His entire body was damp with sweat, though at first the difference had been indistinguishable, as he’d only recently crawled out of a warm slough of filth-water. His clothes were sapped tightly to his body. It felt as though there was a fire burning behind him, a dry heat baking the backs of his hands and neck. The first curls of black smoke drifted into his line of sight, ripped out into the otherwise clear air outside. Something was definitely burning.
The lizard readjusted, sliding forward on the cracked plate to escape the swirling smoke, settling just across the middle of the fissure. With a snapping sound, the clay seal broke in half, startling the Uromastyx to scurry across the sand.
A grumbling sound came from behind Keller, shaking the wall he clung to. A crack formed in the stone floor behind him where he had stood only moments prior. Fissures raced away from it like a spider-webbing windshield, each of the crevices glowing a brilliant orange. The floor finally just gave up and fell away, dropping into a molten pool of boiling metal like lava, immediately consuming the stony remnants of the cavern floor.
The ledges began to crumble beneath his hands, threatening to deteriorate to nothing and drop him into the source of the heat that was already beginning to melt the rubber soles of his boots. He glanced quickly back over his shoulder. Beneath where the floor had once been was what looked like an open lead sarcophagus, brimming with bubbling liquid metal heated to a flame orange.
His right foothold crumbled away, but he managed to compensate with his straining arms. He was going to have to try to leap across it to the stone floor beyond before his disintegrating handholds dropped him to his death.
“Come!” a voice bellowed from behind him, storming up and down the tunnel like a steam engine.
On three, he thought, bracing his right foot against the wall to launch him backward.
One.
The ledges crumbled to dust, leaving him flailing at the otherwise smooth wall and then the empty air. A scream burst past his lips, intensifying to a crescendo of unadulterated agony the moment his feet splashed down into the magma. His flesh burned with a sickening smell like scorched pork rinds, though the flames didn’t consume him. His legs buckled, and the last thing he saw before his head sloshed beneath the surface was his arms catching fire, his skin blackening in response.
The plane of the boiling mess slowly resumed its former calm, betraying the fact that Keller ever splashed into its melted embrace.
“Arise,” Mûwth said, stepping from the darkness. An orange glow stained him from head to toe, shimmering on the fluids that covered the muscles on his chest where there had once been skin. “Arise, fist of God’s fury, second of His Horsemen, first to join the battle and lead the legions of His righteous rage.”
A hand rose from beneath the surface of the metal, deep crimson as though the blood now flowed on the outside. The air cooled it with a hiss; what had at first looked like liquid fire on the flesh cooling to the consistency of leather. The joints fit together like sections of a wasp’s exoskeleton…like a living skin of armor.
Another hand erupted from the left side and both grasped the sides of the smelting pot, pulling upward until the head emerged, followed by the thorax. A single smoothed plate covered the entire face like a shield, minus raggedly slashed seams through which a pair of eyes blazed like embers, and a mouth without lips showed sharp, layered teeth like those of a shark. His faceplate met with what looked like large leather scales where the hairline had once been, spikes rising in a series of long, four-inch spines like those tracing an iguana’s back. Wide plates covered the neck, making it as thick as the head, seamed together with leathery shielding like a knight’s suit, stretched taut to precisely mimic the musculature beneath.
His knees flexed beneath him and he finally rose to his full height, now only a couple inches shy of seven feet, flaming metal draining down heavily scaled legs. He raised his clawed hands in front of him, opening and closing them, watching the way the plates covering each hand fit together with superfluous grace like the talons of a bird of prey.
Whatever had once been Peter Keller had been burned away like his pathetic layer of human skin, dead beneath intricately sculpted biological armor.
“Go forth and champion His Word. Let all who have cast Him asunder know the glory of His Wrath. You are the hammer of His Vengeance and the harbinger of His Eternal Love: the red horseman, he who will leave lakes of crimson on the battlefields in his wake.”
The creature Keller had become stepped out of the molten sludge and raised his fists, inspecting the spines that ran along the backs of his forearms, the wickedly sharp scales that projected from his knuckles.
