Overcomer - The Battle by Judy Colella (best management books of all time txt) 📖

are you to look away, or to stop listening and observing with every fiber of your heart and souls. Do you understand?”

They nodded, completely serious now.

“Good. Cian, come with me.”

They walked to what was apparently the center of the meadow, and the Keeper turned to Cian. “I will summon Moloch now, and then I must leave this place. Are you ready?”

“I – yes, but when, how will you know when to come back?”

“I’ll know, boy. Trust that.”

Cian said he would; he took a deep breath, looking down, and closed his eyes, waiting.

In a harsh voice that none of them had heard the Keeper use before, the Guardian of the Hub of Time called out the name of the demon, and demanded his presence as agreed. As soon as the sound of his call died away, he turned and walked swiftly back toward the place where he’d opened the rock. Neither Katie nor Celeste saw where he went, so intently were they watching Cian, and the boy himself hadn’t moved an inch.

The moments seemed to tighten, pulled into something on the verge of snapping apart, and then….

With a sudden whoosh of hot air, a red glow bathed everything with bloody brightness and there, towering over Cian like a living nightmare, stood Moloch. In this incarnation, its skin gleamed orange, its massive head sporting two curved, black horns, its mouth so full of serrated metallic teeth that it couldn’t close, its eyes slits of flame. It roared down at the boy, hands fisted, each fist bigger than Cian himself. “SO YOU HAVE DARED TO FACE ME?! WHO HAS TRICKED YOU INTO THIS INSANITY, LITTLE BOY?!”

Words, soothing words of power and hope, words of brilliant confidence washed through Cian and he unsheathed the sword, turning the motion into a swing that went straight across in front of him in one fluid movement.

Moloch roared in pain and shock. How had this mere mortal been able to wield that Sword – that hated, dreadful Sword and its blinding light – and do so with such ease and strength? Had this mortal been underestimated after all? “YOU ARE NOTHING!!!” the spirit shrieked, its voice so huge it seemed to flatten the very air.

Another phrase – one about the value of human life – rose quickly into the boy’s mind and he slashed upward this time, causing Moloch to stumble backwards, screaming like the heart of a tornado. It looked down and saw with utter disbelief a black gash running diagonally up its glowing torso. “YOU LITTLE MANURE-FACED BASTARD!” it hollered.

Cian had been called that before, and it almost made him hesitate, but then another word came to him – “masterpiece.” That was what the children of the Father were called, and with fierce joy, he swung the Sword in a masterful downward stroke, causing another, longer laceration on Moloch’s belly that crossed the first one.

Moloch began to wail and rage, thrashing about as flames shot from its eyes and mouth.

Cian stepped closer, waiting. This, he knew, was far from over.

 

*******

 

As soon as the spirit-being had made its impressive appearance, Celeste had begun playing. She started with the wordless Songs simply because she was too cowed by what she was seeing to use her voice. Beside her, Katie swallowed hard to keep herself from gasping aloud. Had the Keeper used the word “frightening?” That hardly even began to describe what they were watching. With Cian’s first sword-stroke, both of the girls had felt something horrible creeping up to them from all around; this must be what the music was supposed to ward off, and Celeste resisted a desire to closed her eyes, concentrating instead on what Celesta had told her about how to know which Songs were needed and when. The second she changed to a more dissonant tune, the feeling of encroaching darkness began to diminish.

In the distance, they saw Cian slash at the creature after it had insulted him, and Katie put her fist in her mouth to keep from audibly reacting. The stupid thing was so big, and Cian had wounded it. That couldn’t be good for Cian, she thought, but acknowledged that not fighting it would be even worse.

 

*******

 

The creature seemed to draw in a sudden deep breath, and as it exhaled flame, it screamed, “BURN, YOU USELESS CHILD! SACRIFICE YOURSELF TO ME!!!”

As far as the girls could see, the flames washed over Cian without so much as singeing his hair. But to Cian, the sensation was quite different. He felt the searing pain of fire on his skin, saw his hands blister as they held the Sword, the skin eventually burning away until only blackened bones were clutching the hilt. But Cian had spent six years being hurt and not giving the ones meting it out the satisfaction of so much as a whimper. So, to Moloch’s annoyance, he made no sound as he remembered Michael’s warnings, and despite the evidence of his eyes, evidence that said those black, skeletal hands were now crumbling to ash, he continued to clutch the Sword firmly, his mind fighting through the pain to the words of the Scroll:

Do not commit me unto the appetite of the beast who is mine enemy! For indeed, a fabricated reality – that is only false – has been made a witness against me by the one who breathes out violence for his own unjust gain.

