by Tobias Wade
“Don’t call it a river if it don’t got water in it,” the older one complains. “Call it what it is.”
“Satan’s piss?” volunteers one in a thick accent.
“Highway to hell more like it,” says another. “How much farther?” Dantes was its name. The demon remembered him from the night his human vessel took the seed. It’s strange to access the human’s memories, warped as they are from its severely limited filter of reality. A blind man who regained sight partway through his life and reflects upon his memories of the blackness when he thought that’s all there was.
“Close, close, just down this slope. There will be a lake on the other side, and a bridge with the well inside of it.”
“Lake isn’t any better. If it isn’t water, don’t use words like that.”
“Demon -blood basin? Monster puke—”
“Yeah, much better. Thank you, ” Jordan grimaces.
The death-rattle sound rises in the demon’s throat. KNOCK—kicking off from the ground to land just beyond the perimeter of flashlights. Soon they will slip through the Eternal Well beyond his reach. Now is the time to strike. Their brandished hunting knives pose no threat, but the kills must still be swift. If they start running down the slope as soon as the first one is killed, they might reach it in less than a minute. That gives twenty seconds to kill each of the other three—make it fifteen just to be safe, but that’s still more than enough. The demon’s raw muscles coil beneath it as it tracks the one called Dantes. The human is an easy target as he struggles to lower himself onto a rock shelf, , his attention focused on trying to find a solid foothold.
KNOCK—the demon is in the air. Dantes doesn’t have time to react before the flight of death lands.
KNOCK—a second ringing sound from a little way down the cliff. Something else spirals from concealment into the air.
The jarring impact explodes like a pair of colliding trains. Searing pain ignites the demon’s flared nerves as fingers grip its exposed sternum and fling it to the ground. KNOCK—an earth-shaking bellow and the unseen assailant slams into the demon once more, grinding it into the rock. Its arms are pinned down and a knee drives itself into the demon’s stomach, penetrating the formidable abominable wall and sinking several inches into the mess of corruption beneath.
“There’s another one!” one of the men cries in disbelief.
“Into the well, now!” the newcomer barks.
“Captain Maston!” Dantes responds, recognizing the voice despite the unfamiliar transformations which have wracked its body. “We can’t leave you h—”
“You’ve never disobeyed an order before. Let’s not start now.”
It looks like Ender is about to say something else, but he doesn’t get the chance. The demon beneath him surges upward with enough force to splinter the stone underneath it. Its neck extends grotesquely as it tries to bite Ender’s face, and the captain is forced to relinquish his grip in order to avoid the slobbering maw.
What once was Henry dwarfs the captain who only stands slightly above the other demon’s waist. Ender’s mask of humanity has deteriorated severely since his last sighting though, and he looks no less monstrous than his combatant. His black eyes have swollen to fill the entirety of his face, except for a small thin mouth which is gritted in concentration. His skin is fish-belly white, except for the glistening marks which cover his body like cigarette burns. He crouches low, ready to receive the impending charge from the spastic bundle of muscle and fury which is roaring in frustration over its denied kill.
Krisha has already reached the bottom of the cliff and is sprinting toward the bridge over the lava. The other men freeze with a moment’s indecision, but Dantes is the next to break the stasis as he bounds down the rest of the slope. Skidding, sliding, tumbling, and then leaping again as soon as he’s found his footing, he hurtles toward the portal.
“Your daughter is still up there!” Dantes shouts between panting breaths.
“I have no daughter,” what’s left of Ender growls. “It’s the daughter of The Beast who approaches.”
Jordan and Jacques have joined Dantes in the wild sprint. KNOCK—the larger one propels itself into the air in pursuit, but again Ender mimics the movement and intercepts the demon mid-flight. The wet SMASH as they slam together sounds like organs being rearranged as the bones around them splinter.
“What’s he talking about?” Dantes slows for a moment, but he’s swept up in the momentum of his soldiers who finish stumbling down the hill. Dantes moves as if to go back, but Jordan grips his arm and hauls him along toward the bridge.
