Off The Pages
Chapter Twenty-Six

A calm air passed over the Valley of Megiddo. Supers loyal to Jack Hurst hovered above the battlefield, watching, and waiting. Outside the enormous barricade that had been erected around the entire area, crowds of people stretching almost to the horizon stood waiting. The morning sun beat down. The crowd stood silent. The Lord hovered several feet off the ground, watching as he turned in every direction. His mere presence awed believer and non-believer alike into submission.

Fifty feet from where Jack and his Lord stood, a portal opened. The Lord immediately threw a protective bubble around his servant. Jennifer touched down, standing firm. Jericho landed behind her, a unique battle outfit tuned to his powers on. Annie planted a foot next to Jericho and behind Jennifer. Her enormous frame stood firm and her head-to-toe battle armament shining in the sun. Edward formed the back of the group. They immediately formed into a straight line.

The tense silence erupted as the enemy supers vanished from their position. Jennifer dodged a stone-coated fist and planted her foot in the man’s neck. He sailed backward until a forearm smash from Annie planted his corpse in the ground. Jericho tilted his head and a piece of metal sailed by at relativistic speeds. He stretched out his hand, snatched the telekinetic and pulled. Edward leapt off Jericho’s back and slashed, vaporizing the attacker midair.

Two speedsters smashed blows into Jennifer. She pushed her speed to full, and dodged a kick aimed at her head. She nailed the man with a gut punch, and drove her knee into his forehead, snapping his head back at an impossible angle before the momentum launched him skyward. The other’s fist sailed past her, and she drove an elbow into his temple, separating his head from his body. Eight projectile supers sailed into the air at Jericho’s command. He then clenched his fist and the eight compacted into a sphere the size of a volleyball, before he shot a fireball and incinerated it.

“Enough games!”

The Lord regarded Jennifer’s shout with disdain. He turned to his servant. “The time has come,” He said to Jack.

“This shall be the beginning of God’s glorious Kingdom!” Jack shouted.

The Lord hovered to within fifteen feet of his enemies. Spreading his arms to his side, a brilliant light overtook him, and his robes and sandals disappeared, replaced by golden armor, reminiscent of a hundred paintings of the archangel Michael. “The first time I came,” the Lord spoke, “I was the lamb, a sacrifice to rid the world of sin, at our Father’s request.” He blinked a tear away. “It saddens me to have to return as a conqueror. However, the forces of Satan have arisen, and the final victory is at hand.” He clenched his fists. “I shall complete my Father’s work upon this Earth, and the result shall be eternal paradise!”

“You talk too much!”

Jennifer shouted, before slamming her speed on as far as it would go. She threw a punch at his face. An invisible force smashed her into the ground, kicking up dirt. Annie rushed up from the left, throwing a punch at full strength. It bent him, but a wave of his hand blasted her through the ground, digging a trench. Jericho stuck his arms out. A black sphere formed around the Lord. He clasped them together, and a dozen explosions went off inside the sphere. A force then threw him upward, and hundreds of handless punches crashed into his body, causing him to jerk like a fish out of water. Then a battering ram blow propelled him through a rock formation. When the sphere vanished, the Lord was unblemished. Ed pulled his sword but saw dirt before he got it all the way out.

The Lord gestured at the fallen warriors. “Is this the extent of Satan’s might upon this Earth?” He asked. “Saddening.”

In a fraction of a second, all rushed him. Hundreds of fist blows struck his face, chest, and torso. Edward slashed at his back. The Lord simply stuck an arm out and launched the two women like toys. A hand gestured in Edward’s direction, throwing him face-first into stone.

“You fucker!”

Jericho shouted right as he pelted the fake Jesus with every projectile he had in his arsenal. Everything from lightning, to fire, to gravity bullets, to metal, and beyond, bounced off the golden armor as the Lord strolled towards the billionaire. The Lord simply tilted his hand and the man did a three-sixty flip before faceplanting on stone.