A quick double slash directly across Moloch’s midsection nearly cut the creature in two. The evil being couldn’t believe it – how was this insignificant little boy managing to harm it like this? Frustrated, furious, and filled with fear over what it knew its Master would say and do, Moloch raised both fists, howling helplessly at the small being standing on the meadow below, that dreadful Sword still in his hands.

This was not the Hub, however, and Time did not stop; Moloch knew the boy would eventually have to grow weary; all it needed to do was continue, trying different tactics, until eventually it found one that the annoying human couldn’t resist. It tried more pain, but again, this had little or no effect. Next came pleasure, but the boy gritted his teeth and lashed out furiously with the Sword, this time wounding Moloch’s legs and groin. So it went to fear – always a show-stopper – and tried to convince him that other creatures of darkness had overwhelmed the little females and devoured them, but somehow, the boy seemed ready for that one, too.

In the way that human life reckoned time, several hours passed as Moloch maintained its onslaught, every attack more filled with fury and hatred than the one before, yet still the boy fought back with an arsenal of agonizing truths that caused a growing number of devastating gashes on the demon’s manifested body, all of which went far below the surface of spirit-manufactured flesh and into the very core of Moloch’s being. These were the wounds that were slowly destroying it. It would have to do something new…

 

*******

 

“What’s happening?” Celeste asked. Her eyes were dry, her lids heavy with exhaustion, making it difficult to see, and she was worried. If she was this tired from nothing more strenuous than singing and playing music, how must Cian feel after all this time? The evil being had given him no rest that she could tell, and while her hands ached a bit, she had to wonder how his arms and back felt – all of him, in fact, since he was probably using every muscle in his body to fight that thing.

“Moloch’s been wounded again,” Katie said, sounding satisfied. Her own eyes were beginning to feel strained, but basically all she’d been doing was sitting there, watching and saying encouraging words, so had more energy than her friend. She couldn’t figure out how Cian was able to continue what he was doing, though. He seemed to have an endless supply of strength – she knew it had been at least three or four hours since the battle had begun, and still he moved like lightning, graceful, unflinching.

At one point, she’d felt something cold, clammy, and altogether unpleasant brush against the back of her neck, but she’d swatted it away with an angry gesture and told Celeste to sing. It had worked beautifully; apparently, these lesser spirits were unable to resist the power of her friend’s voice, and had slunk quickly away.

They could hear Moloch’s nasty words, but Cian never spoke. He’d had been warned by Michael during his training not to speak, but to let the Sword answer every time, and thus far, it had been working.

“Wait – what is he doing?”

“Who?”

“The Evil Dude,” Katie said sourly. “It……geez, it’s getting smaller!”

Celeste leaned forward, squinting. “Wow, yeah, and it’s changing how it looks. . . uh-oh. Remember how Cian described that nightmare he had?”

Katie nodded – she, too, recognized the metamorphosis taking place on the meadow.

“Oh, Lord, Celeste, you’d better sing a lot.”

“No, I’m going to play while both of us start reciting the Scroll as loudly as we can.” Like Katie, she had sensed this was something different, something worse, and while she didn’t believe she needed to use the silver string yet, something radical did have to be done.

They began to speak as loudly as they could, the notes of the Harp providing background music. If Cian could hear them, he gave no indication, but they had to believe he did. If not, then why had they been made to memorize those words?

TWELVE

 

Water and echoes, washes of sound, darkness. The Keeper felt, sensed and saw no difference with his eyes open as he did with them closed. He sat in the boat, allowing the ebb and flow of his surroundings provide an inner silence to quiet his fears. Much time had passed since he’d left the Meadow. At the Hub, he never felt its passage, but when on Earth, its forward motion felt alive. When enhanced by worry, the sense of it was almost overwhelming.

“How much longer, Celesta?” he whispered, his voice disintegrating in his own ears as the strange resonances of the cavern gathered the syllables and disbursed them into its vast space.

Music came to him then, starting as a hum in the core of his thoughts, then whirling outward into a spiral galaxy of notes, each one a spark of understanding. When it faded, he had his answer: wait. Soon, not yet, but pray. Darkness has found a flaw….pray…

 

*******

 

Moloch had stopped raging, blinking its fiery eyes a few times, then began to grow smaller, stopping when it was, as in Cian’s dream, the sleek-haired swell in a bad suit. This time, it carried a serpent-headed cane, which it used as a prop to lean on casually as it spoke, gazing at the back of the fingernails of its free hand.

“I really feel sorry for you, boy,” it drawled in a pseudo-aristocratic accent. “You’re so pathetic! I mean, who told you that you really belong to, well, you know. Do you honestly believe you’re one of His children?”

Cian, physically exhausted, fought back against an encroaching mental fatigue to find the right words from the Scroll to answer this. He’d need two phrases, because the first question had been. . .what? Why couldn’t he think? And. . .of course he belonged to the