“War, most feared and beloved of His children: angel of mercy, angel of death.”
A solitary tear crept from Mûwth’s eye.
“Ride, War, and let the earth tremble beneath your advance. May no quarter be sanctioned and no warning given.”
* * *
“Where is everybody?” Thanh screamed. Tears flooded her stinging cheeks, making the darkness appear as though it was a sentient entity, crawling all around her. “Somebody answer me!”
Her pants were saturated with Kotter’s blood, having slipped in it between the boulders and been unable to immediately get back up. She’d flailed around in the warm mess, trying desperately to get her legs beneath her, before dragging herself atop one of the boulders. Her hair was sapped with cooling blood, drying on her cheeks and hands, making it feel as though her skin was shrinking, tightening slowly to the point she was certain her epidermis would crack.
She spun in a circle, suddenly unsure of which direction she had come from and which way she was going. The walls were closing in on her, sucking the air from the room. Panic seized her in a stranglehold. Rocking back, she screamed into the cavernous ceiling above, her legs breaking into a sprint of their own accord. She ran as fast as her legs could churn, her alternating sobbing and screaming trailing through the darkness, their echo haunting her.
“Oh God, oh please!” she wailed the moment she saw the aura of light filtering through the darkness. Thanh barely saw the burbling cauldron of liquefied metal in time to throw herself to her rear end, skidding to a halt with her toes hanging over the fiery pit. Kicking at the smooth earthen floor, she scrambled backward, her palms smoldering. The heat was ferocious, baking the mask of blood to her face. “Just let me out of here! Please!”
The line of light crossing the tunnel from her left was sheer torture. She could see the circular hole in the wall and the sunshine beyond, but so far as she could tell, there was no way of getting to it. It tormented her: promising freedom, yet offering little more than a slow, cooking death in the flaming magma.
“Keller!” she screamed, burying her face in her hands. She didn’t care about the twin streams of mucus running from her nose or the ragged hitching of her breath, which bordered on hyperventilation. All she wanted to do was find someone, anyone, and get the hell out of the darkness. Conflicting urges paralyzed her; she wanted to run as fast and as far as she could, and yet, at the same time, she wanted nothing more than to curl into a little ball and just simply disappear.
“Give me your hand,” Mûwth said.
“What happened to the others?” Thanh whispered.
“They are waiting for you at the end of the corridor.”
“Why didn’t they come back for me?”
“They have both already passed through into the light. Take my hand, child, and I will lead you there as well.”
“I don’t want to be here anymore,” she sobbed.
He walked closer, to the far edge of the smelting pot and stretched out his open palm. The glow from the molten metal stained his visage, revealing striated muscles seething with blood.
“I know,” he whispered. “Take my hand and this will all be over for you very soon.”
She rocked back and forth, cradling her legs to her chest.
“Do you want me to make all of this go away?”
“Yes,” she whimpered.<
br />
“Then take my hand.” His words were firm, his outstretched arm strained.
“I just want to go home.”
“Come!” a deep voice boomed from somewhere in the pitch-black tunnel like a clap of thunder.
Thanh screamed, shielding her face with her shaking hands. The world was spinning around her. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak. Her body simply shut down.
“Rise to your feet, child. Take my hand and you will know peace.”
Her wide eyes were blank, tears rolling unimpeded. She didn’t realize she was climbing to her feet until she was standing opposite Mûwth, her quivering hand reaching tentatively across the steaming lava. If there had been a point when she could have stopped this, it had long since passed. As a doctor, had she been in control of her faculties, she’d have known that she was in shock. Her blood pressure had dropped significantly, her heart rate accelerating. Her skin shimmered with a cold sweat, her lips shivering. All of her follicles prickled; every hair standing erect.
“One more step,” he coaxed.
