Ashes - The Special Edition: The Tales of Tartarus

by A. L. Mengel

A giant fireball exploded in the office and engulfed it in flames as the mist turned black. The skeleton screamed in agony, pleading over and over again to quell the fire.

  The beast looked down at Jean Carlo.

  Jean Carlo shuddered at the thought of what was standing above him. There were angry lines reaching under a black steel faceplate which covered the eyes. Those angry eyes. But what Jean Carlo shuddered at was the size of the beast. He looked like a combination of a powerful beast and machine.

  “Come with me,” the deep voice commanded. The beast extended his massive arm. “We have been waiting for you.”

  Jean Carlo followed the beast, as he didn’t seem to have much of a choice, sticking close to him. The mist seemed to be laughing at him; taunting the poor little man.

  The beast dragged him through the streets ignoring the mist. He could tell they were walking through the city streets but he still saw nothing. What he heard was vastly different.

  He heard voices, but most were muffled and distorted and he could not decipher what they were saying. Most of the voices he could tell sounded rushed and urgent, and every so often he could make out a word or two – “stop! Damn fools gonna - !”

  “Who was that man back there?” Jean Carlo finally called out up to the beast over the chaos. They continued walking and the beast at first did not answer. Then suddenly they stopped. The beast turned to face him.

  “That was a lost soul. He wandered too far. He was caught by the serpent.”

  The beast turned around and started pressing forward again. Jean Carlo tugged at his arm, attempting to stop his heft.

  “Wait!” Jean Carlo insisted. “What am I doing here? Where is Jonas?”

  The beast stopped again, and once again turned to face him. “Jonas is waiting for you Uriel. You seemed to have gotten lost back there, and he sent me for you.”

  The beast turned around and again they pressed on.

  And then there were screams. What sounded like thousands upon thousands of screams of agony, and the sound of burning fire and many explosions.

  And he could feel the heat.

  “We are here,” the beast said, as the mist cleared. “Welcome to Tartarus.”

  Jean Carlo stared at the scene before him. What had felt to him like a short walk down a city street revealed a fiery destination.

  The sky burned red with flames, hovering over black clouds; and below, a sea of screaming souls. They seemed human – they even looked human; but they each had several things in common. Their terror was all equal; they fought the same fight in the same lake of fire; they each screamed in search of something less than terror; but their wide eyes, plastered open against their pale skin, never able to close, confirmed one thing. That there was nothing but terror where they were…and that their search proved fruitless. Each screamed and writhed over the other, the limbs spilling on to one another in a mass of a tangling mess.

  In the center rose a giant, impending dark black figure; it stood over the fiery lake as if cloaked in black; it reached out over the screaming souls with spiny arms over the sea like a governor.

  Jean Carlo returned his attention to the beast.

  “Come with me,” it said as it grabbed his arm and yanked him behind a giant rock. They stood out of view for the moment.

  Scanning the area, Jonas noticed a steel door at the end of the rock structure.

  “They will come from that door when the battle begins,” the beast explained.

  Jean Carlo stopped and looked at the beast. “Who are you?” he asked. “What battle?”

  “The battle that you ordered. It’s about to begin. That is why you are here. Nesmaron must be stopped. Per your orders.”

  Jean Carlo tried as hard as he could to remember that meeting. He remembered walking through the door – he remembered the Metatron lining the table, he remembered the sea of papers and Jonas explaining to him…

  “Yes! I remember!”

  The steel door crashed open, so hard that rocks broke off and crumbled from the wall of stone that they were hovering behind and fell to the ground.

  Giant armored beasts came through the door, heading out towards the clearing in front of the sea of souls. Each soldier lined up in front of a giant cliff that dropped down to the fiery sea, and as Jean Carlo turned his head to see the cavalry prepare themselves, he saw the beast who led him here leave his side and join the others.

  Feeling a tap on his left shoulder, he snapped his head around to see who was requiring his attention and saw Jonas standing with another man, about the same height but far younger.

