by Ramy Vance
Abby tried to speak through broken gasps. "We can't get in touch with her. What if something's happened? What if she isn't safe? She could be hurt! We can't get in touch. I can't get in touch."
"Abby, it's going to be okay. Trust me."
Abby looked up at Anabelle. Her eyes were wild and bloodshot from crying, and her lips trembled as her face collapsed in on itself. "How do you know that?" she screamed. "How do you know she's not going to die like he did?"
Anabelle and Terra looked at each other. "Like whom?"
Abby's eyes fell to the ground. "Like Papa. We...I never said goodbye to him. Everything was normal like every other day, and then he was gone, and I don't know where he is. The Netherverse? Hell? Could my Papa be in hell?”
Anabelle understood. Abby had processed her father’s death as something final and forever. Now they were going where souls went, somewhere terrible. “There is no way your father is in hell.”
“How do you know?”
“Because of this.” Anabelle touched Abby’s tears. “You loved him deeply, and no one who was loved that much could be so lost that he’d be in hell. It couldn’t happen.”
This seemed to calm Abby, who nodded. “I miss him. So much. I wish I could speak to Persephone. I miss her, too." Abby crumpled against Anabelle, sobbing harshly. "What if she never comes back, and this is forever?"
Anabelle didn’t have an answer, nor did she think there was one. She didn't speak, just held Abby as the tears and the stuttered, nonsensical words came and went. She and Terra wrapped their arms around Abby as she cried until there were no more tears. Then she sat there in silence, breathing quietly.
They all continued to sit together in the silence of their company.
Chapter Eleven
Abby woke up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night, her heart pounding through her ribs. She looked around, trying to figure out where she was. She didn’t remember getting into bed, but here she was, nicely tucked in as if she were a child.
As her mind adjusted to being awake, Abby saw Terra, who was curled up on the floor like a cat, and Anabelle, who was leaned up against the wall, a blanket lying over her.
It all rushed back in. She felt a pang of guilt in her stomach, strong enough to make her feel like she had to leave the room. There was no way she would be able to get back to sleep with that on her mind.
She woke Terra by nudging her.
Terra’s eyes opened slowly and she stared at Abby, sleepily trying to make sense of what was going on. “Tehrek al-Jorak,” she muttered before her head dropped back down to the floor as if it were weighed down by rocks.
When Abby stepped over to Anabelle to wake her, a pulse of mana shot out of the elf’s body, warping the air around her. Her defenses were up even when she was sleeping.
Abby didn’t want to sit around in her room. The walls felt like they were too tight. She decided a walk was a good alternative, even if she felt shitty because Anabelle and Terra were sleeping on her floor.
She left her room and let her feet take care of business, her mind drifting between anxieties and worries with no clear distinction. She knew the fear she felt for Persephone was tangled in her repressed feelings concerning her father, but that didn’t make it any easier to deal with.
The tears came without warning, and she leaned against the wall. She didn’t bother fighting them. She did try to fight the thoughts, though. The pain of Persephone never coming back was nearly unbearable. It had happened once before. There was no way she could handle that kind of loss again.
“Are those tears meant to be shared, or may others join your sorrow?” a voice asked.
Abby straightened, wiping her face to see who was talking to her.
Cire stood in the shadowed hallway. His eyes seemed to beam out from the darkness, two stars in an infinite galaxy.
Abby shook her head, pushing down her sniffles. She hated feeling this exposed. She didn’t know anything about Cire, and she almost felt naked in front of him. “No, it’s nothing. We’re okay.”
“You cannot sleep. That’s obvious. Would you prefer to sit with your thoughts or have something to distract you from them?”
Abby was surprised by Cire’s straightforwardness. “A distraction would be good.”
“Then follow me, little warrior.”
Cire turned and walked down the hallway as Abby jogged to catch up with him. That was the most the orc had ever spoken to her. All the words that had been exchanged between them before had concerned war.
They continued down the halls to a section of HQ Abby had never been in, the library. There were rows upon rows of books. The ceiling was a painting of the sky and the sun, but when Abby looked closer, she saw that the sun was slowly making its rotation as clouds ambled across the vast blueness. The air was heavy with the smell of ancient tomes. “This place is beautiful,” she muttered.
Cire nodded as he walked past a couple of dwarfs squatting over books. “Yes, it is. I take it you don’t come here often?”
“Never a need. Martin provides any information we need. Never occurred to us to come down here.”
Cire continued walking through the library, weaving between the rows of books. He looked like he belonged in this place. Since he’d become the shaman of the orcs, he’d begun looking older. Not as if he had rapidly aged, but rather that his eyes were from a place long lost to the memory of those still living.
As he walked, books floated off of the shelves toward him, trailing behind him like a regal cape. Finally, he stopped in front of a humble wooden door. He pressed his hand to the door and it popped open, revealing a circular room filled with candles, the floor covered in a pentagram with a steel rod at each point of the sigil.
Creon was in the room as well, bustling about, grabbing bizarre ancient artifacts and juggling a handful of books. He beamed when he saw Abby, a smile that looked extremely out of place in the satanic room. “Abby! I wasn’t expecting to see you here. I didn’t think you had any interest in magic.”