The rubber soles of her boots peeled off in a gooey mess like black gum, but Thanh no longer thought of anything at all. Mûwth clasped her hand, drawing her across the burbling volcanic emission like a princess from a carriage. His flesh was febrile, so hot it hurt her hand, but she no longer cared, allowing him to usher her deeper into the darkness. The light from the hole in the wall and the orange glow of the molten metal faded behind her.
“Just a little farther,” he said.
The smooth walls absorbed their footsteps, as though the only sound in the world was their harsh breathing. She didn’t know how far they had walked, only that the heat from his hand flooded up her arm, warming her entire body. She was as light as air, yet somehow her feet still touched the ground.
“You must go the remainder of the way by yourself,” he said, gently slowing her to a halt in the middle of the tunnel. Nothing was distinguishable from the utter blackness. “I can only lead you to the light. I cannot make you see.”
His hand fell from hers, the warmth sucked away with it. She was cold again, shivering. The shock of the transition allowed a surge of fear to rush back in. She didn’t know exactly what she was looking for, but she could feel it drawing her closer, like a migratory bird to the equator. She stopped after three paces and looked at the wall to her right. It appeared just like the rest of the channel: smoothed to an almost lacquered sheen, barren of any sort of crags or imperfections. Her right hand rose from her side of its own accord, pressing her flattened palm to the surface and gliding it back and forth until she felt a thin vertical seam she’d been unable to see.
Thanh took a small step forward.
“Beyond that doorway lays freedom,” Mûwth’s voice drifted from behind. “Will you go willingly?”
She nodded, still staring at the wall as though beyond laid her heart’s desire.
“Then kneel before your salvation.”
Thanh dropped to one knee, blood-crusted hair slapping her face like dreadlocks.
“Before you is the key,” he said, watching carefully as she reached down to the stone floor and produced a circular disc. Her fingers grazed the indentations of several etched symbols.
She looked back at him over her shoulder.
“Break it,” he said, his voice resonant with a deep sorrow. “Break the seal.”
There was a moment of hesitation as she turned the clay piece over and over in her hands.
“On the other side of the door you will find redemption.”
Gripping either side of the seal, she snapped it cleanly with the slightest effort, the halves immediately disintegrating to dust in her palms. With a grumble, the stone door began to open away from her. Chains clanked and gears groaned, so loud that the mountain itself quivered. The screech of stone being dragged across stone finally ceased, followed in short measure by the grinding of chains coming to rest on sprockets.
A humming sound crept from within on the first breath of stale air to seek refuge in the tunnel, like millions of tiny voices made high-pitched by helium.
“I don’t see the way out,” she whispered, her own voice a thousand miles away.
“You must have faith, child.”
Her leg tensed, but she couldn’t bring herself to take a step. She looked nervously back to him, though all she could see was darkness.
What was that humming sound? She could see nothing in the darkness that seemed to intensify within that room. All she wanted to do was get out of there, and if there was an exit beyond the humming shadows, then by God she’d turn cartwheels through there if she had to.
Thanh’s jaw jutted forward, her lips a determined tight line. Her fingers curled into fists and she willed the tears to cease. Her right foot moved, followed by her left. Each step made the next that much easier. Before she knew it she was through the doorway, a sense of excitement rising within her. She was going to get out of that godforsaken darkness and the hellish catacomb of passageways. A smile warmed her lips. She wanted to run toward her salvation.
“How much farther?” she asked, daring to turn to look in the direction she had come.
Even though she couldn’t see him, Mûwth just lowered his chin to his chest in response, tears dripping straight to the floor.
The chains began to grind.
“No!” she screamed, sprinting toward him.
With a screech, the slab of stone began inching across the floor.
“Please! Don’t close me in here!”
“I am truly sorry,” he whispered.
“Help me!” she trilled, her voice cracking. She reached the closing door and grabbed the corner of the enormous rock. Her fingertips bit for leverage, but the force of the closing door ripped it right away from her.
Mûwth dropped to his knees in the hallway.
“Thy will be done,” he whispered.
“Nooo—!” Thanh screamed. She was silenced by the closing door.
Thanh pounded at the rock wall with insane vigor. She screamed and raged, sobbing convulsively, hurling her diminutive form against the sealed stone.