“He needs our help,” Dantes protests.
“There’s nothing we can do here.” Jordan shoves him onto the stone suspension above the lava. “Killing the demon vessels—that’s the only way to help them now.”
The ghastly clamor arising is the vocalization of all that is animal within man. A snarling pack of wolves could not have made such savage, guttural sounds. Monstrous wounds are gouged in the other, their pain only fueling the frenzy of their wild dance.
“Hurry!” Krisha wails. “You mustn’t keep him waiting.”
Keep who waiting, exactly? Ender? The Demon Vessel? The Beast itself? There’s no time to pause and wonder. Ender is swiftly being demolished under the rabid assault, and soon there will be nothing standing between that unbridled violence and the vulnerable party. Dantes can feel his feet melting into the superheated stone bridge as he sprints across to the gazebo in the center. He’s staggering and choking on the heavy air by the time he reaches the structure where the Eternal Well rests. Passing through the archway of the building though, all of that is left behind.
The tiles are cool and soothing under his feet.
The cacophony of reckless violence is muffled to the faintest vibration.
This is without doubt a sacred place, the last bastion of humanity against The Beast and his minions. Jacques has already slipped into the swirling waters of the well, and Jordan is climbing the side to ease himself into the tranquil hole in reality.
“Are you coming too, Krisha?”
The pale man looks like he’d just stepped in something rather unpleasant and can even now feel it oozing between his toes. “I must,” he says. “I’ll take you to where I’ve hidden the Codex.”
“And you, Dantes,” Jordan presses, hesitating with his feet in the water. “We need you. We need our captain, now more than ever.”
“Our captain is still—” Dantes stops himself and swallows hard. One last look back, and then he too climbs into the swirling eddies.
“Deep breath, and then dive as far as you can go,” Krisha instructs. “You will surface in another world.”
Dantes does so, and as the water closes over his head, the haunting echos from the battle outside vanish entirely. The current moves across his body with purpose, its pressure feeling him as though mapping every inch of his skin. He pushes off from the wall to drive himself deeper into the darkness. He briefly wonders how long he should stay under and how he’ll know when he’s arrived, but the thought is banished as an ethereal song begins to filter through the quiet waters. It calls to him without words, so sweet and low, such longing and promise, more familiar than his own spirit, yet so alien that he knows without doubt that he is already in another world.
30
Dantes' head bursts above the surface and he gasps for air. It tastes stale and dead, like entering a room which has been locked and untouched for countless ages. The song he heard in the water is gone. Everything is quiet. He wipes the heavy liquid from his eyes, immediately bracing himself for the sudden onslaught of monstrous legions. Jordan and Jacques break through the water on either side of him. Spluttering and coughing is the only sound in the sombre stillness. They’re still inside the gazebo, but through the stone arch there’s no bridge or lava or the raging conflict of demons.
“I never thought it would be so gray,” Jordan says. He pulls himself from the well and drips across the tile floor toward the
doorway. “Shit, it’s like we landed on the moon.”
“Did you hear that?” Jacques asks, still bobbing in the water. The other two tense with defensive urgency, but Jacques hurries to add: “In the water, I mean. Like someone was singing. Like a voice without words.”
“Yeah, I heard it too.” Dantes sits up on the ledge. “I think it was coming from the space between worlds. I don’t hear it here and didn’t notice it back…”
“Back on Earth, you mean?” Jacques asks. He’s barely speaking above a whisper, but it seems so loud in this eldritch place.
Dantes shrugs and peers through the stone arch. The cavern is gone. The heat and the lava and all of humanity itself, all gone. That’s going to take some getting used to.
Endless shades of gray stretch from horizon to horizon. A pale sun shines overhead which casts little more light than a full moon. The colorless barren earth is ruptured by occasional outcroppings of jagged rocks, and a little farther away stands a lone tower embedded within a sheer cliff. Penetrating the cliff around it are dozens of gargantuan black blades which would have taken a giant to wield.
