Angel of Death

Angel Of Death Chapter Two: THE WAR OF THE GODWORLDS

CAPETOWN, SOUTH AFRICA

2027 A.D.

Uprooted city blocks, massive chariots of the Gods, bigger than an entire city. Tiny human victims scurrying for cover; a nuclear cataclysm that comes apparently from nowhere, wiping out an entire city in mere seconds. A news-woman in a windy morning, adjusting a petulant scarf around her elegant neck. Old divinity in conflict with a new universe...

It was a cold, windy morning bereft of clouds, and things were soon going to heat up in Cape Town, hospitality capital of the rainbow nation of South Africa... Science was dying, its tendrils of human control collapsing in ruins; and it was about to fling its last, defiant, calling card at an unsuspecting world. The deep droning sound of a jet passenger liner approaching the city, the aircraft hanging and moving slowly in the air as if hesitant to land. But its long-drawnout bellow did not drown out the piercing, melodious voice of a child screaming at the top of her lungs. The shout carried across the still, blue waters off the coast of Cape Town:

"Ermina!"

Closeby, a cosmic anomaly began to take form. With a storm of blue-white static, coruscating lightning violence, the teleportation component of the 'Alien City' monolith atop one of Cape Town's skyscrapers flashed dazzlingly white -- mirroring exactly the flash of another hitech device thousands of miles out there in the Sahara Desert -- and Brianna 'Oloro' Storm found herself, when the veil of transfigurational immersion had lifted off her eyes, aboard a luxury yacht that was moored in shallow waters off the coast of a mountainside nestling city.

She grumbled as she looked up and down and all around her.

Cape Town. Nice!, she enthused sarcastically. At least you bastards could have dumped me at my initial starting point, like any self-respecting time traveling machine! But no! The almighty WW Studios must do things differently! And then, she held her breath as she realised that she was like a solidified shadow here -- physically present, but seemingly invisible and occupying another universal space -- and therefore undetectable to the occupants of this ship. That train of thought made her to leap to a whole new level of cognition.

"Oh, no! Not this one, guys?!" she shouted down at the serene ocean surface, knowing those old boffins -- over there at the Transfigurations Laboratory of WAR WORLDS STUDIOS, North Africa -- would still hear her, somehow. "Not this Timeline again!"

A short memory, a vivid sense of deja vu washed over her awareness, and she was back in her office in New York, briefing some black garbed security operatives while the strange woman in latex catsuit watched silently from her perch atop a stack of weapons crates. Brianna remembered she was telling the six-man squad of hefties that those crates contained alien, crystal cubes from an alien city of some sort in Antarctica. It had been guarded by an invisible alien guardian that their alpha squad had managed to take out at great cost to the rest of the team. Now, she had smiled sardonically then, one of them was going into the alien archives' crystal blocks that Pentagon had dubbed as the Archive Cities...

I didn't sign for this, dammit!

She studied herself as she stared in numbed shock at the scene playing itself out before her eyes... She was dressed in a blue astronaut jumpsuit, complete with bloated pocket pouches. Her ginger head of hair ruffled slightly in the winds that blew from the ocean. She wore a pair of very shiny, close-fitting, black rubber shoes; and, to her intense shock, she craddled a plexiglass bubble canopy transparent dome of an astronaut's vacuum helmet in the crook of her arm and solar plexus... Her sharply beautiful Japanese face stared with a baffled expression back at her from the mirror-like surface of her suit helmet...

Children noisily, but cutely, played at war games aboard the cruise yacht; yellow and orange-colored toy guns and black, menacing starships in their tiny hands; making wheezing, whistling, buzzing noises -- dramatizing an imaginary war as they ran all over the pristine white deck of the big boat. There were five of them; two boys and three lovely girls: and apparently they couldn't see or feel her... Their ages ranged from five to eight; the only black amongst them was a girl. She was the tallest and the prettiest. She was Ermina.

"I've got you! I've got you!" 'Die! Die...!" "Cheater...!" rang among them as they bickered and roved about under the watchful eyes of three sailors acting as lifeguards for this cruise... The children were all panting now, momentarily tired. Brianna smiled Big-Sisterly at them and was about to ruffle the abundant towhead of one of the boys, when something else began --

A muted, groaning sound, coming from everywhere and nowhere at once. One of the kids looked up, saw the glow, then he saw another -- two glowing balls of flame; one bright white, the other obsidian black. On impulse, Brianna quickly put on her bubble helmet, activating the polarization component by word command. There was a slight burr and whirr of invisible machinery as her hitech helmet's circuits were once more closed, the entire suit was once more functioning at maximum performance...

