The War of All Wars

by J. Eric Booker

  Though Nemis was still dealing with “awe” at seeing this structure, she asked upon standing on dry land, Do you mind if I get my cape back, pretty please with sugar on top? The temps out here are a blistering one hundred and eighty degrees, and I’m really starting to burn up!

  As he began untying the cape, in order to take it off and hand it over, he answered aloud, “Yes, you can have your cape back…and as there’s no one around, so you can speak if you wish.”

  By the time he had finished speaking, she had already thrown it on her shoulders, put on the hood, and was in the process of tying it around her neck. “Great! In case you don’t know, that building over there is called a pyramid. Though I’ve never seen one in real life before, until now, I once read about them on a scroll that was a few dozen pages in length.”

  “Never heard of a pyramid before, not even in my geometry class. What are pyramids used for?”

  After donning the hood over her head, she answered, “The scroll didn’t reveal a whole lot of useful information. Besides vaguely mentioning that some of the priestly rites were performed inside these buildings, dedicated to their pantheon of gods, the priests also used pyramids to store the dead bodies of the pharaohs, or god-kings, as well his large entourage of wives, slaves, and animals, so that they could all safely transfer between life and death to the afterlife. This unknown author illustrated a half-dozen of their major gods, including the god who rules this hell, identifying them by name and attributes—attributes that clearly defined their individuality and place within the pantheon…”

  She took another deep breath, before revealing this next piece of information, “The surprising twist at the end of this scroll, at least to me, was the fact that the author only then labels this polytheistic religion gets labeled ‘false and extinct,’ asking the reader to come to their temple to learn about their monotheistic God named ‘Jehovah.’ Unfortunately, I no longer have the scroll anymore, or I’d show it to you…I trust you now.”

  “Well, thanks,” became Baltor’s reply. After sucking in his own deep breath, he added, “At least here in this Hell, this religion ain’t false and extinct. In fact, in my opinion, this pyramid is the best place to start looking for the Arch…especially because I don’t see any other possible options, unless other options exist beyond the mountains or that pyramid?”

  “Yeah, I concur that this pyramid is the best place to start,” she answered. “Hey, just so you know, I have no more maps, and only a bit more relevant information to convey from the scroll I did read.”

  “That’s okay about not having any more maps,” he replied. “So what other information do you have?”

  Nemis answered, “This particular Arch was the first one identified out-of-a-dozen gods on the scroll, in which I don’t need to reveal this individual’s name, thanks to Beeal. The Arch on this Plane is a trickster and murderer in nature, even having murdered his own brother Osiris in his lust for power. He even had his own vast cult of devout followers for more than a millennium—all of them being just as evil and backstabbing…so that’s all I know.”

  Baltor nodded his head one time, before saying with appreciation, “Great…thanks for sharing. That is a lot of useful information to digest, actually.”

  “You’re welcome,” she said with a small yet appreciative smile.

  As he shifted his gaze back to the pyramid, he observed that this structure had no entrances, except for that one small tunnel in the very middle on the ground floor where the river flowed in—ten feet above the water by twenty feet wide. Unlike at Bastion where they had to sneak in, all they had to do was walk right up and enter.

  “All right, climb aboard,” he said—she did.

  Baltor ran for the pyramid at his top speed. Two hours and forty-five minute’s time, they arrived at the entrance—she stepped down to the ground once he had stopped. Not once throughout this entire trip had they even seen any other living creatures or demonic guards, but Baltor reasoned it might have to do with Beeal’s “non-divine interference.”

  “Remember that we need to be extremely careful once we’re inside,” Nemis suggested. “Who knows what lies in here?”

  “True, true,” Baltor replied. “So that’s why we’re going to hold hands until we see the light at the end of the tunnel, as I can see through the darkness with my night-vision.”

  With a wink, she replied, “You should know that we don’t have to hold hands for that particular reason, as I can see just fine in the dark too—called infrared vision. But we can hold hands if you want to for other reasons…”

  Baltor was about to rebuke her again for her “flirtatious behaviors,” but changed his mind. Instead of saying a single word, he sighed with annoyed tones.

  “Please listen to me until I’m done speaking,” Nemis said softly in the next moment, “I know we’re very different people from each other, but I can’t lie when I confess that I am so deeply attracted to you…you are the essence and the embodiment of man!”

  Before he could say something, which he was about to, she added, “Now just so you know, I’m not even thinking of starting a romance up right now with you here in Hell. But, when we get done with this crazy-crazy-crazy little adventure, and trust me when I say that I’m willing to go with you all the way to the Ninth Plane to rescue your friend….will you—after this is all over—perhaps consider asking me out on a date?”

  “Perhaps,” became Baltor’s one-word answer nearly ten second later.

  “‘Good,” she said right away, and with an elated smile.

  Not returning the smile, he instead raised his left eyebrow before cocking his head toward the entrance, and asking, “Ready to enter?”

  “Yes,” she answered, no longer smiling and back down to business.

  After nodding his head once, Baltor said, There sure as hell aren’t any life forms out here, but who the hell knows what kind of monsters dwell inside the pyramid? So for now, let’s go back to using telepathy. Okay?