“It reminds me of Azgangi,” Jacques says. “Look, over there by the base of the tower. Are there people there?”
“Buggers maybe,” Jordan says. “Don’t expect to find any people here.”
“They’re statues,” Dantes says, taking a cautious step into the wasteland. “Maybe these are the demon vessels we have to destroy. Krisha, are they—”
Krisha isn’t here. Dantes takes a half-step back toward the well. Jordan’s eyes widen with the same realization.
“Merde. Putain merde,” Jacques says, spitting on the floor. “We can’t go back for him. That thing is on the other side—”
“It’s another trap. Another goddamn trap,” Jordan howls. He flings himself to the ground, wrapping his arms around himself in dismay. “We won’t be able to find the book without him.”
“We can look,” Dantes says. “We have to.”
“If it was ever here in the first place,” Jacques mutters.
“Then we can go to the statues,” Dantes says. “If we can destroy the demon vessels, then we can still safely return.”
“If they’re the same things we saw in that mine, then that would mean they’re already on earth.” Jacques’ voice is flat and empty.
“Speculation is pointless,” Dantes snaps. “Ender is still fighting out—out somewhere. Let’s head for the tower and see what we can find.”
“Or what can find us,” Jordan adds ominously. “I don’t know which is worse: running into The Beast here, or finding out he’s already back home.”
The ocean chill no longer reaches Jessica, for there is fire burning in her blood. A small whirlpool forms in her wake as she erupts downward through the water. Her whole body is an instrument tuned to the motion of her dive as she sinuously streams after Kathleen. The feeling of her legs responding to her command is euphoric. For the first time since her fall—no, for the first time in her life, she feels complete.
“Are they still alive?” Jessica asks. She senses no discomfort as the water streams down her throat, and she’s able to speak quite easily without the burden of breathing. The sound is still muffled by the water, but Kathleen slows to listen at Jessica’s side.
“Why are you still bothering with them?” Kathleen asks. “You can go anywhere, do anything.”
“So can you,” Jessica counters. “So why did you kill Eric?”
A grimace flashes across Kathleen’s face. It only lasted less than a second, but there was so much pain burned into that moment that the image stuck in Jessica’s mind.
“It was a mercy,” Kathleen says. “Humanity will suffer when The Beast arrives. I will have spared him of that.”
“What of my friends? What’s happened to them?”
Kathleen’s face is expressionless. “A mercy.”
“Take me to them.”
There’s a glint of a smile about her lips. “I left them with Henry. He will be finished with them by now.”
“I see,” Jessica says, her tone carefully measured. “Then I’m finished with you too.”
The heat from the seed inside her billows throughout her body, and Jessica does nothing to hold it back. Eviscerate is too innocent a word for what happens next. Eviscerate implies a single hole from which the entrails of the victim are removed. The heat lancing from Jessica enters Kathleen in a thousand places, flooding her body and churning the corruption into a maelstrom of energy. The tiny burns covering Kathleen’s body don’t do justice to the ricocheting blender inside, and nothing is visible of Kathleen’s torment besides the slight fluctuations in her skin as the power bounces around inside of her.
There isn’t a scream. Not with her mouth, anyway. There is a sound though, a sort of wet smack as Kathleen’s body ruptures in every direction at once. The water transforms to a red cloud as the last charred remains continue dividing, until nothing larger than a finger remains.
Jessica doesn’t know whether it was The Beast who wanted to do that, or whether the immensity of that hatred all came from her. Neither does she care. She only knows how good it feels to bask in the center of that ruin, and that this is only the beginning of her revenge.
The portal is calling to her through the water. And just as a bird must fly or a fish must swim, she is drawn toward it as the purpose natural to her being. The collapsed archway is no barrier to her now—the power of the seed within Jessica makes clearing the way no more difficult than blowing a dandelion to the wind. The darkness of the cavern does nothing to hide the innumerable waterways, and Jessica navigates unerringly through the sunken city.