"Lookee!" the kid screamed. "Look!" the towhead roared at the top of his voice, grabbing his nearest playmate and pointing up. As one, the others followed their gaze. Ermina had the presence of mind to scream for her mom, over and over again. Below-decks, two couples of young parents interrupted their drinking and ran up to the deck. They were just in time.

The glows ignited and a hellish burst of light and heat swept across the harbor and the city. Like pancakes hit by sledgehammers, the houses flattened, pulverized and blew off in the powerful accompanying solar-like wind. Like leftover grits swept off by a giant broom, the waterfronts and harbor melted away into the sea, the pulverizing heat wavefront came rushing headlong towards them...

"Cool!" one little boy gasped, but was cuffed on the head by his tall, rail-thin Afrikaans elder sister.

Flames blossomed over the city, floated in a horrible red-yellow tide on the water's surface. Jaws went slack all around. Too awestruck and numb to move, they all just stood there and stared. The horrible mountain of flames reached them --

Bodies glowed red-hot, shriveled, shredded and exploded in flames. The luxury yacht, moored in shallow waters as it was, glowed white-hot along its metal hull below the water's surface and burst at the seams like a boiler pipe under immense steam pressure. The blast wave mercifully extinguished the lives of those below-decks in an instant... Brianna felt herself being shrouded by an immensely powerful, extradimensional forcefield of some sort as hellfire blazed all around her form... Time momentarily collapsed on itself --

Ten minutes, twenty minutes, thirty? -- Who could tell? -- after the voracious flames had roasted all flesh on board the yacht, the blackened shape of one little body began to bubble, acquire matter and swell; the goey matter becoming flesh, the previously charred matter falling off the corpse. The form, like a cine-spool image in accelerated forward time, gained back all of its former mass, organs, bones, vessels and tissues -- sucking, liquid sounds sloshing around inside it as some kind of phenomenal regeneration process rapidly gave form and life to the burnt-to-cinder body.

Slowly growing back its chocolate colored skin as if the regenerative process had worn itself out -- the skull's orbit and nasal openings oozing greenish-white bilious liquid as the two last organs reformed -- the naked, newborn-like bleached form of Ermina uncoiled from its fetal attitude while burning and shakily got to its feet. Steadied now on her limbs, she gazed in dazed confusion at the other broken, blackened forms. Then, her eyes glowing unnaturally in a kind of exultant pride, she drew in a deep breath and whispered:

"Always knew I'd freak out someday."

She took another deep gulp of air and dived without hesitation into the shark-infested water. She swam confidently for the shore. Brianna Storm just stood there and gaped after her departing form, too lost for words to even move a muscle... Finally the pressure of the suspense dragged the breath out of her. This was like classic scenes from the advent of Doomsday, only this time she was witnessing in person the sheer brutality of the near-cosmic events. She shivered and hugged herself.

Days pass in a spinning whirl as Brianna Storm turned about on one spot in momentary confusion, beginning to understand that these were light-speed quantum-memories of the long dead alien soldier's mind that War Worlds Studios' scientists had been studying. The poor lad's soul must have been loaded to bursting point with a spiralling-out-of-control montage of a tall, grisly, thronged chronicle of Earth, she mused... Weeks pass... As the Human/Angel War worsened all across the globe, and in particular in this rainbow nation, the desecrated pleasure ship remained largely untouched -- a bilious relic of the past in these dark days. Bilges burst, bow and stern directed unnaturally, protruding only slightly above water level; torn in places as if clawed by some gigantic, primeval marine beast.

Away from this gloomy reminder of the twentieth century, a huge, twisted, broken-down, drunken-stance billboard had the legend: CAPE TOWN, with the words above it erased with black splotches of paint.

An actinic, arc-welding-like flare of a pincer of white-hot flame burst through the thick metal skin, creating a huge tear in the signboard. Something, humanoid-shaped, but huge, armored and dense bodied, and glowing with an unnatural light of its own through the entire length of its form, came through the rent.