“I honestly expected a battle worthy of the Son of God,” the Lord spoke, blasting Jericho through a boulder. “It is really sad how much hope the devil puts in his false messiahs.” He flicked his wrist and Annie tumbled through dirt and rock. A finger point caused them to hover upward and be placed safely on their feet. “This is your last chance. You have just one choice: bend the knee to your Lord and receive eternal life. None gets to the Kingdom of Heaven but through me.”

“Fuck you!” Ed shouted. Invisible bonds held him in place while a shockwave bashed him in the gut. He spilt his stomach contents onto the ground.

“Say again?” the Lord asked, lifting the man’s head up with a gesture.

“You know what?” Ed shouted. “I’m a Christian. Jennifer might not believe, but I do. My mama, you know what she did? She taught me all about Jesus.”

The Lord listened with compassion in his eyes. “Do continue,” He spoke.

“We read the Bible together,” Ed explained. “She always said Jesus was about love and understanding.” Red hot fury burned in his eyes. “You, sir, are not the Lord!”

Melancholy passed over the Lord’s face. “It saddens me, hearing that,” He spoke. “Do you know why?” He let out a breath. “It means you will never see your dear mother again. You’ve chosen, here and now, to suffer the fires of hell.”

“I bet!” Ed shouted, slashing upward. The curve of light harmlessly reflected off the armor.

Jennifer threw a kick upward. He ducked his head back and gestured his hand. Her energy detection showed her the blow coming, and she threw a shot of ball lightning that exploded in the Lord’s face just as she got launched.

The intense light caused a moment’s distraction. Annie leapt forth and buried her fist in his armor as hard as she could. The force pushed him up and shattered his armor. His eyes shot open in surprise, causing a giant shockwave to launch her into the ground. Jennifer appeared and fired a wave of plasma into the Lord’s back. He spun around just in time to catch a blade of energy to crash into his armor. He stuck his arms out and a spherical wall blasted all his foes back. The redhaired heroine threw herself headlong into him for a headbutt, but his eyes lit up and she ricocheted off stone like a skipped rock.

Annie threw herself forward and threw a kick, but he hit her with a shockwave right to the forehead, that knocked her for a loop. She landed in a pile of debris.

“You fight for a lost cause,” the Lord spoke, as his broken armor fell away, revealing his robes underneath. “That attack did not harm me.”

Jericho teleported in front of the Lord, slashing with fire hands and throwing electric bolts at his eyes. The Lord placed a glowing hand on the billionaire’s neck, and an intense burning erupted. Jericho screamed in pain. Now! The billionaire thought.

The Lord caught that mental command. What did it mean?

His eyes widened. He spun as fast as he could.

A portal opened inside Jack’s protective bubble. It closed, depositing Luther Torvalds, who then latched both hands onto the preacher’s neck. At once, the Lord waved his hand and Luther’s head snapped backward as he got launched.

“My Lor….aaaaAAAAAHHH!” Jack’s statement turned into a shriek of agony as he clutched his head. The man stood, hands on temples, eyes as wide as possible, a look of utter horror on his face as he screamed bloody murder.

“JACK!” the Lord screamed. He teleported to his servant’s side. Jack Hurst had collapsed and was convulsing on the ground uncontrollably. “Jack! Hold on! I will…” He touched a healing hand to his servant’s temple.

Breath caught in his lungs, as the Lord felt genuine fear for the first time.

Nothing happened.

He placed a palm on the man’s forehead and commanded the agony to cease.

It did not respond to his command.

Horror turned to rage. “YOU!” the Lord shouted, pulling Luther to him. He smacked the young man, healing him. “You shall tell me at once what you have done!”

A grin painted itself on Luther’s face. “Why, my Lord,” he stated, hanging on the last word, “don’t you know? I thought you were God the Son.”

The Lord’s face screwed up in a scowl of pure hatred. A finger extended, lighting up the lower half of Luther with the fire of a thousand suns. He screeched in an agony no human had before felt. A moment later, he was restored. The Lord snatched him up by the neck. “You shall not tempt the Lord!” He shouted. “I will ask you but once more, what have you done to my servant?”

