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Epilogue: Lucifer's Impure World

They didn't stay in Hez'Ranna long; Zerrex and the others had to attend Huck's funeral, of course, and watch as Albatross was promoted to Commander and Churchill took control of Uroboros and promptly relinquished control of Hez'Ranna over to the few world powers that still existed... and throughout the world, clone soldiers threw down their weapons and returned to Hez'Ranna - which became much the equivalent of the exiled country it had been many years earlier in life - but they did receive a grudging thanks from a reformed World Council for the destruction of Paradise and Narrius.

The rest of the world was a mess, of course... most of it a wasteland, collapsed in on itself, crushed and twisted into a terrible, feudal world with little or no technology... also, ironically, a strange equivalent to the old Hez'Ranna. But oddly enough, when Zerrex and his family returned to Baskin's Grove, they only stayed long enough for Zerrex to take Mahihko on a tour of the now dilapidated Mayor's House and for the Drakkaren, Cindy, and Marina to pay their respects to Requiem's grave: the warrior may be dead and his body stolen, but Zerrex knew it was only a special focal point for them to reach his spirit by. Before he left, he gently scooped some soil from the old grave - and it was amazing, what flowers would blossom here, even now in this dead world - and adding it to a small wooden chest that also contained the soil from the graves of his other cherished dead, including some scooped from the field where they had been forced to burn instead of bury perhaps a million ruined corpses in a massive funeral pyre.

The little chest was his personal shrine... a memory of all the people who had cared for him or worked for him... including Huck and poor Hans, who had also died in the second enemy charge against the Resistance Headquarters... a battle known forever now as the Storm of God. Just as the Headquarters was now called Gravestone by all the people who were interested in looking up the famous battle in this famous area... and Zerrex smiled faintly as he looked down quietly, shaking his head slowly. It was terrible, the way they always changed things around and added such flashy names to battles... for him, it would always be 'the rebel base outside of Uroboros' and 'the final battle of the seven-and-some years war,' which wasn't so cool, but would always be true... just like he hated the name they had given the war.

Zerrex - who was currently standing at his usual eight feet and two inches, wearing a clean, longsleeved dress shirt that covered up the swastika tattoo he still found himself staring at every now and then, a nice pair of black jeans, and polished combat boots instead of his usual dirty ones... and leaning on a cane, because his right leg tended not to work so well anymore - pulled a history textbook out of the shelf he was leaning against, and glanced mildly down at the chapter of the 'Great Nuclear War,' or sometimes just the Big Holocaust, or the Cataclysm. He'd also heard it called the 'War Where Hez'Ranna Pulled The Plug,' because of the fact Narrius had targeted technology and power plants, and had successfully annihilated quite a successful amount while leaving other present-day technologies useless.

Sure, by now - more than fourteen months later - the world was starting to rebuild and renew itself... but people still hated that they didn't have cable television set up or couldn't go to the movies in a lot of the smaller places... more than they apparently hated how many of the buildings were crumbling and damaged, or that the heat didn't always turn on. People were weird like that, though... but it had certainly been good in some places, too.

For instance, Baskin's Grove had been doing great... it wasn't happy, but the city was working together, in unity, and he was just a dark legend... so he'd quietly decided to pack up with the others and leave, find some other place to go and set up in a town where no one knew him. Ire had written the history books on the great war - it was only 'politically correct,' apparently, because 'Hez'Ranna started the big war, and they got defeated...' no one seemed to realize by who, why, how, or that Hez'Rannans had actually suffered the most under Narrius's rule... - and attributed their victory 'partially to a small rebel force that had several minor victories in the capital of Uroboros but mostly to the tactical expertise of Irenic military forces, and their cool-headedness over the seven years of battle, waiting for the opportune time to strike.'

Hez'Ranna had been stripped of its glory, its nation, its status... and Ire had finally gotten that lumber contract it wanted to cut down trees - not like it exactly mattered now. It had also apparently been officially rebuked by the 'bullshit it had published without any fucking authority to do so from some idiot writer who knew jack-shit about what happened' - censorship had gone to hell in the 'New World,' to coin a phrase - and also was suffering serious political sanctions for its constant attacks on Hez'Ranna, who the world 'recognized and befriended' as more 'savior than once enemy.' But countries would be countries... they were racist, hateful, speciesist, and always wanted to kill each other unless they were pretending to be friends so the angry President of the World Council wouldn't give their ambassadors or presidents time-outs.

