by Drew Foote
Another explosion like that would undoubtedly be the last. For them all.
With one last surge of effort, Barnabas and Walter dragged Kalyndriel into the depths of the hazy gate. The Imp flew eagerly behind them, and the wounded and weary travelers left the Malebolge behind.
Chapter 26
Limbo
I looked around, disoriented. The world around me was gray and featureless, an expanse of murky fog. We seemed to be standing in the middle of a vast plain, but it was hard to tell. The sky was nearly the same drab shade of slate as the ground below. A weak, milky light filtered through the haze above.
This must be Limbo.
I glanced at Kalyndriel’s collapsed form. She was still unconscious, but she seemed to be breathing easier. Her armored chest rose and fell evenly. There was that to be thankful for, at least. I was beaten and worn to the bone. I felt like I was ridden hard and put up wet.
“Well,” I said. “I think it’s time to take a break.” I sat down cross-legged on the ground that, to my pleasant surprise, was rather soft and spongy.
“Best idea I’ve heard in days,” Arcturus replied, and flopped clumsily onto the dirt. “Hey, this isn’t bad!” he added when he noticed how comfortable it was.
Walter gave me the stink-eye. “A break? You think we actually have time to take a break?” he asked. He crossed his arms sullenly over his chest.
I reclined backward on the springy, gray earth, placing my hands behind my head. I sighed, content, and smiled at the indignant human. I waggled my feet cheerfully.
“I think this is the perfect time for a break. If you think I’m dragging that sleeping sow one more inch, you’re mistaken. Either she wakes up and is fine, or she wakes up and kills us all, but either way, I’m done.”
He huffed in annoyance, but sat down as well. He poked the ground curiously with a finger. “This is odd.”
“Just about as odd as everything else, eh?”
It made sense to me; if Limbo was the place where creation was thin and unfinished, it probably didn’t have the budget for things like real dirt. The ground seemed to be more cloud than solid, which was just fine in my eyes. It made for much better napping.
“I can’t argue with that.” Walter turned to stare at the sleeping Angel with concern.
“Oh, I’m sure you’d find a way,” Arcturus grunted.
“Says one of the two Demons cowering in fear while I actually did something,” Walt snapped.
“You know, Art,” I said happily. “I think one of the cutest things about humans is how, when they finally manage to do something right, they suddenly think they’re amazing.”
I rolled onto my side and grinned at Walter, my chin resting in one hand. “That sounds like hubris, don’t you think, Walt? You know a little bit about that, don’t you? Isn’t that how we met?”
I winked knowingly.
“Zing!” Art added. He reclined lazily like a fat little speed bump.
Walt stared evenly back at me, completely unamused. He never did have much of a sense of humor. That was fine; it just made it even more fun for me. There was nothing quite as entertaining as picking on puritans.
“Point … taken,” Walter replied. He turned to ignore me.
“You’re not still sore at me about the whole soul thing, are you?”
I smiled eagerly. I never had the opportunity to chat with one of my souls after they died, and it sounded like a fascinating diversion. The journey through the Malebolge had left me somewhat shaken, and some human baiting might be just what the doctor ordered. It was obvious that Art, unsurprisingly, was onboard.
Walter turned back to me. His eyes held a hint of anger, but he was trying terribly hard to keep it from showing on his face. “No,” he replied, but I heard the insincerity in his voice. “It was my own fault. I blame myself, not you.”
I gasped with syrupy-sweet relief. “My, how progressive of you! I’m sure that will help me sleep at night,” I oozed. “I’ve been tossing and turning in regret, you see.”
“Walter’s pretty magnanimous for a monkey,” Art observed.
“I know what you’re trying to do, and it won’t work,” The human took a deep breath, and exhaled slowly. He closed his eyes.
“So clever, too. You can tell he graduated from Professor Paimon’s School for Pompous Souls. We are in the presence of a certified enlightened master, Art!”
“I bet he was the ugly girl in his class.”