Luther saw the Lord was touching him, and his eyes went wide as possible, and a wide sneer appeared. “Why,” Luther yelled, “see for yourself!”

The Lord looked confused. “What? I…”

His statement cut off mid-breath.

Suddenly, the Lord wasn’t in his own body anymore.

He was a child playing with a toy truck in a working-class home. The child looked up from his toy, drawn by a strange red glow from outside. The boy stuck his dark brown fingers up in the air, standing up and walking towards the window. “What is that?” he said, in Hindi. The red light in the sky then exploded outward. Stumbling backward onto his butt, the child gasped in terror as a wall of red light rocketed towards him. He had but moments until it overtook him. Every pain receptor lit up at once as his fingers and toes evaporated. The pain arrived at the brain just in time to cause unimaginable suffering. Then the nose melted, the eyeballs exploded, and finally, parts one normally expects not to hurt caused insufferable pain. This lasted an eternity in the few seconds of actual time it took, and then the boy felt nothing at all, ever again.

The Lord experienced a Christian man living in the Punjabi region of India, who saw his entire body light up in a strange blue translucent aura. His friends at his house all watched him with fascination and fear, as they could not touch him. Suddenly, a red light shone into the room, like a heating lamp, only brighter. Suddenly, a cacophony of noise erupted as a wall crashed into and through his house, melting stone like butter in an oven. The wall of light passed him by harmlessly, bouncing effortlessly off the blue barrier. However, his screams died in a mountain of noise as he saw his friends melt and then evaporate before his very eyes. For a brief, horrible instant, he smelled the air thick with cooked fat and muscle, before the wave passed, and he smelled only dead air. A minute later, he stumbled into a surreal sight. There was plant life, and animals, even water ways, but every building, every road, every man-made structure was gone. He saw no people. He could see all the way to the horizon, and only far off in the distance, did he see a few people here and there. He collapsed and cried until he passed out.

This and macabre experiences like it, replicated perfectly down to the slightest detail, with every sense recreated flawlessly, played out hundreds of millions of times over in the minds of the Lord and Jack Hurst. They got to experience firsthand, every single life they’d taken.

The Lord screamed and writhed, trying in vain to banish the experiences wracking his brain. No matter what he did, he saw sights and experienced sensations utterly beyond compare in their horror. He fell to one knee and shouted in agony.

A massive swarm of supers, seeing their Lord in peril, launched into action. The four took positions as hundreds of supers smashed metal fists and spiky feet into them. Every projectile imaginable flew their way. Jennifer crashed punches and kicks into whatever enemy got too close to her and zapped several at a time. Annie threw bone-shattering punches into ribcages as well, but the crazed expressions on the enemy faces told them these were willing martyrs.

A fist headed towards Jennifer, but a hand caught the wrist. The assailant, cross burned into his forehead, looked up to see a muscle-bound woman with Slavic features haul the would-be martyr into the sky and crash an elbow into his forehead. His neck gave way at an impossible angle and he went limp. All the attackers stopped and turned as she tossed the victim aside.

“None of you are real Christians!” she shouted with her Russian accent audible.

“Thanks!” Jennifer cried.

The crowd of enemies turned to see tens of thousands of supers arrive, having turned against the false messiah. “We’re here to show this fake what a real Christian is like!” a man shouted. The larger swarm then engulfed the group of zealots like a cloud of gas.

“Go stop the fake Jesus!” the Russian lady shouted. “We got this!”

Jericho slammed on every healing power he had as he regrouped with his three allies. They stood in a circle around their two enemies.

The Lord struggled to his feet. Despite the war raging inside his head, he began to reassert control over his body. He clenched his teeth as he regarded the four, anger bubbling up. He shot forth like a rocket, swinging, She tried to dodge, but his punch clipped a part of her cheek off. As that regenerated, she kneed him in the gut and slammed an elbow into the back of his head. This knocked him for a loop, propelling him into a sword slash across his gut. Annie blasted forward and planted a foot in his abdomen in the same place.

