by Ramy Vance
Sarah locked eyes with Creon. "I think I’ve found a way to talk to the Omniverse, but it isn't going to be easy. I need your help to keep me alive."
Creon frowned as he tried to figure out what Sarah was talking about. "How are you going to need my help?"
"There's a new Path, one I don't think I can reach on my own. The Path of Pain."
Sarah walked away from Creon and Cire toward the wall. She removed her shirt and placed her hands on the surface, revealing a heavily scarred back.
Cire took a deep breath as he turned to face Creon. "We believe pain is the door to open this path. Sarah already has a high pain tolerance. We will need someone who can revive her quickly if she passes into death. Someone who can do that fast and often in a short period of time. Do you think you can do that?"
Creon sighed and shook his head. "How many times has she—"
"Twice so far. Reviving her was...difficult, but she believes she is getting closer. Will you help?"
Creon pulled up a holoscreen on his comm unit and displayed Sarah's vital signs. "You both will listen to me and not question my judgment. And yes, I should be able to help you."
Sarah looked over her shoulder and shouted impatiently, "Come on, Cire, let’s get this over with."
Cire raised his hand, muttered under his breath, and pointed it at Sarah.
Six long, deep slashes tore open across Sarah's back.
Creon gasped as Sarah's screams filled the room.
She fell to one knee as she took a deep breath and bit down hard on her lip.
Cire looked at the open door of the training room. "I think it might be a good idea to close that door."
The Lords of Death were talking quietly among themselves. Rasputina and the DGA agents waited for them to finish their discussion.
Abby was curious and wanted to start her own conversation. "What did you do, Rasputina? Earlier, with those black veins?"
Rasputina looked at Grok hesitantly but answered before the orc could say anything. "That's how Grok and I have been building. Hell is made up of energy similar to that of the Netherverse, a type of the Dark Melody. I don't know where it comes from or why it's different from what's in the Netherverse, but it can be bent if your will is strong enough."
Terra's eyes widened as she whistled. "Are you saying you can control the Dark Melody?"
Rasputina shook her head. "I'm not sure I can control all of it, but whatever is in hell is easy enough for me to manipulate. I can bend it to my will and create my own reality here."
Anabelle hadn't taken her eyes off the Lords of Death. "What about the statues of us. You decided to make those...why?"
Rasputina avoided the eyes of the Dark Gate Angels. "That's not important."
Anabelle laughed quietly. "There are huge statues of us in the middle of your little world. Why wouldn't that be important?"
Rasputina's eyes looked wild for a moment before they filled with tears. She looked away from the Dark Gate Angels. "Because you're heroes, more so than anyone I've ever met. And..."
The lich turned to face the DGA, her face reverting from its youth back to the hollow skeletal visage she used to show the world and then quickly filling out with bright, living skin. "You gave me another chance—a chance to become something more than a lich. I am remaking hell into a better place for souls like me. That is something I can do."
Anubis cleared his throat and waved Rasputina and the DGA over. "Your victory is substantial, and we formally grant you the right to rule hell. But there are some conditions to this rule."
"What are they?" Rasputina asked.
"For starters, do not make a habit of allowing mortals to enter. These three, understandable. They've proven themselves worthy of standing on hellish ground. And the orc, of course."
Grok smiled and politely nodded her head.
Anubis continued, "Second, we will be allowed in the realm for whatever business we need as long as it does not interfere with your rule. Third, the Slender Man would like to resurrect his Scungilli Man to do with as he pleases."
Rasputina agreed to the conditions.
"And fourth," Anubis said, "the material of hell's creation must remain in hell, not mined by or for mortals. Understood?"
Rasputina extended her hand to Anubis, who took and shook it.
He and the other lords bowed slightly. "Very well, Lord Rasputina. Enjoy your rule."
The lords disappeared in puffs of smoke, and behind the Dark Gate Angels, the Scungilli Man's corpse dissolved into water and disappeared.