  She nodded her head and replied, Okay.

  With Baltor in the lead, they entered the dark tunnel made entirely of pebble-covered concrete—the water level stood at four feet deep. Thanks to his vampiric vision, he could see that this straight-and-narrow tunnel stretched for only one mile, before turning left at a ninety-degree angle. He could not see what lay beyond this corner.

  After having made the turn, he discovered that this tunnel traversed only fifty feet, before making a ninety-degree right turn. It spanned for a half-mile before making a left. Just before they were about to make that left, Baltor’s left foot stepped on a booby-trap on the floor, which sound became swallowed up by the water.

  In the blink of an eye, the pointy tip of a lance had already swung from beyond the borders of the specially designed hole in the ceiling, puncturing not only through the front of his armor, yet out the back—though in a hell of a lot of pain and agony, he forcibly managed to bite back his scream! This lance—all the way up to the defensive bracer—happened to be six feet long, made of steel, glowing blue, and razor-sharp.

  In the next moment, Nemis looked “shocked, horrified and disgusted,” and not just because she had witnessed the lance come out of his back, yet more-so because of all the blood that now covered and drenched all over her own face and robes! Thankfully, she had her mouth closed and she had blinked, and even more thankfully, she had been five feet behind him.

  Once that pain had subsided, but only just a fraction, Baltor gazed down in total disbelief at the lance still lodged in his chest, feeling oh-so-stupid that he hadn’t been looking for underwater booby-traps. His first profession had been “a master thief,” after all.

  Fighting back her tears, Nemis asked, “Is there…is there anything…I can do?”

  With a whole lot of strain in his voice as he continued to fight the agonizing pains, he answered, “No. I got…to pull this out…myself!”

  Right away, he ever-so-painfully began to pull the lance—inch by inch—from his body.

&nb
sp; Once removed, nearly a minute later, he henceforth pulled out the canister of seasonings, poured a bunch of it into the palm of his hand, and rubbed it over the front of his wound—instantly a frothy substance grew all over the wound. Nemis watched him work in silence.

  In five seconds time, not only was the wound completely healed, yet there wasn’t even so much as a scar—front or back! Other than the remaining large gaping holes in his armor and padding—front and back side—he now looked and felt one hundred percent fine.

  After releasing a deep sigh, Baltor sucked in a deep breath before saying, I think swimming our way will be much better, as opposed to walking, as I don’t want to repeat that mistake ever again…so, please climb aboard my back?

  Okay.

  For about the next fifty miles, he dog-paddled with Nemis riding piggyback, making ninety-degree turns left or right every so often—the funny thing was the fact that there hadn’t even been one intersection or exit. Yet this task had taken about ten hours as he had been attentively checking this tunnel for indications of any booby traps, above and below water. Still, despite his best efforts, his pedaling feet had trigged still another trap one minute later—a magically invisible, taut wire hanging halfway between the bottom and the surface.

  Just as fast as the tusk had moved, a wall of stone slammed down right behind their position, perhaps ten feet away, blocking the route they had come. He stopped, turned around, noticed the wall, and said, “Well, I guess we’re trapped in this pyramid…might as well keep moving.”

  “True, true.”

  He spun around, before proceeding to dog-paddle, noting that the next turn they had to make was to the right, after a five-mile stretch. They had gone one mile, when—all of a sudden—Nemis became completely yanked off Baltor, and dragged beneath the water!

  He stood onto his feet, drew his swords, spun around and frantically looked all around the waters while yelling, “Nemis—Nemis! Where are you?”

  Even though he had been able to see through the now-still waters, he could see no trace of his friend, anywhere.

  Just when he was just starting to give up, nearly an entire minute that felt an eternity later, she resurfaced about forty feet away, already sucking in a deep gasp of air. Even worse, something wormy, slimy, and black had wrapped itself around her waist several times over—it was as thick as both of his powerful arms put together! Most likely an eel, he presumed.

  He was just about to swim over and rescue her, when most unexpectedly, another eel had wrapped just the tail section of its body around his right leg and yanked. Without any time to react, this eel was already dragging him backwards beneath the waters.

  It was not until it shifted its movements by going the opposite direction that Baltor was able to use the sword still in his right hand to slice three-quarters of the way through its midsection—it died with a final squeal.

  After rising to his feet and shaking his head to clear the water on his face, he saw that this eel had been three-foot thick and fifty-foot long, and it had dragged him five hundred feet in under a half-minute! Of course, there were hundreds more of those eels of various sizes swimming his way—eels that possessed green-glowing eyes. Unfortunately, he saw that Nemis had been dragged underneath the surface of the water only a split-second earlier, for the second time.

  Without any further delay, he treaded forward toward Nemis’ last known location, all the while swinging his swords all around his body, including through that water as if it did not even exist, for it did not splash around.

  Only moments later, he had already killed dozens of eels, but to his dismay, three new eels had managed to wrap their tails around three different limbs. One, his left arm; two and three, his legs. Once again, they pulled and dragged him beneath the surface, but this time in different directions.