That’s when Jennifer saw it.

She only saw it for a moment before it healed, but the wound was there. Instead of a bleeding cut, she saw a crack appear horizontally across his gut. Out of it spilled white light, before it sealed up. In the moment it was there, they all saw it.

All pretense at finesse vanished on the Lord’s part. He traded blows with each of them, counting on his durability to hold out. After taking another sword slash, he planted a flat palm into Ed’s gut, causing a spray of blood from the man’s mouth. He planted a hard kick into Annie’s left knee, bending it backwards at an impossible angle. The goddess shouted in agony as she collapsed, before pushing her broken knee back into place to regenerate. He slapped a glowing palm into Jennifer’s face, melting a hole in her cheek. She pulled away so it could heal.

Edward pointed his sword like an ice pick and drove it into the Lord’s chest. It bounced off skin. Annie drove a punch hard enough to break her fist into the same spot. Jennifer’s fingers shot forward, but the crack healed up an instant later.

“You are surprising, servants of Satan,” the Lord said, regaining composure, “but ultimately, you…”

Three fists, one glowing, plowed into his face, launching him into soil. A beam of light erupted from the ground, blasting straight through Jericho. “Shit!” he sputtered, before teleporting. The Lord burst forth and smacked a palm into Jennifer. A light shot through her and she felt several organs rupture, causing her to cough up a spurt of blood and a piece of lung. He then extended two fingers and Annie’s arm bones exploded into dust at several places. She screamed, but before she could collapse, he stuck out another two fingers and her leg bones pulverized. She hit the ground screaming in agony.

The Lord spat blood from his mouth. “YOU DO! NOT! INTERRUPT THE LORD!” He screamed. Luther appeared and attempted an attack. “AND YOU!” Luther felt invisible hands drag him to the Lord’s feet. “YOU DARE HARM MY SERVANT!” Luther looked up to see a look of anger not remotely human painted on the Lord’s face.

The Lord stuck out his hand.

Every bone in Luther’s body exploded into dust at once. Every organ ruptured. His brain went to seize or pass out from the pain and was not allowed. The sound that came out of Luther should never be heard by human ears. An instant later, the Lord healed him, and repeated the torture. And then, he did it again, and again. His allies watched, their broken bodies regenerating, a sense of dread washing over them as they felt like children.

Jennifer spat blood as her body recovered. “You leave…him alone!” she sputtered.

The Lord turned from Luther, leaving him halfway healed, but unable to move from the torture. He threw him aside like leftover garbage. As he stepped slowly, deliberately towards her, she saw a look she would never be able to forget. The look of anger and hatred that greeted her was one no human face should have been capable of making. It was a look of pure distilled evil. “YOU!” he shrieked, his voice carrying the weight of every feeling of anger ever. “YOUR FATE IS THE WORST OF HELL!”

He tapped her on the forehead.

All at once, her body went limp. Her brain no longer sent commands to her flesh. The entity once known as Manny Voren, or Jennifer Black, no longer inhabited a place that could be described. Without a body, she floated in an endless wave function of pure suffering. It would prove impossible for any merely physical being, regardless of intellect or capacity for description, to put to words what suffering she endured. To say she was dead would be false. She was neither alive nor dead. She was suffering. That was the state she existed in. Her mind hovered in an endless sea of misery, an undefined distance from her body.

Were it possible to describe her pain, the description would not fit within reality.

She existed without sight, sound, or other senses. Only somewhere, an unfathomable distance away, did she remember faintly of sights entering eyes, but those feelings belonged to another reality, and only trickled to her through faint remembrance.

Somewhere, a billion trillion light years away, a million different attacks converged on a single point on the Lord’s abdomen. A massive crack shot from one side to the other, bathing the battlefield in a brilliant light.

All at once, as though hit by a defibrillator, Jennifer found herself back in her own body again, in command of her own flesh. Before she would have wasted even an instant getting her bearings, the light called to her like a moth to a flame. Her body shot forward with force she scarcely would have imagined. She wedged both hands into the crack, pulling in opposite directions.