Rasputina turned to face the DGA. "Now, I assume there was something that brought you here.
Chapter Sixteen
Abby watched as the council chamber disappeared, the ground sliding out from underneath her feet as the ceiling stretched away, revealing stars. What was behind the stars caught her attention. Blackness swirled about, waves crashing over each other like a dark sea.
It was calming, and she felt like she could watch it forever.
Rasputina floated up toward the swirling blackness, turning for a moment and motioning for Abby and the rest to follow her.
Once they had all passed the stars, reality started to shift into focus again. Columns stretched up out of the nonexistent floor, which quickly covered itself in intricate black and blue tiles that spread from the floor to the walls, then changed the ceiling’s color and coalesced to form multiple golden chandeliers.
Rasputina sat down on a throne in the middle of the room. “Thank you for the help. I don’t think I could have killed that beast if you hadn’t provided me with a distraction.”
Terra kicked her feet up on the ottoman between the four of them and leaned back in her chair. “No problem. It was horrifying, but at least… HOLY SHIT, ABBY, I COMPLETELY FORGOT ABOUT YOUR ARM!”
Abby’s right arm was no longer bleeding, but it was a messy stub cradled next to her chest. She hadn’t noticed that she wasn’t reeling in pain anymore. Martin must have killed her pain receptors, and the disorienting, mind-bending transition in Rasputina’s Citadel had been distracting enough.
But the distraction was over now, and looking down at her stump, she stammered, “Oh, shit, we…uh…hm… Hold on, we need to take care of this.”
Abby knew what she had to do. The thought crossed her mind whenever she thought of worst-case scenarios. Even though she had already entertained the idea, she still felt somewhat melancholic.
Martin popped up. “So, you’re finally taking the plunge?”
“Don’t really have a choice,” Abby answered. “Right now is as good a time as any.”
“All right, kid. Hope you like the new arm.”
Abby’s attention returned to the conversation around her. Nanobots crawled out of her wound, which they had cauterized earlier, and began building, adding protein chains to nanobot chains to craft an entirely new arm.
Terra was trying not to look like she was staring, and Abby ignored her friend’s eyes.
After a few minutes, Abby had rebuilt her arm. Anabelle, Terra, and Rasputina watched with amazement.
“Damn, girl,” Terra muttered.
Rasputina nodded. “Impressive.”
“Thank you,” Abby said. “But please, you were saying about hell…” She gestured for the lich to speak.
“Very well. It’s simple enough. The Lords of Death refused to share any of their information with me until I was officially one of them. At first I thought they cared about hell, but apparently, this place hasn’t had a ruler for centuries. Each of them has their own underworld to rule, and it’s assumed that one must have their own underworld to rule.”
Anabelle leaned forward, her eyes hungry for information. “And they know what the Omniverse is?”
Rasputina nodded as she rubbed her temples. Her face looked tired and strained. Even when she relaxed into her chair, she looked tense and uncomfortable. “I do not know everything. The Lords are still wary about giving away all their information. As far as they’re concerned, I am a ch
ild, barely older than that idiotic Slender Man. But they did tell me what the Omniverse is. Its true name is the Light One.”
Terra bust out laughing and slapped her kneecap. “You’ve got to be fucking with me? The Light One? I thought the only reason we called the Dark One by that name was that Myrddin lacked imagination. Those things actually call each other by those titles?”
Rasputina rested her head on her hand. “No, they do not. Those are simply the names they give to us. Names hold an extremely large amount of power, and it would be foolish to assume that any being of that much strength would reveal its real name.”
Abby remembered something that she had read in one of the dossiers on the Dark One. “Wait, two different groups found the Dark One’s name—the Mundanes, and Team Boundless, the dragonriders. They said it was Jodin or something like that.”