  Thankfully, Baltor proved to be physically stronger, and thus he managed to regain his footing, before swinging his swords low in order to kill those attached eels—of course, the creatures continued to electrocute and try to paralyze him, but the voltage had no effect.

  Within the next moment alone, he killed two of the three. However, three more eels—in the same moment—had just wrapped their tails around three different areas of Baltor’s body, including one around his neck and head.

  All the while, hundreds continuously slithered around his entire body—every so often, one of them would either take a fist-sized bite out of his face, back, or stomach, or electrocute him!

  In pain and frustration, he began to wonder if he was going to make it out of this battle alive, despite being an immortal.

  Just when all seemed lost, a massive fireball exploded all around Baltor’s immediate location. The spherical explosion was so powerful that it blasted through the waters, causing thousands of gallons to turn instantly to steam, while killing hundreds of eels in the thirty-foot-blast area. On the bright side of things, he was, for the most part, impervious to fire, having suffered third-degree burns from the blast.

  He rose back to his feet, observing hundreds of eel corpses floating all around. Nemis now stood on her feet about twenty-five feet away, but she was facing the opposite direction and chanting yet another spell with her hands raised in front of her.

  Perhaps five seconds later, an entire blizzard’s worth of below-freezing air, snow and ice shot forth from her hands, which fast turned the waters ahead to pure ice, and froze a thousand more incoming eels.

  Baltor swam through the waters until he stood by her side—by then his wounds were gone and without any evidence of scars.

  “Thank you,” he said gratefully, after standing to his feet. “I thought I was gonna be a goner…and I already thought you were a long goner!”

  “Soooo,” she sighed aloud with a little smile. “Are you now glad to have me around?”

  “Actually, ya,” he answered, returning that smile. “So how many more times can you do that freeze spell?”

  Instead of answering the question, she asked her own, “Why do you want to know?”

  “Well, maybe…we can slide our way down on the ice until we get to our destination, so that we don’t trigger any more underwater traps.”

  “Sorry, but I have to wait twenty-four hours before I can do that spell again, or fireball. I do have a lightning-bolt spell, but I figured it’d be ineffective against those eels,” she answered with a little shrug to her shoulders.

  “Oh,” he said using grim tones, “that sucks you don’t have another ice spell. What really, really sucks is the fact that my warning senses aren’t alerting me to traps like normal…I’m not happy about it at all.”

  “That,” she came back with a point of her finger, “is probably because you’re in Hell—the Second Plane to be exact.” She proceeded to point two fingers into the air for the next couple of seconds.

  “Yeah, true,” he said, while squinting his eyes and considering her words. “Still, there’s got to be another way to avoid all these traps…”

  “Hmmm…well we have two options.”

  He asked, “What are our options?”

  She answered, “One, both of us has teleporting abilities, although I have to visually see where I’m teleporting, and with this maze, we’re not going to get very far. Not sure how your runic-teleportation powers work, just yet.”

  Before he could tell her, she added, “Our other option is that you can hold onto me piggyback style while we fly at a fast pace for about thirty minutes, until my robes run out of magical power. So talk to me.”

  “I, like you, have to know where I’m teleporting to, in which I am given a rune for the new coordinates that I have to draw in the air, so I think the second option is the best route…at least it’ll get us closer to the middle of this thing.”

  “All right,” she said, “hold onto me.”

  He did, wrapping his arms around her shoulders and clasping his hands together—as soon as he had done so, she forthwith closed her eyes, focused her mind, and raised both of her arms high up in front of h
er.

  As the two began to elevate only a handful of seconds later, she opened her eyes and began to will herself forward—they flew deeper into the tunnel.

  Perhaps a minute later, he asked, “I’m not choking you or anything, am I?”

  “No…I’m fine,” she answered right away without looking back, “Thanks for asking.”

  A few moments after that, their flight speed multiplied, moving as fast as the galloping pace of a horse—two hundred feet later, the ice abruptly ended and they were once again traversing over water.

  Thirty minutes, twenty-two miles and dozens of turns passed before the two slowly-but-surely began to descend back down into the water, until the flight had landed. Throughout the entire time, neither person had seen any other exits out of the tunnel that just kept going, and going, and going…

  Once Baltor had regained his standing position, he said, “Well, that helped us out a lot.”

  She turned around, smiled for a quick second, and said, “I wouldn’t say a lot, but quite a bit. If I was flying by myself, I would have gone about twice the speed and twice as far.”

  “Hey,” he countered, “every little bit helps.”

  “True. Ready to keep trekking?”

  “Yeah, let’s go…but before we do, I need to say that I’m still not very happy about me not instinctively being able to detect traps like normal.”

  “Well, get over it. We’re both doing the best we can. Want to swim it or walk?”

  “Swim,” he answered, “but I want you to cast that speed spell you have and then climb on my back.”

  She did.

  Nearly eight hours, one hundred and forty-six miles, thousands of turns, and no additional traps (that they knew of) later, an exit finally did emerge. It happened to be a rectangular-shaped hole—two feet by four feet—in the middle of the ceiling ten feet up. However, there was no ladder or rope to climb up to the room up above that was unlit. Furthermore, there sat a metallic grate that prevented them from continuing any further down the tunnel.