“Undoubtedly,” I agreed. “But I’m sure you didn’t have much time for dating, did you, Walt? Too focused on scholastics, certainly. That’s the way to get ahead in this world!”
Walt sat there, silent, and looked down at his hands. He stared at the faded fingers as they flexed, examining them like a piece of foreign machinery. “It seems like so long ago,” he eventually replied, his voice hollow.
“All of, what, less than a week?”
Walter smiled sadly and shook his head. “Perhaps so, but it feels like an eternity. There’s just so … so much,” he said wistfully. He exhaled a shuddering breath. “I barely even remember who I am, Barnabas. You’re insulting a dead man; the man who sold you his soul is gone, nothing more than a forgotten dream.”
I frowned with disappointment. What a buzzkill: sorrow was always less amusing than anger. Sadness was far too plentiful a commodity in this bleak world. I could find no pleasure in such a trivial victory.
“For what it’s worth,” I mumbled. “You were pretty impressive back there, for a pompous twit. The old Walter wouldn’t have had the rocks for that.”
He smirked with appreciation, but it was a fragile thing. “Perhaps you’re right, and thanks for that,” the human said. “And for what it’s worth, I apologize for snapping at you. Even if you were being a bully with low self-esteem.”
“True statement. Zing!” Arcturus added once more.
I sighed. It was so hard to find good help. I was stuck with an ill-tempered Imp, a holier-than-thou damned soul, and a berserk Avenging Angel. Oh, how the mighty had fallen. I might as well give up and take a nap, and never awaken. I rolled onto my back once more, and closed my eyes.
“Barnabas,” Walter called.
“Yes?”
My mind was lost in contemplation. A bully, he had said? Perhaps there was some truth in that, but the realization didn’t trouble me. I didn’t think being a bully was wrong, per se, but it was a bit tacky. True villains had more style. I needed to step my game up.
“I’ve been thinking,” Walter said, his voice hesitant. “Paimon said this couldn’t have happened without the collusion of powerful Angels and Demons. Who could they be?”
I considered the question, and it was a very good one. We would likely need to answer it if we were to survive. I sat back up and hummed thoughtfully.
“All signs point to Beelzebub, Samael, and Uriel, at the very least. Likely Leviathan, as well,” I speculated. “They all want to silence you and anyone with anything to do with you. That seems like a pretty good indicator.”
“What about Satan? Could he have been involved?” Walter asked.
“Who?”
“Satan,” Walter repeated.
“Right. Satan who?” I turned my head in puzzlement.
“Um … you know. Satan?” the human continued, obviously just as confused as I.
Arcturus erupted with snorting, coughing laughter. It was not a pleasant sound. He rolled over to face us.
“He think there’s a ‘The’ Satan,” the Imp chortled.
“Ohhhh,” I nodded in dawning understanding. It really was amazing just how misguided humans were; I had completely forgotten that many of them thought there was actually some guy named Satan. How utterly ludicrous.
“Yes, well. There is no Satan, Walter,” I explained carefully.
Walter looked at me, baffled. “…Yes, there is. I saw him during the rebellion in Heaven,” he insisted. “Lucifer, the Morning Star?”
“Well, you could certainly call him a Satan,”
I acknowledged. “Instead of saying there is no Satan, I should probably say there are lots of Satans. That word just means ‘adversary.’ It’s a bit of a catch-all term your theologians used for a powerful Demon they didn’t understand.”
“It’s not like there’s some sort of mega-Demon, holding a pitchfork and dancing, who’s actually named Satan,” Arcturus sniggered.
Walter looked at me, disbelieving. I was surprised that Paimon hadn’t discussed it with him already. I thought it would have been covered in Demonology 101. I needed to address that deficiency when I next saw the Fallen Archangel.
“There are many Demons attributed with the name Satan over the ages,” I continued, speaking slowly to help the human understand. “Lucifer, certainly; he was the first Fallen Angel, and he’s the titular ruler of Hell. Not that he actually does much of anything. I doubt he has anything to do with this.”
