by Lumi Laura
CHAPTER 50 Great Evil
They stood inside the Chateau before the door that led to Millennium Road and more recently, they realized, the Underworld.
"You can't go!" shouted Alex. "For the hundredth time. Someone must care for Andra's soul, and you, both of you, will be more trouble than you're worth."
"A likely story," said Jaklin. "I'm faster and stronger than you."
"Jaklin's right. You showed no such skill at the fight in the Ichor Dome," added Mikhail.
"This is psychic space. The Divine World doesn't want even me going. You know how rankled they get. "
"Take just one of us. Me," said Jaklin.
"No! Get over it."
"You're not the boss of us. I want you to know that," said Jaklin.
All three laughed.
"Just saying."
Alex tucked her cross inside her blouse and slammed the door behind her. She headed in the direction of the dark cavern, where the souls of the angel vampires had taken her. She worried that her cross might not work at all, that Alu might have been lying and that the cross might be worthless inside where she was going. She didn't care. She had to do this.
She was the only one to enter the cave entrance in the black mountain and immediately felt the increased grade and her footsteps irresistibly quicken. She could already smell the stench and was losing grip on her mind. She seemed to be dissolving. She could no longer control her speed forward and started to tumble out of control, falling, falling. She didn't record an impact and just became one of many shapes milling about in darkness.
In the distance, the girl saw the great plains of war, the explosions of devices and heard the screams of the innocent and saw the defiling of the dead. She wished to join them, to commit the great carnal crimes of war. But off to the west she saw a dim light, a halo about a mansion on the dark mountainside. She could always wage war but now the light intrigued her and she imagined what great atrocities she could commit to those inside as she climbed the craggy cliff, scampered across the rocks and debris and slinked along the outside of the great dark palace.
The girl found a door to the cellar, broke the latch and crawled inside, felt her way through the dark toward a dim light. She pulled back a partially open stone door, squeezed through into a curious building of halls and open rooms, everything cold black stone, vacant, and yet she heard faint cries of agony. She walked up stairs to the next floor and saw hideous bodies milling about. They paid no attention to her. She stood before open doorways and saw great torture chambers. She entered a cathedral of suffering where souls were chained to walls and spread out on stone tables. Cancerous beasts whipped and beat and abused, and among them walked the Queen of Torture, a magnificent Daemon of Distress urging them on to maiming and decapitation, the searing of human flesh, the main course.
At the far end of the chamber, on a huge throne, sat a pale giant, the Overlord, consuming the tortured and roasted human flesh. The director of all this was a woman, the Queen, once dressed in white but now covered in human grease, burnt drippings of the tortured. Her job was to taste each carcass before passing it on for consumption.
The Queen turned on this new worker, called two of her slaves who slashed the girl with their whips. She was given the task of roasting the victims alive, and the girl could feel her own hatred now, the power of inflicting pain with apathy, turning the Flame of Indifference on the screaming souls until they charred and cracked, and then passing them to the dismemberers.
But the girl wasn't quick enough and although she cried out in hatred and poured the flames and burned the souls, still she wasn't fast enough, for the great consumer had to wait no matter how quickly she worked. And the Queen of Torture came to beat her about the head and shoulders, slapped and shoved her up against the roasting table so that her flesh too seared. She grabbed the girl by her garments to hurl her across the room to the torture chamber that would teach her the price of slowness.
But once she'd grasped the girl's blouse, the Queen stopped for she felt an object beneath it, and her expression changed from utter hatred to one of surprise and recognition. The girl grabbed the Queen's hand where she clasped her garment, and then she too saw and recognized. They heard a great shout from the consumer and they again went about their tasks, but the spell had been broken. The girl looked at the woman. Their eyes met. They connected. The girl turned and ran with the woman, the Queen, right behind, past the screaming and groans of writhing bodies, through the door and along the hall, down the stairs.
They heard the alarm go out, the shouts, the scurry of feet. The girl and the woman weren't quick enough, for the great army that guarded the mansion awoke, and as they exited the mansion they were surrounded, and the Overlord approached. They would now become the eaten. Once again the girl's hand went to her garment and clasped the object underneath. She pulled on its chain and out it came. A pale light it cast in the darkness, and all around cowered and were afraid. They moved forward, and the girl took the woman, not out the main entrance, but down the side of the cliff whence she'd come, and then they were on the plain streaking back along the dark path, the object in her hand lighting the way. It seemed they might escape, although close were they pursued by many.
But a dark figure stepped in their path to the stairs. "You cannot pass," he said. "A deal has been struck, and although it was for just one, you've broken the covenant, and now both are forfeit. Back to the Halls of Suffering."
The woman stepped up beside the girl, and she clasped the object in the girl's hand also, the two of them sharing the grace.
"I speak the Language of the Cross, and it is one of mercy."
"The cross carries no magic here, and I do not obey such commands. It may lay waste to others, but I obey the ways of the Underworld, and this is an object of a despised realm."
"You may not acknowledge it, but it rules any domain within which it resides. I command you again. Let us pass!" They saw the shape weaken, but the earth trembled and the mountain shook and rocks tumbled from the cliff. Something bigger, more ominous was coming, something neither the girl nor the woman wished to face. They moved forward and although weakened, the shape again moved into their path.
Suddenly, he was cut down from behind.
"This way!" someone shouted.
The girl and the woman fled past the fallen shape and headed for the stairs. Two brave soldiers, a man and a woman, urged them up the stairs while they stood guard protecting their retreat. A flurry of furious daemons flooded the area, but the two fought them off with such speed and agility that one would have not thought it possible. Up the stairs the girl and the woman fled, panic stricken with the two soldiers also retreating but always fighting to push the encroaching army of monsters back off the stairs and into the chasm. They heard the stairs crumble, the destructive force of some magnificent monster of ruin in hot pursuit. On up they went, ever fearful that they were being overtaken.
They exited the cavern and were on the plains of Millennium Road when they heard the cavern crash and crumble in upon itself. No one had followed them out, and the girl wondered at the brave souls who had saved them. Perhaps she'd never know who they were.