  “Hello Uriel,” Jonas said, smiling warmly. He hooked his silver hair to the side of one ear.

  “Where did you go?!” Jean Carlo rushed towards Jonas. “You left me and a crazed lunatic exploded in front of me!”

  “I know, Uriel,” Jonas said. “There are still going to be many things here which we do not understand. But I assure you, they all happen for a reason.” He turned to introduce the man that he was standing with. “This is Darius. This is the man who took my life.”

  Jean Carlo stopped for a minute. He stared at the man before him and saw the face of his killer. He turned to run, but Jonas stopped him.

  “Wait! Jean Carlo stop!” Jonas grabbed Jean Carlo by the arm, keeping him there.

  And then Darius stepped forward, caressing the cheek of his former victim. “Don’t worry, my precious,” he said. “My motives right now are not to reclaim you. I called Jonas because I needed to reveal to him what would happen, what would happen to the one I created.”

  Jean Carlo stopped struggling from Jonas’ grip.

  But Jean Carlo glared at Darius. His eyes pierced outwards to Darius; and his face was outlined with contempt; every line and crevice stood standing and forthright as he clenched his fists.

  Darius gently placed his hand on Jean Carlo’s shoulder. “Please. Stop. I know what I have done. But I did that as a monster that I formerly was, not as the man that is standing before you.” Darius squeezed his shoulder. He smiled wanly while placing his other palm on Jean Carlo’s cheek. “I wanted so much for you to be my creation, a son, a warrior that I could mold,” he continued. “But things went differently. Everything has changed now.”

  All three men looked towards the Metatron patiently standing guard and awaiting battle.

  “It’s going to happen soon Darius,” Jonas said.

  “I know. But I must finish.” He turned back to Jean Carlo. “I killed Jonas, at first, for the sport of the kill. He has every right to be angry with me because I did not kill him for a reason. But here he is standing before you next to me because I revealed a reason to him. I stand before you not as the monster who took your life or raised you out of your casket, but as a man. I am here because I need your help.”

  “But the Metatron are not on your side Darius,” Jean Carlo pointed out. “They are here to combat this evil. They are here to set things right again.”

  “I know,” Darius said. “But you must understand. I am no longer a part of that realm. It was taken from me.”

  “Taken from you?” Jean Carlo asked.

  “Yes,” Darius replied. “I am no longer immortal.”

  Jonas nodded in agreement. “And we need to save Antoine,” he added. “Because he is…”

  “- he is the only hope that I have for survival,” Darius interrupted. “Only he can make me immortal again. And only he knows where the Chalice is.”

  “What chalice?” Jean Carlo asked.

  “The Cup of Christ,” Jonas offered. “It offers renewed immortality.”

  “So you are saying with that cup you will become immortal again?” Jean Carlo asked.

  “Not exactly,” Darius said. “Only Antoine knows where the cup is located. We found it together several hundreds of years ago in Egypt. But since then, and since Antoine and I had become estranged due to our differences in running Sacrafice, the cup has been lost. And, to make matters worse, there is another. Claret.”

  �
�Claret?” both men asked Darius in unison.

  “Yes, Claret. Please don’t say that name loudly here. She might hear you. She has been showing her face lately. And she is one of the reasons that Antoine will be destroyed here today. Antoine took the cup and the cup was a gift from Claret to King Tutankhamen. She lived during the times of Jesus Christ. Some say that she took the cup directly after the Last Supper had ended.”

  “And she gave it to Tut? Didn’t he live thousands of years before Christ walked the earth?” Jonas asked.

  “One of the great unsolved mysteries,” Darius offered, shrugging his shoulders. “Some say she can time travel, others say she is the Devil. All I know at this point is that I need that cup, I need to save Antoine – or I will die a rapid death.”

  “And it won’t be easy,” Jonas said. “Nesmaron is the most powerful of demons. Even Asmodai kneels before him. They have been gathering. The Metatron there are waiting, protecting reality, but they won’t wait for long. Soon they will attack. You will see. They are just waiting for your command.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  Before Jean Carlo had been told that he was the leader of a spiritual rebellion against evil, there was the mist. And before that, there was the bubble.