“There have also been many others; Apollyon, Leviathan, Beelzebub, and the Beast, just to name a few. Even your best friend, Paimon. Remember the Serpent from the Garden? Your clergy also called him Satan. I’m a Satan, Art’s a Satan, so on and so forth.”
Walter nodded, comprehension slowly working its way through his mind. “I do, and I didn’t really think about what that meant for traditional doctrine.” He frowned. “You said ‘the Beast.’ Who is that?”
I shuddered. “I’m not surprised. That one isn’t a Fallen Angel, and wasn’t part of Lucifer’s rebellion. You probably didn’t read that book since it hasn’t happened yet. If you still believe in prayer, pray that you never meet it, or its keeper.”
“But to answer your question; was Satan involved? Without a doubt! But that doesn’t actually mean anything,” I concluded triumphantly.
“I see,” Walter said. He was silent and lost in thought. How strange it must be for him to realize there was not some Demonic Final Boss on which to blame the tragedies of existence. If only things could be so simple.
We were all Satan. Hell was everywhere, and humans created it. I flopped onto my back and closed my eyes. Sleep did not come.
~
“What ... what happened?”
I heard Kalyndriel’s groggy voice and opened my eyes, sitting up. The Angel climbed unsteadily to her feet. She looked around, bewildered. She shook her head as though to clear it.
I waved brightly to her. “Basically, you went bananas, passed out, and we dragged you into Limbo. Since then we’ve just been relaxing, bonding, and talking theology.”
I grinned, genuinely pleased to see she wasn’t about to murder me.
The Angel nodded sadly, her wings drooping. They were now closer to the color of ash than the pitch-black they had been earlier. She seemed drained and empty, a hollow vessel so recently filled to the brim with rage.
“I thank you all,” Kaly said with a heavy voice. She turned to Walt. “And especially you, Walter Grey. It was your bravery and nobility that saved me.”
“It was nothing. You saved yourself, in the end,” he replied warmly. “How do you feel?”
Kaly considered the question, deeply troubled. “Slightly better,” she acknowledged. “But I still can’t trust myself … I feel my control slipping ever further. I’m truly sorry.”
“Speaking of apologies,” I said congenially. “Have you ever considered taking up anorexia or bulimia? You weigh as much as a dump truck.” I eyed her armored thighs with distaste, shaking my head. “You’re never going to get a boyfriend looking like that.”
She offered a slight smile. That was a good sign. “Again, I thank you all. I will strive to do better.”
Kalyndriel bowed her head contritely, her platinum hair cascading against the ebony of her armor. Arcturus, pleased, flapped into the air and settled once more on her shoulder. I felt sick to my stomach.
“Kiss-ass,” I mouthed silently to him.
He stuck his tiny red tongue out at me, flipped me two birds, and curled up with satisfaction. Kalyndriel, to my annoyance, did not seem to mind. She was welcome to keep the fickle little bastard when we were through with all of this. We would see how she liked him after a few hundred years.
“Yes, well,” Walter said impatiently. “I think we had best be off to find this Orobas.”
“And which way would that be?” I asked skeptically.
The entirety of Limbo looked identical; flat, nondescript gray land beneath a hazy sky. Banks of dancing mist rolled over the landscape, obscuring our vision even more. I could barely tell up from down, and I certainly had no idea where to go from here.
Kaly pointed in one featureless direction, indistinguishable from any other. “That way,” she answered confidently. “There’s a source of great power in that direction.”
I frowned with irritation; what was she, an Angelic Eagle Scout? I then realized, with even more irritation, that is precisely what she was. How obnoxious.
“Lead on, Kaly,” Walter said. “But, if I may make a suggestion; perhaps you should keep your lance sheathed, for the time being.”
She nodded. “That is … sound advice, Walter.” Her face was troubled, and I saw the echoes of darkness in her fine features. The granite façade was cracking and there was madness below: the shape of damnation to come.
Kalyndriel led the way through the moving banks of thick fog, her black armor a stark contrast to the colorless cloud. The ground, springy beneath my feet, made walking pleasurably easy. Walter and I trailed close behind her, not wanting to become separated in the featureless landscape.