Rasputina looked up, her eyes interested. “The Dark One is a master of magical names. Some would consider his name to be the same as the Norse God of War, the One-Eyed Prophet. But even that is a name he allows mortals to know. We might not find out what his true name is until we kill him. But the Light One is…something different than the Dark One. It is perhaps the strongest thing in existence.”
Terra cracked her knuckles. “I’m pretty sure that’s what everything says until it meets us.”
Rasputina shook her head slowly. “No, it might be. According to the Lords, the Light One is the very embodiment of life and death. It is…sort of a piece of the multiverse… No, that’s not right. It’s more like…the Omniverse and the Netherverse are two sides of the same coin. They are inseparable. A balance must be maintained between them at all times. The Light One is the caretaker of the balance.”
“So, are you saying I can’t kill it?”
Abby ignored Terra’s question. “That would make the Light One a good guy, right? If it cares about the balance, it would help us destroy the Dark One.”
Rasputina reached out for a glass of wine that had magically appeared on the table. “Balance and morality are two very different things. The Light One doesn’t care about anything other than balance. It will destroy whatever it needs to in search of maintaining that balance. There is no emotion in it. No empathy. If wiping out the nine realms would restore the balance between the Omniverse and the Netherverse, it would do it in a heartbeat.”
Terra snagged one of the cups of wine on the table. “It sounds like a huge bag of shit.”
“The Dark One, it would seem, is something of an avatar of the Netherverse. The lords don’t know if he’s one of the elder gods or he predates them, or if he was the Netherverse at some point. But now, for whatever reason, he is trying to do something other than he initially was intended to. Conquering realms, destroying life at a whim on a massive scale. The Dark One has gone rogue, and the Light One is here to fix the damage that has been done. I don’t know why the Light One has decided now is the time to fix this, but for whatever reason, we need to make sure the Dark One does not provoke the Light One into any more action.”
Anabelle sighed as she shook her head. “The Light One gave us a time limit. Twelve moons or some shit like that. What exactly are we supposed to fix?”
Rasputina stood and wrapped herself in a cloak she pulled from nowhere. “The lords of death have agreed to fight the Dark One. They’ve also shared some of their observations. Anubis believes that since the Dark One is weakened and can no longer be in control of the Netherverse, he’s opting to flat-out destroy everything.”
Abby snapped her fingers as she jumped up excitedly. “That’s what we thought he was going to do! But we couldn’t figure out what kind of weapon he could use that could destroy all of the realms. It would have to be—”
“He doesn’t need a weapon,” Rasputina said. “The imbalance is the weapon, and he’s been working on it for some time. His massive culling of souls, finding ways to send them to the Netherverse regardless of where they belong. Tricking Grok and me into closing the valve was just a drop in the bucket of what he’s been trying to accomplish. By creating an extreme imbalance, he’s hoping to trick the Light One into destroying everything.
Abby was trying to track what the lich was saying. She understood the metaphysics of what Rasputina had explained, but she still wasn’t certain about the motives…or the technicalities of how it was to happen. Truthfully, that didn’t matter. She understood the Dark One had found a way to destroy the nine realms, regardless of his defeat. “We don’t need to understand how or why he’s doing this. If we kill him, the problem goes away.”
Rasputina’s true age shone on her face for a moment. “True. Regardless of his reasoning, he’s a vicious animal backed into a corner, and he’s lashing out. All we need to do is put him down.”
A high-pitched giggle came from the far side of the room.
Rasputina jumped to her feet, waved her hands, and pulled up a wall of bones between her and the DGA and the source of the laughter. She pulled her arms close, which yanked Abby and the others near her. “Who dares enter my sanctum?”
A small child wearing a deer skull mask, his skin as pale as snow, stepped into the light. His hands were covered in deep red blood, as was his chest. Thick black hair was clutched in his hand, and a decapitated green head swung from his fist.
The Pale One threw the head, and it hit the ground with a smack as it rolled toward the bone gate.
Rasputina screamed, her voice hollow and pained as Grok’s face looked up at her.