The thing was a grotesque, sixteen-foot immitation of the sixty-feet tall Angel form known as the Hierarchs. Its hideous form bristled with frontal facing, huge spider spines, wickedly sharp and evil looking; all six appendages arching from its back like free-floating arachnid limbs. Only the glistening, fiery fire-light coming from just beneath the surface skin of the ominous things hinted that they were some kind of deadly, biological light amplification weapons. Its tremendous shoulders, chest and fore-arms were protected by a fascinating display of thorny armor. Six of these monstrous beings appeared out of the bowels of the sea after the first one.... And Brianna got to clearly see her first Super Angel for the very first time --

Its face was reminescent of the classic Medusa face, complete with long, wavy strands of multitudes of tiny, fiery-eyed worm-snakes -- white-glowing, ready-to-lance-fire -- the huge balls of malevolent eyes seeming to control them all. Massive muscled pair of legs ending with feet that seemed fused with the huge chainsaw iron boots that it wore as footwear. Menacing lightning branches reached down from the overcast sky above and hovered above each cosmic monster's back. And they all began to levitate; a fiendish white vortex of fiery force coming into being on their backs and midchest level just below the sternum.

All seven of them roared simultaneously, the shrieking sound unearthly, with the effect on the ears as of metal tearing. Without wasting time, they began firing rapidly at scurrying, ragged-looking human forms with those formidable array of hexa-spines; projecting heat rays and plasma bubbles that instantly disintegrated or incinerated the few humans lurking around the harbor. The orbits of their eyes glowed with an eerie, greenish light. The dental frameworks grinned in devillish cunning as one unfortunate human after the other were caught in its formidable barrage. More of their kind appeared; the savage, battering ram of their sundering feet, long, wide and ominous. The killer divine bio-machines -- firing incessantly at lurking human forms -- floating like ghouls, methodically patrolled the dockyard and waterfronts of Cape Town, South Africa.

Brianna assured herself of her sanity with a sarcastic chuckle, and then she depressed the offline activation button of her wristbound personal communicator. The device's specific function button would energize the final part of her time jaunts through the bewildering, hitech portals and sinkholes of the future -- and then she caught her breath.

A holographic super-advanced computer console surrounded her body in an ethereal shell of lambent blue, green and purple lights. Her bewildered eyes and brain recognized the beginnings of the framework of a ghostly quantum supercomputer DRAGONS DIP device, before the gestaltic stream of information bombarded all of her senses and she saw, felt and heard everything that the projections from Zoomtech's latest communications device was showing her...

Another spinning whirl of a brilliant white-and-stormy tornado of energy surrounded her, reminding Brianna of the Bifrost. She was turned forcefully around on one spot as knowledge in the form of spinning, glowing glyphs seeped into her consciousness from the tornado of energy around her body. And her mind was soon filled with real life events -- from the beginnings to the present day, and the near future -- of the consequences of this dreadful war that had suddenly fallen into the laps of an utterly confused human race...

AGONY IN HER VOICE

From the Video and Voice-track records of translations from THE HIDDEN STORM: The Lost Writings of Nostradamus (The Man Who Saw Tomorrow), discovered in the ruins of Syllologist Anna Winterstorm's cellar library, Johannesburg, South Africa.

The Super Angels arose from the forest clouds of the global biochemical and nuclear holocaust of December 2027 A.D.... For three years the jingles of oncoming World War 3 had drummed across the face of Terra. And when war finally ensued between the Russians and the Americans across three continents; this time dangerous cosmic forces from the 'Outer Dimensions' will chose sides...

These immensely powerful divine entities had secretly come to Earth centuries ago. And as chaos and the bombs fell all across the planet, the divine aliens annihilated the striken world within three days. Final War fell on the planet, in the form of a debilitating conflict that would rage on for three decades -- as the seemingly vulnerable Third World countries would strike back at the heart of Europe and America with a power that was beyond superhuman. Indeed, with a brutality that would stun two universes...

The mind-blowing contention of this new cosmic war for Earth's sovereignity was the aliens' power-struggle to stop Mankind's ascendancy to the state of gods!... To counter imminent failure, mimicking ancient Earth holomovies, Kraniac -- the realm of Outer Dimension controlled by Super Angels -- began sending cosmic killer beings known as Cremators, through space-time portals, into Earth's present day, from the 211 Universe. But a mysterious alien power, enforced by die-hard demigod vigilantes who have lived on the planet for millennia, stood between extinction for humanity at the throttling grips of the titanic Angels.