Zerrex didn't care, either way. He kept in contact with Albatross and Churchill, sure, occasionally talked to them... but that was about it. He was vaguely entertained by the world rebuilding itself around him... but otherwise happy. He and his family weren't exactly welcome here in his old hometown of Valise City - their last name was Narrius and they were reptiles, after all - but they were relatively accepted. And Mahihko also happily served him too, as a little wolf Iuratus, and had turned almost entirely crimson when Zerrex had said gently he might as well take on their name too, since he didn't want his old one... and that was how Mahihko Narrius came fully into being, knowing his past but free of it in a new body that was adorned in all manner of piercings and tattoos... including a crossed sword and gun on his skirt-wearing ass and a 'Property of Zerrex' tattoo that arched over his spine, as well as a few others.

Cherry kept meaning to get some of her own tats and piercings regained as well... but she was kept busy in the boxing ring and keeping the name of Valise's Fight Club champion; smashing people up was really what she excelled at, apart from whoring herself out and having sex. She also had settled in a bit too comfortably with her penis, and Zerrex had to reprimand her when he heard a rumor she had raped some poor female fighter in the showers. He decided it wasn't rape but not take back his reprimand when the hopeful, also-muscular came knocking one day at their door and asking with a blush if Cherry was around.

Cindy and Mahihko, meanwhile, worked a nearby pub, cooking and serving drinks, both of them drawing a lot of looks and attention; the one bright side was that homophobia wasn't as common any more, letting Mahihko wander around fairly freely... especially as long as he was protected by Cindy and could shift his size up whenever necessary, which he'd done once out in an alley to chase some dumb young punks around who'd been making fun of the 'flower-wearing faggot' working the bar.

Lastly, Marina was attending arts school... her drawings were beautiful, almost incomparable... and her paintings were absolutely marvelous. Zerrex loved every sketch she did, and had smiled and said firmly she should pursue her talents and dreams and not be stuck like the rest of them... and she'd blushed, hugged him, and said 'I love you, Daddy,' the words that never failed to light up his heart. He smiled as he remembered this, then he slid the history book back into place.

As for him? After securing a house - houses were almost free now, since the population had dropped so damn severely from Narrius's raids and attempted razing of the entire world - that would comfortably fit all of them, and doing some repair jobs to make sure they would all be relatively comfortable... he had started working at a small bookstore, mostly just to pass the time. They had lost all their money, since Narrius had also targeted banks and major computer systems that stored all the important information around the world... but Zerrex had happily sold his entire stock of jewelry and artifacts in the trophy room he'd used to keep, while Cherry had loaded up her car - it had been in dire need of a tune-up after seven and some years of just sitting around, however - with all the weapons they could find, refusing stubbornly to leave them... and Zerrex had also taken a moving van - vehicles also weren't exactly expensive anymore, because now they all ran on some sort of fuel-cell-battery power... the same technology that had powered Narrius's jeeps and other vehicles, and had been generated to a far-huger extent in Paradise - and they'd formed a little convoy on their way back to Zerrex's home, the only place he could think of where they could go for now.

They'd settled in there... gotten some furniture, and a good bit of money hocking the vehicles they didn't need and the jewelry... and then all taken their jobs, likely more out of a need to do something than a need for comfortable income. Even living together, in this climate they didn't need a furnace or air conditioning, and blankets did more than well enough to keep them comfortable even on the coldest of nights... but it was nice to have something to do, and Zerrex thought it was goddamn nice to be... almost normal. He smiled a bit at this; normal people, however, as far as he knew, didn't have giant swords on their walls at home, had a sex life that consisted mostly of their own children and a slave, or had Nazi-style tattoos on their forearms.