The Pale One giggled, his voice echoing in the heads of all in the room. “You never fail to impress, Rasputina. You’ve learned and gained so much…in so little time…even without a soul. Look at you, caring about mortals. Obviously not enough, or this one wouldn’t be dead.”
Rasputina sank to the floor, clutching her heart as she screamed, “You killed her, you killed her!”
The Pale One waved his hand, shattering the bone cage separating him from Rasputina and the DGA. “There is still much you do not know.”
Rasputina grabbed Grok’s head and pulled it close to her chest, weeping as she prayed inaudible words over her friend, rocking back and forth and trembling.
The Pale One’s wooden mask’s mouth turned up in a grin, the wood groaning as it stretched. “Still so much to learn.”
Sarah could hardly stand. Her back was carved up, and she didn’t want to think about how much blood she’d lost, but she knew her skin was too slick to dress again. She felt weightless, but that was because Creon and Cire were holding her up, dragging her to the Omniverse.
She had commanded them to bring her to the Omniverse. It had reached out and spoken to her. It knew she could hear it, and it knew she could speak to it.
The night was freezing, and Sarah held her arms close to her chest to try to warm herself while Creon and Cire placed her before the sphere.
Sarah closed her eyes, focusing and trying to hear the voice she’d heard before.
There was a shred of her still here; she could sense it. That was what had to leave her body. She looked over her shoulder, her back erupting in pain. “Cire, I need to go over. You’ll know when.”
Cire’s face was blank of emotion, but he nodded nonetheless.
Sarah pulled into herself, opening each of her gates one by one, each gate flooding her body with energy that made her skin feel as if it were unraveling down to the bone. She needed to get to the last one, to make it to the Path of the Lost.
The last gate opened, and Sarah’s eyes flashed with fire as she threw her arms outward as if she were trying to embrace someone.
Cire muttered under his breath, and Sarah’s back exploded with fresh wounds.
Her mouth clenched as her mind went white. Her body fell forward, but she didn’t feel the ground against her skin. Instead, there was a warm caress across her cheeks.
The sphere burst into flames as her limp body floated into the air.
Sarah could hear the Light One speaking quietly into her bones, setting everything within her on fire
.
She could speak with the Light One, languages she’d never heard before pouring out of her mouth.
The Omniverse vanished.
Sarah’s feet touched the ground, her wounds healed, and Cire ran to her, wrapping her body in her cloak. “Did it work?” he asked.
Sarah looked up at Cire, her eyes burning with the same light that had been cast from the Omniverse. “I will speak to the Dark One. This one is my vessel now, and there will be balance.”
Chapter Seventeen
Abby stared down at Grok's lifeless eyes as she backed away from Rasputina's shrieks. Before she realized what she was doing, she was flying toward the Dark One's child avatar, screaming with rage, her blood creating and pumping nanobots.
A wall of bone ripped up out of the ground, separating Abby from the Dark One, slowly coating itself in hell’s variation of the Dark Melody.
Abby hit the bone wall with a heavy thud and scrambled to her feet, looking for her teammates. They were behind her, and rather than attacking again, she decided to join them to do what they did best: fight as a team.
Rasputina clutched Grok's head to her chest. "Stop! Don't you see what he's trying to do?"
Anabelle stepped forward, her face stony and her lips trembling. "He killed her. That's what he did."
Rasputina shook her head. "Not here. Not in my domain. He doesn’t have that kind of power here. This will still be hard, and I will need your help. Please?"
The angels came over to Rasputina's side and knelt next to the lich, whose face twitched as if someone were pulling on her skin, trying to tug it away and show what was buried deep within.
"What do you need?" Terra asked.
Rasputina circled her hand above them, her eyes rolling back in her head. "Your energy. Relax your bodies, your spirits. I need extra strength to bring her back. She can't be too far. And then I will have to rebuild. But I will need you to do it quickly. Usually in a few minutes. Please, focus."