Within this Archives rests the story of the alien mercenary, demigod and super-soldier, Segan; sent by Greyskull (Earths's super dimensional military arm) into the fast-changing 21st century of Earth 2 -- from the war-torn hell of the planet's 22nd century. His mission: to destroy or enlist a child principality, thus averting Earth's biosphere from being turned into an alien War-World when hostilIties began.. But the question is: Will the Crethor and his targets be able to survive the cataclysmic attacks of the divine Cremators, while battling to escape from Heavenly cities crumbling under siege from an even more fearsome, monstrous invader? Would an entire world hold its breath as a nubile girl, with the fate of civilizations in her hands, was being targeted for elimination by killer gods?

To answer these questions today, in a weeping Earth with its seas turning to vinegar, we must first envision the Earth's future history -- from the view of a time-traveling cosmic artificial life organism of its 21st century --

The long expected Millennium Bomb, a new century and millennium expected to manifest some of the most breath-taking inventions and innovations mankind has ever witnessed would begin with large scale avid greed for money in the last dregs of the twentieth century.

Brother would turn against brother... Earth dried up by hate would fail to bring up food. Famine, like a plague, sweeps across the face of the globe in the early stages of the 21st century. Mankind's children becomes deprived of love and care; hunger and appalling crime situations in these stricken lands give rise to scenes where men eat men with brushfire frequency. The African realm becomes an emaciated, floundering apparition of a once-great race. In three segments of an Asiatic race, mushroom of hard, ravening viral fire is exchanged... Light and heat like a hundred suns flows like lava over once-green lands. The Earth moans in torment as earthquakes scourges it, tearing down into Aegis. Earth and sky tears asunder... And Fallen Angels are unbound. Dark cloud fumes in the heavens; the skies open in rage, giving birth to untold firmaments of living stars: carrying forth a thousand billion-fold force Angean beings whose ravening cruelty would rend the hearts of the entire human race... For they come as locusts, humanity's equivalent of a routing and pillaging Genghis Khan.

The years of war rolls by... Utter hell is unleashed on Earth by the rampaging Angels. The planet, despoiled now beyond redemption, has become a boiling, hellish cauldron festering with toxic wastes and viral contamination of cancerous proportions. In every nook and cranny of the Earth, fire and germs shall burn. This was the long-prophesied alien war. None, no nation can escape it. In segments of dying humanity, man shall become a man-hater and man-destroyer in proportions that would have shamed the lords of darkness themselves.

Greater evils, alas! would still scourge the Earth. Death, horror, sorrow, fear, misery, would blaze across the planet in one titanic, fiery tornado in those dark, early years of the War of the Super Worlds. Technology is pitched to the precipice as mankind battles the brutish, near-demonic, divine machine beings of the unearthly invader force... Earth finally triumphs, but at a terrible toll in lives. Six and a half billion lives lost... But this triumph is only short-lived. With only a brief respite left for reconstruction after Earth's hard-won, Anarubis (Atlantis)- and Cretan-aided victory, war came again; this time against organisms of dark matter extract, maliciously turned against humans by the Angels' shady maneuverings... Beings that were aptly named by six universes, Doomchild. They were vile things even the legions of Hell itself would have dreaded and respected in morbid fascination.

The first of the synthetic gods were finally created in cosmic human labs, but man and the nightmare humanoid race are eons apart. Killer master organisms, the modern-day revivals of the war-gods of ancient legends, they were born with the power to destroy worlds at will. The Demon War, as this war became known, spreads deep into three galaxies and out to the other galaxies of the three contending universes. Wherever Greyskull, mankind's last bastion of resistance retreats to in order to reinforce, the merciless, modern revivals of the ancestral beasts -- gifted with the propensity to perpetuate horrible mass murders beyond human imagination -- are sure to pursue...

Their evil rule is finally broken in the year 2158 A.D. with the birth of Dresden Scotts... An ultigod tutored by Xofans to end the DEMON WAR and usher in the thousand years of the new race of Gods' judgment of an entire universe... But the deciding battles for the masters of the multiverse would not be decided in the war-torn hells of the 22nd Century. They would take place in the relative peace of a present-day cloned Haven World... In any eternal city: any House; any Mansion; any Garden; any Judgement Day -