"Pardon me..." A careful, polite but also somewhat awed voice - although the female was working hard to keep the last out of her voice, which made her tones seem somewhat clipped - interrupted his thoughts... and he turned before his eyes settled on a figure of a black-scaled dragoness, wearing a cloth police jacket, a white shirt that he could see her black bra through, and a pair of tight blue jeans that went down into - Huh. Police boots, looks like they're Kevlar-coated. Nice. "I'm looking for a book on the Great Holocaust... I'm a bit of a history buff." A slight smile, and her dark blue eyes - and she had ivory, thick scales that were almost like hair falling over these, covering her head, with a pair of ivory horns sprouting through these, as well as long black ears - flickered a bit as he looked up to meet Zerrex's emerald. "It's the third volume of the uh, series, called 'Black Dawn...' do you have it in stock?"

Zerrex glanced at the shelf, then pulled it out with his free hand and handed it down to her, making her smile a bit as she looked up at him, and he noted the white scales that went from her inner neck likely over her entire chest... and then he couldn't help but add - no matter how many times the store owner reprimanded him for this - "It's all crap, though."

"What?" she looked up at him in surprise, causing the dog tags she wore around her neck to jingle... and the Drakkaren grinned a bit wider; he'd caught her off-guard, obviously. But then again, most people didn't like to hear exactly how a book on the war that had caused them all so much suffering was full of virtuous, courageous, and terrible lies. "What do you mean?"

She was giving him a guarded look, and he leaned idly on his cane, saying mildly: "Well, the publishing company that put this out works for the Irenic Government, not the Hez'Rannan..." A pause and a glance at the clock on the wall, before he coughed, and rubbed the back of his head as he looked back down at her with a bit of a smile. "You know, I'm about to get off work, how about we go for a walk or some coffee, and I'll tell you all about the real war."

"Were you a soldier?" She tilted her head... and Zerrex recognized her, as a strange mirror of the same flickered in her eyes as well... and for a moment they looked at each other before she murmured: "Do I know you?"

"Maybe a bit." Zerrex said softly, and then he smiled and patted her on the shoulder gently as he turned and waved his cane at his boss, who was standing behind the counter and looking at him sourly, but nodded, and then he looked back at her before nodding himself and turning towards the exit, walking away on his cane and calling cheerfully over his shoulder. "Come on, then, don't let the cripple beat you to the curb."

"Jerk." Reia muttered... but she did grin a bit, shaking her head slowly and tossing the book onto the counter as she passed, following him out and figuring it would provide at least a temporary distraction... and the two walked down the broken sidewalks together as Zerrex laughed a bit as she pestered him for an answer.

Later that night, Zerrex would sit quietly with a coke - he no longer drank... he kept spirits in the cupboard for company, but even Cherry never drank around him anymore... maybe even never drank period, admiring her master and father's strength and once more trying to emulate him there, too, perhaps... and he'd be reading through a book of classical literature, something on Hell, as he rested back in his armchair with his cane beside him, feet up on a desk and Cherry out beating people up, Cindy and Mahihko in the kitchen singing together and Marina working at the table in a bedroom... and it would mention a concept that reverberated through his mind and made him think of Narrius and Drake and things long past.

Eudaemon... the word stuck with him. Eudaemon; it meant a demon of order, could even refer to a 'good demon...' then again, the word daemon itself referred to 'knowledge' in Greek, and the demons hadn't always be considered evil... but still... he liked that. Eudaemon were the good demons, and Cacodaemon were the evil demons... and he looked up thoughtfully at the ceiling as he let the book fall into his lap, and Marina glanced up with a blink, then turned and smiled at him, saying softly: "Of course you are, Daddy... because darkness is darkness, darkness doesn't always mean evil."

"Yeah..." Zerrex said thoughtfully... and he stared up at a crack in the ceiling of their comfortable, one-floor home, at the world - a world reborn into something else, renewed in its own grand way and once more living through the trials and tribulations of developing from hell, paradise... hopefully this time without screwing up as bad as they had last... - then he smiled a bit and quietly closed the book.

And the world spun on as it always had, as he lay his head back and closed his eyes, relaxing in the chair and crossing his arms over his naked chest, and this particular blood-drenched Eudaemon felt like he had once more spread his wings... perhaps never to once again be an angel in Heaven... but no longer trapped in the fires of Hell, either, permitted this small sanctuary in a world reborn.

Good is just a frame of mind;

Doing what's right is solid fact...

And often much harder by far.

Zerrex R. Narrius

November 24, 2007-January 25, 2008