She pushed into the sky like a Saturn rocket, drawing power from other realities into her body and burning it like coal to fuel almost incomprehensible strength. The crack began to seal, causing glass-like edges of the Lord’s flesh to cut into her otherwise invulnerable hands. Blood poured onto her face, burning her eyes and focusing her rage.

The Lord smacked glowing palms into her face, burning off her hair and starting to char flesh. She grit her teeth and pulled with everything she had. He stuck out a finger and a javelin of light speared her right hip clean through. Her scream sprayed a bloody mist across his face, but she dared not let go.

Jack Hurst regained his composure just in time to clamor to his feet. “You cannot prevail!” he shouted. “You will not defeat the Lord! No one can!”

Jericho appeared out of a portal. His wound healed; he stuck a right arm through the bubble. The forcefield ate through his clothes and scarred his flesh, but he managed to clasp a palm onto Jack’s shoulder. He shot an intense bolt through the preacher, burning him internally. The man screeched in pain and collapsed.

The crack had almost sealed when a loud bang sounded. He looked down to see Jack Hurst collapsed onto the dirt, unconscious. He saw the source of the bang had been the crack widening. Brilliant light shone out like a flood lamp.

The Lord felt genuine horror yet again.

Jennifer’s arms screamed at her, her hands were numb, her face was burnt almost black, and her entire upper body was coated in her own blood, but she pulled.

“WHAT?” the Lord shouted.

“rrrrrrRRRRAAAGGH!”

A crack of thunder echoed for miles around as the sky lit up like the flash of a nuclear explosion.

Everyone threw their arms up to shield their face. Four people saw it first.

Jack collapsed onto his butt, his eyes wide and mouth agape.

Annie spat up blood as she healed enough to stand. Ed lie there in agony, but alive, and healing. Luther felt a feeling of joy overtake him as he lay there, unable to even turn his head. Only Jericho stood tall, burnt arm smoking and all.

The Lord had been bisected at the abdomen.

The two halves fell. The light dimmed to normal daylight, except at the open areas where light still emerged. Gobs of glowing white liquid emerged from the open wounds of the Lord, which congealed into crystalline shapes, then cracked into dust, before vanishing entirely. The lower half hit rock and shattered on impact like glass. Fragments lost all texture and color and became white shards of glowing crystal. They congealed into glowing liquid and crystallized, before vanishing.

The upper body hit hard dirt. The Lord’s left arm absorbed the brunt force and shattered, leaving a cobweb-like pattern of cracks up the torso. He had landed twenty feet from his servant. He began to pull forward with his remaining right arm, crawling, as chunks of his body began crystallizing and falling away, before turning to dust and vanishing. He dug hands rapidly losing texture and color and becoming pure white into the soil and pulled. “Jack…” he uttered weakly.

Jack regarded this with sheer horror. At first, his body disobeyed him, refusing to acknowledge the reality in front of him by moving. After a moment, he forced himself to react, and he ran at full speed.

The preacher lifted the half body into his arms, cradling it like a wounded child. “M…M…” Words failed Jack Hurst. “I…I…”

“Jack!” the Lord begged, as unknown quantities of fear emerged from places in his mind he didn’t know existed. “Jack please! Help me!”

“Uh, I…” Jack tried to think, but his brain fired at a billion miles per hour in a hundred trillion different directions. He could not commit his mind to this reality. “I…the…”

“Jack!” the Lord shouted, his voice warping. “I…I can’t! It hurts, Jack!” His face began to lose color. “How…can this be…How…Jack…tell…”

“My Lord!” Jack screamed, his mind latching onto the only words possible. His face ran wet with tears at the sight of the rapidly deteriorating body in his arms.

“The…I…” the Lord turned his gaze skyward. A look of sheer terror painted itself on the Lord’s face. “My Father…he doesn’t answer me…” A gasp escaped him. “Why doesn’t…my Father answer me!”