  It was Antoine that had remembered.

  Antoine remembered taking the money into the door behind the stage in the club, and then that was it. But he felt something had brought him there.

  Coming to, Antoine sat chained to the wall in a misty, greenish dungeon. The walls above him towered over his head, so high that when Antoine looked up he could not see the ceiling – just darkness, as if it were a night sky devoid of stars. The walls were made of stone blocks covered with a layer of greenish brown moss; it was scattered about the walls like small continents in a sea of stone.

  Looking back to his torso, Antoine brought his damaged right hand and delicately touched the gash across his abdomen, wincing as he did so. He brought his hand back to his side abruptly when he heard a heavy, grating door open in the darkness before him. The chains clanked as he did so. The door sounded far away, yet he could feel the grating in the stony, earthen floor.

  Antoine knew that his time had come. It was the moment when he would pay for his mortal sins, and it was the time that he would pay for his immortal sins as well. No matter what he did in his immortal life to correct and undo what he had done, it was too late. Payment must be rendered, and it must be rendered now. The determined deep footsteps that grew closer told him that.

  When Antoine was put in the dungeon, he was in a state of unconsciousness, but was still semi-aware of what was around him. He had heard Nesmaron. That he knew for sure. He felt the clasps forced over his wrists, that he knew for sure too. And he heard Gizelle. Both mortals that he had saved, turned on him in immortality.

  As Antoine peered into the darkness before him, he saw a long hallway, and even further, what seemed like a faint orange glow. That was certain death, but he was not bothered. He knew this moment would come, and knew that it must play out as it should.

  As the glow came closer and brighter, he could see the end of the hallway, and a wall on the far end, which revealed another hallway branching off to the left. On that far wall the orange glow was the brightest. It was not bright and steady, it was moving and fluid like the liquid like glow cast from a flame. To the right the orange glow flowed, like a faint, distant sun, when he saw the long, spiny fingers silhouetted in the luminosity…Nesmaron.

  Hello, father.

  I am coming for you. I hope you enjoy your stay.

  Certainly you didn’t think that I would stay playing second fiddle to you forever, did you? I found my own portal; I found my own way.

  And now you are here, sitting in shackles. Waiting for your destiny.

  It could only be Nesmaron. Only Nesmaron had a hand like that. With six spiny fingers jutting from a muscular forearm, Nesmaron was the epitome of the demoniac hierarchy.

  And he was spawned from Antoine.

  Closing his eyes a sighing a deep breath into the dark, damp air of the dungeon, Antoine lay back on the wall, exhausted, preparing to accept his fate. He knew that Nesmaron has come to claim his throne of the earthly realm, and now it was time to pass the torch.

  Which is what Darius had done many years before.

  *~*~*

  The cave of crystals.

  Antoine remembered it very clearly. A secret room, offering a sanctuary and safety from Asmodai, he remembered and drifted off…

  *~*~*

  …Peering intently at the body before him, Anthony recognized the facial features starting to take form. Gradually, the body was starting to transform into Darius. Right now, it looked like a cross between and old, rotted corpse and Darius – but the face was gradually starting to show the facial structure and look that Darius had possessed.

  Antoine crawled up to the pile of rocks where the hole had once been, pressing against them, checking for their solidity.

  “This will only keep Asmodai from us for so long,” Antoine said, as the room shook once again with the waves of the earthquakes and falling boulders. The entire floor moved as if on a seismic roll. “He is going to get in here…unless…”

  Antoine’s attention was diverted from the rocking of the earth. Anthony was extending his arms out over the corpse. The corpse was glowing white, taking in Anthony’s luminescent aura.

  “Come over here Antoine,” Anthony commanded while closing his eyes. “We have to leave. This cave is going to collapse around us!”