Abby crossed into the room, trying to ignore how uncomfortable the pentagram made her. “Didn’t think you did either.”
Creon pushed up his glasses. “All goblins have at least a cursory interest in magic. It isn’t my strong suit, but I know a few tricks here and there. Enough to help out if I need to. Thinking about broadening your horizons?”
Abby swallowed her anxiety and took a good look at the arcane symbols on the floor. “You know, never really thought of it. Guess we weren’t curious after finding out that humans need familiars to use magic. What we have seemed to work well enough.”
Creon shook his head disapprovingly. “You should never let your ability to do something determine your level of curiosity. Look at me! Still useful at something I’m not great at. Besides, knowledge is knowledge, magical or technological. For all intents and purposes, technology isn’t anything other than magic. Both are ways for us to manipulate our physical and—if you’re lucky—metaphysical realities. The only difference is the means.”
Cire, who was crouched in the center of the pentagram, his face covered in shifting shadows, looked up. “And it is a misconception that humans cannot use magic, one Myrddin does his best to circulate. Humans cannot use magic the way that the rest of the races can without a familiar, but there are many other ways for humans to access magic. Take Dante, for instance.”
Cire raised his hand, and a book floated over to him. He motioned for Abby to come closer. He opened the book, showing a complex map of nine circles, arcane symbols scrolled all throughout the geometric patterns.
The orc traced his hands in the air, making one of the signs from the book. As his finger trailed, it burned the sign into the air, causing smoke to float up to the ceiling. “Sigils are one of the foundations of magic and one of the most ancient arts. Mere writing, yet capable of so much. They require no mana, no connection, merely knowledge and understanding.”
Abby watched the sigil burn out and fade away. She’d never thought of
herself as being jealous of magic, but at that moment, whatever was inside her crystalized. “How do we learn?”
Cire’s toothy grin was as far from intimidating as it could be. “I was hoping you would ask. Creon didn’t think you would be interested.”
Creon, who was now busying himself painting sigils on the wall, turned and shrugged. “It’s hard to read humans when it comes to magic. It’s so unbelievable that you never know if they’re going to take a chance until it’s thrust upon them.”
Cire motioned for Abby to join him in the circle. He opened another book and passed it to her.
Abby stared down at the book of symbols. To her, they were nothing but nonsensical squiggles on paper, but that was all calculus had been at some point. And binary, and everything else she’d pushed herself to learn over the last two years.
For the first time in a while, Abby was excited to learn something.
Terra woke up punching the air, a habit she’d gotten into because of Cire. It was a part of orcish childhood games: first thing in the morning, punch your sibling in the jaw and then wrestle your way out of bed to see who makes it to breakfast first. Terra and Cire played a similar game, but it was not breakfast they were trying to get to.
As Terra stretched, Anabelle also stirred. The elf’s hair was a mess. It looked like a beehive had come unraveled. Her makeup was smeared, so it looked like half of her face was dirty in the most beautiful way. “Where’s Abby?”
Terra looked around the room, searching for the young woman. “How does she keep her room so clean?”
Anabelle stood and stretched, then touched her toes easily and twisted her body into an odd posture that implied she did not have bones. “She’s got a computer program in her head. The least it could do is make sure that she’s not living in a pigsty like you do.”
Martin popped up on Anabelle’s and Terra’s wrist comms. “Abby is down in the library with Cire in the restricted tomes section. She’s been up all night, working with Creon and Cire. Your presence is required. Furthermore, it is suggested that you suit up, as Abby put it.”
Anabelle scratched her head, still trying to get over the last bit of sleepiness. “Guess we’re going to hell,” she said as she gathered her gear. “What is Abby doing down there before us anyway?”
“You’re going to be as surprised as I was.”
Anabelle shrugged and headed toward the door as Terra followed her. “I swear, that kid is up to no good.”
Terra took one last look at the pristine room, then she grabbed a pillow from the bed and tossed it on the floor. “There we go. That looks better. Now you can tell someone lives here.”
Anabelle chuckled as she waited for Terra to walk out of the room. “Cire doesn’t dabble in technology, does he?”
Terra shook her head. “He’s not a Luddite, but orcs have never used much of it. Recently they’ve started to pick it up. We have a whole goblin research team starting up a school, and there are HQ initiatives. Makes sense that after the Dark One’s bullshit, they would go into it.”
Anabelle could see why the orcs were working so hard to get up to par with the rest of the Nine Realms in the technological arena. The Dark One had used advanced technology from another universe to enslave nearly all of the orcs. It only made sense that they didn’t want that to happen again.
“You know that the council is making a statue of Abby?” Terra asked.
Anabelle stopped and turned to face her. “Are you serious?”
Terra raised her hands to defend herself. “Hey, don’t look at me, I don’t make those kinds of decisions. And don’t even start getting jealous. I’m not getting a statue either, and I’m the fucking Hand.”
Anabelle waved away Terra’s criticism as she shook her head. “I don’t care if I don’t get a statue. It just surprised me. I’ve never known orcs to be big on monuments of any kind.”