The humming grew louder.
Thanh slapped at the back of her neck the moment she felt the first stinger pierce her epidermis. More mosquitoes landed on her cheeks and arms. Staggering backward, she swatted at the air around her, feeling countless bodies swarming her like a tangible fog. They covered her skin in a living sheath, planting their small legs and then driving their stingers in. It felt as though she was on fire; the fleshy layers of her skin ablaze with a pain far more intense than she could have ever imagined. She threw herself against the cavern wall, desperately trying to kill as many as she possibly could, but as soon as one fell, two more filled the gap left by the squashed carcass.
The sensation of lightheadedness came on suddenly, sending her crashing to the floor, flailing uselessly. They were draining her blood; she completely understood that now. She was growing increasingly dizzy and gasping for air, yet still they inhaled her lifeblood, squishing when she rolled on them, covering the stone floor with a sheen of her blood. It coated her body, the scent driving the rest of the mosquitoes into a feeding frenzy.
Thanh screamed, the last fearful note passing her lips on breath never to be replenished. Her skin turned to parchment, crumpling over what little substance clung to her bones. Emaciated, her corpse lay on the floor beneath a seething layer of feasting insects, intent on securing every last drop of her blood, wherever it may be.
The swarm arose at the first clank of the chain, buzzing back to the walls where they merged with the darkness, out of sight, a gentle, contented humming filling the room. The stone slab scraped back into the room, the stench of death belching out into the tunnel.
“Arise,” Mûwth said sternly.
The task was almost complete.
Thanh’s paper-light, nearly mummified body floated from the floor, levitating momentarily before alighting on its feet once more. Her eyes were cracked and yellowed
like ancient paper, merely resting in sunken sockets suddenly far too large. The graying skin was pulled tight over her cheekbones, clinging to her jaw-line. All that remained of her nose was a skeletal nub flanked by a pair of triangular black holes. What little hair still protruded from her skull was scraggly and clumped. The wiry strands no longer even came close to covering her crusty scalp, the rest congealed on the floor in what little remained of her rapidly drying blood. Her arms and legs were merely dehydrated skin on bones that looked like the slightest touch would shatter them.
“Rise, third of God’s horsemen, let your plague follow the fall. Go forth and spread disease enough to decimate all that is left.”
The thing now inhabiting Thanh’s body opened her mouth wide, exposing teeth like withered corn kernels, and drew a deep breath. With a furious hum, the mosquitoes flew from the walls, swirling around her head like a cyclone. They funneled into her open mouth, crawling on her lips, creeping through her nostrils until the entire swarm had vanished down her throat.
She closed her mouth, silencing the incessant hum.
“Ride, God’s chosen daughter, let your minions scour the earth and lay waste to all. Take to saddle, Pestilence,” Mûwth said, voice splitting, tears flowing unhindered. “Prepare the path for him that is to follow: ender of suffering and bringer of life eternal.
“The end of times is nigh.”
* * *
Mûwth knelt in the darkness at the end of the tunnel. His tears were all but dried. He had known all of his life that this moment was coming, yet he had prayed to never see the day. It was only a matter of time before they destroyed themselves anyway. They had already destroyed God. This was simply the culmination of a series of events that had been building since the first man evolved from ape and raised a fist against his brother. Violence was in their nature. It had always been, but he had never imagined that man would be willing to destroy himself to claim such a hollow victory. Especially in the name of God.
Jihad.
Man had fallen from His grace. And like the rabid dog he was, man would be put down. There was not enough compassion in the world to spare it a moment longer. No love, no light, no hope. The doctor he had spared, the one who had helped the child of the enemy, would have been better served by a mercifully quick death, not what he now had in store. The man had shown him compassion and he had sentenced him to a grueling, painful death. Rather than trying to cultivate that little blossom of hope, praying for it to bloom, he would eliminate it with the rest of the rage and hatred. It was like stomping a bed of flowers to kill the weeds.
The Fall Page 14