  Antoine crawled over piles of rock, ducking below jutting stalagmites, down the pile to where Anthony was. Anthony was hovering over the corpse now, levitating on what seemed to be a translucent could of gas.

  But Antoine knew that it wasn’t a gas. The cave was almost airtight, and despite the earth’s movements, the cloud was expanding. Whatever it was, and whatever it seemed to be, it was aural and it was other dimensional. Whatever Asmodai did to Anthony certainly bestowed many powers upon him.

  What many powers? Antoine thought, descending the rock pile. Looking at Anthony’s levitation – while not that impressive of a power for netherworldy beings, was certainly remarkable for a mortal who was so recently transformed. It was apparent, if not from anything else that Anthony had exhibited but for the glaringly apparent aura – and the levitation – that Anthony somehow advanced to a much higher level than Antoine in the moments that he had disappeared from the graveyard.

  Stepping into the brightness Antoine immediately felt swallowed up by a force with a great magnitude like he was being gravitationally pulled into the center of the force. When it overtook his face, his vision was blocked by a brightness so intense that all he could see was whiteness, all he could see was purity.

  The sounds of the earth and the sounds of Asmodai were swallowed up and faded away; faded to a beautiful, clean, crisp silence like that of death – but the brightness indicated life and prosperity – washing away the sadness and despair of the cave of crystals.

  Anthony did not speak, but Antoine did not have to ask anything.

  He felt a wind against his face, a wind as though they were moving. But it still felt like he was kneeling on the cave floor.

  But they were safe.

  Antoine felt the security envelop him; Asmodai could not go here – the sanctity of the situation greatly overpowered the forces of the darkness.

  Antoine began to get a sense that they had traveled quite far. Holding on to Anthony’s torso – of which his grip had never loosed since he ventured into the brightness – he opened his eyes and looked into the wild and dazzling beyond.

  *~*~*

  “What?!” Antoine exclaimed. He was jolted out of a state of dreamlike existence by a pair of strong hands on either shoulder. Nesmaron was standing above him in all of his glory, accentuated by his tall, slender body, pointed head and flowing robe.

  “It is you I have come for,” Nesmaron said flatly. He leaned in close to Antoine’s face, so c
lose that his nose was almost touching Antoine’s and their eyes were at the same level. “I have come for you, Antoine. You have failed me. Uriel is rebelling and forming a legion with an army of angels!”

  The hatred in Nesmaron’s eyes was apparent. He was furious that his plan was not going like clockwork. He backed away from Antoine’s face, and stood up, folding his arms over his chest. He started swinging the stole from around his neck, round and round.

  “What a waste,” he said, shaking his head and looking down at Antoine. “You could have joined me. We could have controlled every dimension together. Damn Hell! Damn God!” He raised his arms up to the darkness, and a crash of thunder sounded as a flash of lightning illuminated the room for a split second. In that split second, Antoine thought he saw Roberto, if just for a split second.

  Antoine looked up after the room went dark again. “I made you…” He clenched his teeth and growled.

  Nesmaron threw his head back and laughed. “You! Made me? What do you mean? When you were fucking me senseless in my father’s house? No wait! It had to have been when you told me that you loved me! Certainly it was then!”

  Antoine glared at Nesmaron.

  “I am Nesmaron, and I was made this way by the demons you see before you.”

  Antoine looked up in each direction at the two demons that were still holding his shoulders, and they pulled him from the floor gruffly, like the prisoner he was.

  “You will be damned to hell,” Antoine said, staring up at Nesmaron, directly in the face.

  “I already am there! What do you think this place is?” Nesmaron looked at the two soldier demons. “Take him away,” he commanded.

  *~*~*

  The beasts hauled Antoine to his death.

  “Get on your knees!” Nesmaron shouted, standing over Antoine on a stone altar.

  Antoine obeyed, the shackles on his neck and arms clinking as he did so.

  Nesmaron first looked down before him, seeing Antoine looking up to his eyes like a child kneeling before his father asking for forgiveness. But Nesmaron was not forgiving. It did not matter that Antoine created him.