The silence of their passage feels too much like the dead, but it won’t last. There will be a reckoning for whatever she finds in her way, and reckonings are never quiet affairs.
“Merde. Shit.”
Jacques is the first to climb the barren hillock overlooking the tower. Dantes and Jordan are still laboring upward, the stale air beginning to feel more like concrete in their lungs. There’s something terribly futile about the very atmosphere of this place. It feels as if one could shout until their throat was raw, and no one would ever hear.
“What do you see?” Dantes wheezes.
“The cliff. It’s got carvings in it.”
Dantes doesn’t have enough air to bother asking him to explain. The dry soil cakes around his damp feet, and all he can do is stare as they plod wearily one step at a time.
“Not carvings. Shit. It’s all moving.”
This seems like something to worry about, but Dantes can’t quite make himself care. He’s just so tired. Such a desolate place—sleep here couldn’t bring respite. He’d only wake wearier than when he rested. Food would taste of sand. Friends would seem as strangers. Even Jessica—
No, Jessica was something else entirely. Maybe she really was from another world, although he can’t imagine how someone as vibrant as her could have come from such a dead place. Could she have been the very life of this world, taking it with her when she left? Or had it always been this oppressive, and that is why The Beast is so anxious to escape?
All that mattered was that he could take another step, knowing Jessica still needs him on the other side. Reaching the top of the hill, he stares at the cliff wall with eyes that take several seconds to process what is in the cliff.
There is no cliff. There are only the marble statues. Thousands of them. Millions—heaped on top of one another. Some stood upon shoulders to form columns throughout the haphazard structure, but most of them were simply piled as heaps of bodies lying in a mass grave. Arms and legs were tangled together, hands squirmed and constantly readjusted as if they were trying to get comfortable. And the eyes—moist, living eyes, all staring out of that abominable pile, watching the intruders with hopeless resignation and bitterness.
“How the hell are we supposed to find the right vessels in that?” Jordan gasps.
“One body at a time,” Dantes says. He’
s already climbing down the side of the hill, slow but sure, toward the cliff and the tower.
“Where’s The Beast? Inside the tower?” Jordan asks. “I never thought I’d want to see it, but damn if it isn’t worse not knowing where it is.”
The pummeling fists are sledgehammers. The eyes glaring at each other burn brighter than the molten rock. Their labored breath is a hurricane, and death is in the air.
Ender can’t compete with Henry’s sheer physical prowess. The seed had grown longer in him than anyone, and every inch of the demon’s new body is imbued with its blessing. The corruption has spread so far that Henry’s mind is little more than a glowing ember though, and his inability to summon the more intricate powers is delaying his anticipated kill. It lunges once more, flying directly over the river of flame only to smash into the shadow where Ender had cowered a moment before.
Henry roars at the air, the shock wave of its frustration sufficient to send Ender tumbling where he appeared a few feet to the side. It takes longer for Ender to pull himself back to his feet than it does for Henry to close the gap, and a fist smashes into the side of Ender’s face before he can step into the shadows once more. He feels a spiderweb of fractures explode through his skull, but he’s already gone before the full impact is delivered.
Henry bellows again, sensing its prey’s wounds. Ender is slowing down. His will is depleting. Though one may swim against the current for a time, the current doesn’t tire, and sooner or later the peace of death promises a sweeter end than a battle that cannot be won. Even now Henry is poised to leap again. Ender rises as far as his knees, but he can go no farther. The lull in the battle provides a moment of silence, broken only by soft weeping in the direction of the gazebo.
Elijah—that coward. He never went back through the portal.
Then what is Ender fighting for? If the book is not found, then the portal will not close. If the portal will not close, then Henry and The Beast’s influence will only grow stronger until he emerges into the world. Mortality has been confronted with the powers beyond, and mortality has lost. After everything, Ender has still given the final order to lead his troop to their deaths. Jessica will succumb to the demons—if she hasn’t already.