We were moving through a particularly dense bank of mist when I thought I heard a sound. It was faint and ethereal, but it sounded like … a child crying? It was a thing of pain, and of loss: a broken heart given voice. A wave of sorrow washed inexplicably over me like ice water.
I shuddered. What the Hell was that?
“Did you hear something?” Walter gasped from behind. He must have felt it, too.
“That—” Kalyndriel replied, sadness in her voice. “—was a lost soul. This place is thick with them. It seems they truly are leaking into Limbo.”
She continued onward.
“But I’m a soul, and I still have a form?” Walter asked, puzzled.
“That’s because you regained yours when you arrived in Hell, to better feel your torment. These are souls trapped in the moment of their death, lost and confused, unable to find their way,” Kaly said darkly. “These are things of shapeless despair.”
That was most assuredly bad. If the infrastructure of the entire cosmos was coming apart, and souls were ending up in Limbo instead of Heaven or Hell, then what did that mean for any of us? How was the infernal machine supposed to continue running without its fuel, and what good was a God that could not provide salvation to His followers? The universe was broken.
“If the souls are winding up here because the Nexuses failed,” I reasoned aloud. “And this Void … creature … is destroying the Nexuses, then that means that this is precisely what it wants. What’s going to happen?”
I could see Kalyndriel’s shoulders shrug dismally in the gloom ahead of me. “Something terrible, I do not doubt. We must hope that Orobas can answer that question, among others.”
We continued through the fog, surrounded now by whispers and wails. The embrace of the mist was smothering, filled with the weight of lost souls, and I could feel the turbulence of their confusion in my mind. I began to breathe slightly faster, and I heard Walter doing the same behind me.
The pressure grew heavier and heavier. I felt as though the mist pressed in on my heart, seeking to still its beat. I heard their screams, their fear and panic. I tasted their despair like an intoxicating brew. Souls were not meant to be trapped in such a place.
I was overwhelmed.
I wanted nothing more than to lie down and curl into a ball, to shut my mind to the suffocating waves of unfamiliar emotions that wracked my body. I could not take much more of it, and I saw my companions were equally stricken. Tears streamed down Walter’s face, and Arcturus bawled unco
ntrollably from atop Kalyndriel’s shoulder.
The Angel pressed forward, trotting swiftly, her dark wings bobbing mere feet ahead of me in the devouring gloom. “Hurry!” she exclaimed. “We’re nearly there!”
We ran after her, desperately trying to escape the weight of the mist. If we didn’t get out of it soon, I feared that we would lose ourselves. We would never make it out, and our howling voices would add themselves to the lost souls.
Suddenly, Kalyndriel came to an abrupt stop, directly in front of me. I crashed painfully into her metallic backside, and then Walter crashed into mine in a slapstick pile-up. Kalyndriel’s solid mass did not budge, but Arcturus shot forcefully forward … only to smash loudly against the surface of the immense structure in front of Kaly.
It was a pair of gigantic, curved gray doors. They soared high into the impenetrable fog. A gigantic doorknocker, shaped like a spider’s fanged face, hung before Kalyndriel’s head. She reached up to knock, but it seemed Arcturus had already taken care of that.
The doors swung ominously open, and we stumbled inside. I briefly reflected on the convenience of so many doors opening automatically.
Chapter 27
Diablerie
Gehenna: the Lake of Fire. It stretched from horizon to horizon; a vast, subterranean ocean of molten lava and leaping flames. It was the true, beating heart of Earth and Hell both, its fire stoked by every sin that transpired in the mortal realm above. It was a thing of primal savagery, its majesty undeniable. It was the glory of the inferno.
Babylonia loved it there. The Mother of Harlots walked slowly on its black and desolate shore, her delicate feet leaving perfect imprints in the sharp obsidian sand. Her hair was unbound, her feet were bare, and she was clad in a loose shift of deepest purple. She was an apparition of elegant beauty wandering, alone, on a forgotten beach.