He’d been spending some time examining what they’d killed, but seemed just as eager as the rest of them to leave.

Michael stepped back through the rift and walked with the woman and her child a few more yards.

“Davi, help those two, Michael, close this divineforsaken thing right now!” yelled Bayle the second he’d stepped out of the portal.

Once Davi was helping them, Michael turned around and faced the rift again. This time, he had a better idea of what he was doing. He lifted his hand, putting all of his focus on the rift in front of him. His hand glowed a fierce gold, and the rift seemed to stabilize and then begin to shrink. It felt as if he was forcing a door closed as something else was pushing it from the other side. He slowly clenched his golden hand into a fist and as it clenched the rift closing began to speed up. For just a moment, he thought he could hear a kind of sorrowful howling on the other side, then the angry red mark that had hung in the air was gone.

He held his fist closed there for a few moments, catching his breath. He was physically exhausted. The act of closing the portal felt the same as healing a dozen people in an instant. That, on top of the riding he’d just done, the battle he’d fought only a day ago, and the fight he’d had with the horned creatures on the other side had drained him heavily, but instead of exhaustion and misery, he felt elation. He’d saved people, slayed an enemy that actually needed slaying, and sealed something unnatural that could’ve brought harm to many more people had it stayed open. He felt steel in his spine and he stood up straight looking into the sky and feeling the warmth of the sun bleed through his helmet’s visor.

“Praise the divine,” he said, “Thank you for letting me perform a purely good act like this.”

He let out a long breath and looked at everyone else, noticing that he was getting strange looks from his friends, and an analyzing one from Bayle. The ones they’d saved on the other hand, were looking at him with eyes widened in awe. He buckled his shield to his back, and removed his helmet, looking at Ollie who was the closest of his friends to him.

“I said that more loudly than I’d meant to, didn’t I?”

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