The two of them reached the library. Terra opened the door for Anabelle. “They aren’t. They have maybe three of them on the entire world. One of them is the first shaman. The others honor the greatest warlords. I’m hoping to get up there someday, but they’re definitely erecting one for her. I mean, she did kind of save the entire orc race.”
Anabelle had nearly forgotten about that. Last year had been one crisis and then the next. They’d been fighting the war at a breakneck speed. But among all of that, Abby had found a way to reverse the Dark One’s techno-grip on the orcs. She’d liberated them and nearly lost her life doing it, and she’d altered her humanity beyond repair.
The two of them stood in front of the library’s restricted area. “Hope it’s a good one,” Anabelle said. “She deserves it.”
Terra scratched her armpit. “Had to convince them not to give her four arms.”
“Why four arms?”
“No idea. It’s an orcish tradition. They give all their heroes an extra set of arms. I’ll have to ask Cire about it some time. The only problem is, I’m sure his answer will be long and full of detailed battles from centuries ago. I’ll probably have to block off an entire weekend for the answer. Don’t worry. I’ll send you the CliffsNotes.”
Anabelle and Terra stepped into the room. It was dark, lit only by candles, but there were hundreds of them on the floor and in sconces on the walls. Some were even floating in the air.
The floor and walls were covered in sigils, none of which Anabelle recognized. She doubted if Terra knew any of them either.
Creon was in the corner, running some kind of scanner over the sigils on one of the walls.
Cire was standing on a ladder, painting sigils on the ceiling as if he were afraid too much pressure would break the plaster. Abby was floating by his side, carving sigils into the wall with a laser in one hand and a dusty tome in the other. She looked at Anabelle and Terra when they walked into the room. “Hey, guys!” She drifted down to them as Cire made his way down the ladder, smiling.
Abby landed and looked away bashfully. “We’re sorry about last night. About the whole freak-out. We were—”
Terra put her hand on Abby’s head and shoved her away. “Don’t even trip about it. Glad you were able to find something to do. As if you aren’t always doing something.”
The girl’s smile returned, youthful and excited. “Cire’s been teaching us how to write sigils. That way, we can do bits of magic. Not a lot, but it’s still pretty fun. We’ve been doing the protection sigils on the hell-mouth portal so nothing comes through.”
Cire nodded as he clapped his hand on Abby’s shoulder. “She’s a natural.”
Abby beamed. “It’s not that much different than coding.”
Anabelle looked at the sigils. She didn’t know much about how they worked, but she knew enough to tell when they were done well. Abby’s not only looked as aesthetically beautiful as Cire’s but were also just as functional. Anabelle could feel power humming from them. “Okay, well, let’s get this portal open and get going.”
Cire walked to the center of the room and motioned for Abby to join him. “Would you like to do the honors?”
Abby squealed and clapped her hands together as she ran over to join the shaman. She took a piece of chalk from his left hand and scrolled a sigil on both of her palms before pressing them to the center of the pentagram.
Light burst around the edges of the pentagram as a portal opened in front of her. She poked her head around the portal. “Why the hell not? See what I did there?”
Terra lumbered over to the portal and looked around it. “You going to start doing standup next?”
Anabelle walked over to Cire. “Anything we need to know about this place before we go in?”
Cire nodded grimly. “Don’t trust demons. Other than that, you should be set. Abby seems to have a good idea of what human hell is supposed to be like. Terra probably does as well. Once you’ve finished your mission, Abby will be able to open a portal to get you out.”
Anabelle turned her attention to the portal. “All right, Angels. Let’s get the hell out of
here.”
Terra groaned loudly. “I swear, if you two are going to be doing this the whole time, I’m quitting. Two weeks' notice is going in as soon as I get back.”
Abby poked her hand through the portal. “Whoa. It is warm on the other side.” She stepped through, and Anabelle and Terra followed her.
The portal closed behind them.
Chapter Twelve
The three Dark Gate Angels stepped out of the portal.
There was no visible sun or moon. It was difficult to see where the light was coming from, but it seemed more like grayness than blackness. Even in the gray darkness, a path could be seen, dirt stamped into dust.
Terra knelt and touched her hand to the path. "Looks like we got a direction to head in. I would have expected hell to be hotter than this. You know, fire and brimstone and shit. At least it doesn't smell bad. God, could you imagine if there were shit demons in here? Like from Dogma?"
Abby and Anabelle gave Terra confused looks.
Terra put her hands on her hips and clicked her tongue at her partners. "Are you telling me you guys found out you were going to hell and didn't put on the greatest movie about demons ever? Greatest comedy, at least. Peasants, the both of you."
They began walking down the path, the grayness all around them. A howl pierced the eerie stillness.
"That's ominous," Anabelle muttered under her breath. "At least hell isn't lacking in absurd thematic consistency."
They continued on, their feet dully hitting the dusty road beneath them as the air grew thicker and wetter. A foul humidity settled over them until their uniforms felt as if they'd been drenched.
Terra continuously pulled at her suit. She was glad she hadn’t brought the fur armor she'd made of the pelts Cire had given her. The humidity made her feel like she was drowning. "Either of you two religious?"
Anabelle pointed up ahead where the sky was a little bit less dark.