Finally, his eyes went wide. “Oh, God…!” A realization of horrific implications emerged. “Am I not the…?”

He went silent and still.

An instant later, his body turned to dust in Jack’s arms.

The preacher stared at the vanishing dust where the Lord had been. He blinked once, mouth agape.

Then he let loose a scream of pain and loss not even war widow could equal.

With news crews watching via helicopter, everything had been broadcast to the entire world.

Jennifer landed with a thud, her feet kicking up dust. Her blackened flesh dropped away to reveal healed skin, and the hole in her hip healed, but her body bore the remnants of total war. “Water,” she cried.

A super landed by her. She gestured, and he sprayed her from head to toe, washing blood and grime off as much as possible. Next, he produced a sphere of water, which she drank from. A super stripped one of their beaten enemies of clothes and tossed it to her, and she changed in a flash.

She gave a look to Jack that would cause a bear to cringe.

“How…”

She grabbed his shirt by the collar and hoisted him overhead. “What?” she shrieked.

“How could you defeat the Lord!” he yelled.

She dropped him and barked out a laugh. He stumbled to a steady position.

The strange reaction was like a cup of coffee to a tired man. “What’s so funny?” he said, heart still racing.

She guffawed harder.

He clenched his fists. “WHAT’S SO GODDAMN FUNNY!”

“You honestly don’t get it!”

“That wasn’t the Lord,” Annie said, approaching.

That sobered Jack up. “You’re lying,” he said.

“Nope,” Jericho said, his arm healing. “Feel that twinge in the back of your mind? I don’t know how you gaslit yourself into forgetting about it, but everyone who has a power has one.”

Tears soaked Jack’s eyes. “No! You’re lying!” he shouted.

“Then you won’t be able to summon anything else,” Jennifer said. Everyone shot her a look like she was crazy. “Jericho, he does anything funny, explode him.”

Jericho stood behind the man and placed both hands on his neck. “Gladly,” he said.

Jack shook his head. He would prove these fools wrong. There was no…

His heart sank.

He felt it.

He pictured some harmless cartoon character from his childhood and pulled the trigger. An instant later, the cartoon rabbit popped out of a hole in the ground and stood before them, as real as the ground they stood on. “Hey!” the cartoon rabbit uttered, looking at a wristwatch. “I’m late!”

Jack gasped, hand covering his mouth. “No!” But regardless of what he said, he saw it. He banished it with a flick of the trigger.

He thought of a character his kids watched on those Japanese cartoons and activated his power.

“We’re going to have a fight!” the Asiatic character shouted, adopting a fighting pose as his martial arts gi flapped in the wind.

“NO!” Jack’s legs gave way, but Jericho hauled him up again. The character vanished when Jack turned it off.

He turned on his power once more and another cartoon character from his childhood appeared.

“You’ll never be able to…!”

“OH GOD! NOOOOOO!” Jack screamed, silencing the creature at once by turning it off. The preacher collapsed to his knees again, openly crying into his palms.

Jericho regarded his friends as they waited. The preacher looked up from his hands as pure dawning terror gripped him. “Oh God…” His utterance was barely audible at first. “I killed them.” He blinked, then the dam burst. “I killed them!” His eyes slammed shut. “I KILLED THEM! ALL THOSE PEOPLE! OH MY GOOOOOD!”

Annie looked around, and she happened to be the only one who saw it. “Jennifer!” she shouted.

At super speed, she saw the moment extend into eternity. He was going to commit suicide by biting through his tongue.

Jack slammed his teeth together, only for an impossibly hard hand to wedge between them. “NO!” Jennifer screamed. “You’re not going to martyr yourself! You’re going to face man’s justice!”

Annie hauled the man to his feet. Four portals opened, and their remaining teammates walked out. John snapped a nasty, red glowing collar around the preacher’s neck. Davis and his superior poked futuristic-looking pistols into the man’s back.

“Reverend Jack Hurst,” Davis Wilson said, leaning in, “for crimes against humanity, you sir, are under arrest.”