by Tim Hawken
“Just keep us in formation,” I said to him. “I’ll do the rest.”
Summoning the necessary atoms around us, I pulled the air thickly together. Germaine wove his talents, locking each of us in a triangular grid as we lifted off the rooftop. I was the head of the spear; Germaine and Charlotte were just to the side and back; the other three made up the tail. With the winds rushing behind us, we surged forward. Hell twinkled below: the city streets showing the perpetual motion of souls, organizing and training. From this height, the division of the colored districts of sin looked something like a demented pie chart. Each wedge began from the base of Satan’s Tower and spread outward through the city, the edges of each regiment clearly visible in the change of markings on every building. Mount Belial remained untouched, still the seat of my own rule. The Pit, where entertainment normally ran constantly, was dark.
Everyone was involved in this fight. Not a single inmate of Hell had shirked the calling of the legions. Satan’s Demise was still black. No one was willing to disturb The Perceptionist’s home, even for war. We pushed away from the city, jetting with growing speed over the blurring landscapes. Jungles and deserts spun by. Lakes of lava the size of seas boiled beneath us. Barren valleys of rock rose out of them as the mountain range in the distance grew larger and larger in front of us. Ridges so high on Earth would have invariably had snow on them. These remained void of life. They were jagged jaws of rock, spiking up into the clouds.
The flight was surprisingly easy with Germaine helping to hold us together. All I had to do was propel us onwards. With use and practice my ethereal body had grown stronger. I was unbounded by its potential, willing to face Asmodeus head on. I wasn’t fool enough to believe it would be easy, but I also knew that I was no weak target. We really did have a chance in this. He had said himself that I was now too powerful to destroy. His words from Earth were a hope to me. An unconscious god is basically a dead one. If that were true for me then it would be true for him as well. He had also said Judas was yet to wake up, which made me think he couldn’t overcome Zoroaster’s creation of sleep. There may be a way I could use that same liquid to trap Asmodeus. If only I could hold him for long enough. Destroying this barrier, and The Guilt along with it, was our first aim, however.
Germaine brought himself upwards so he could yell over the wind that roared in our ears as we flew on.
“I have been thinking about the vision Phineus showed you,” he said. “Did you say you thought there was some kind of void placed between Heaven and Hell?”
“Yes,” I yelled back. “You’ve been in The Perceptionist’s creation. It was almost identical, except there was still an outcropping of rock to stand on and some kind of pull downwards instead of being able to stay still in the nothingness. I could see towards Heaven, there was an atmosphere holding the void in. Underneath it was like a vortex spinning down to Hell. I’m not sure how, it all happened so fast.”
I watched ahead, shaking the thought of killing Lotte from my mind once more. We were on a direct path forward. The massive mountain range before us seemed endless now, thick and foreboding. We were still a long way away, but their dominance overshadowed everything else, making them appear closer than they really were. We had to get to the other side of them if we were to get to where we needed to be.
“What you’re describing is exactly how our master made his home,” Germaine continued. “I helped him do it.”
I turned my head then to Germaine in shock. He had helped The Perceptionist build The Void? I had always assumed our teacher had done it on his own. Seeing my reaction, Germaine let a wry smile touch his lips.
“Would you know how to do it again?” I asked, curious at the possibility this presented.
“It was my idea to begin with,” he grinned. “Like any other vacuum, you create a seal and then have to suck everything out through an exit point. Once there is nothing left, you close it off. For The Perceptionist, we let everything escape, including space and time. We then added the elements we wanted back inside very carefully. It sounds like there was still some constructed matter inside what you describe. The most solid things, like ground and fully formed earth, always go last, which would explain why you were standing on some kind of cliff. Eventually it would be eroded away, leaving nothing at all. There would have been no elements around you in the air by then. That explains why if you created anti-matter, it would be able to exist without being cancelled out right away.”
I peered back to the rest of our group, making sure Germaine’s concentration hadn’t wavered while we spoke. Everyone was still in formation. Charlotte gave me a reassuring nod that she was okay. My chest hammered with the potential of what Germaine had said.
“Do you think you could do it again? Could something like that erode the barrier?” I pressed.
He shook his head, his long, scraggly hair flapping backwards as we flew.
“The barrier is too solid. It would resist because it’s under its own power. You would have to break it up first. I’m not even sure you could actually make a void, especially if Asmodeus was trying to stop you. I certainly don’t have anywhere near enough power to do it. I planted the idea, but The Perceptionist made it happen. He had had decades of practice making smaller versions until we tried it on a large scale.”
I let the conversation fall silent. Perhaps The Perceptionist would come to our aid after all, if I had truly seen what I thought it to be. For now, my attention had to be on getting up to Heaven through The Guilt; the mountains were upon us.
“Hold us tight, Germaine!” I said to him, knowing we would have to go up through the clouds.
He fell back and I increased my concentration. Our speed, which had been steady, now seemed to quicken as the black foothills raced below us. I brought us to the right, going up, getting ever closer to the sheer rock face of this mammoth growth of stone and earth. The face of the mountain steamed with hot gases, escaping from deep within its fissures, but there was no other movement. I created a small buffer of air around us for protection and looked to the clouds above. I would have to hug close to the face of the mountain to make sure we didn’t get lost in the darkness of the storm above.
A spark of light speared down and I zipped to the side, narrowly avoiding its sizzling energy. Thunder exploded in an instant, almost splitting my ears with the noise. Germaine pulled the formation even closer together, to make us a smaller target. I placed my trust in him to keep the others with us, training my eyes forward. Staying as close to the mountain as I could, we shot up into the clouds. I could almost feel the stone of the mountain below graze my stomach. We bumped upward in turbulence as the air bubble I had placed below did its job, keeping us from being shredded to pieces. I was nearly blind in the clouds, the thick black smog choking my senses, basically traveling by feel. Another bolt of lightning cracked, lighting a shadowy path ahead. We veered to the left to avoid an outcrop of rock. We must have been nearing the peak. Again thunder shuddered at our heads as I pushed on. The mountain began to fall away slowly and I let our altitude drop with the decline, keeping the speed constant. Abruptly, we burst from the bottom of the clouds. The sudden light startled me. As my eyes adjusted I almost stopped short. The end of Hell sat before us: a shimmering white wall. The solid mass was as smooth as a bleached eggshell, dead straight with no angles or end. If this was the true edge of the universe, then I had no idea how to get beyond. As we descended, I watched with the elemental vision, which showed nothing different. The wall was completely even, without a single gap in its composition. It didn’t glow like the other elements, yet nor was it like dark matter. It was totally impossible to describe, except that I knew it was there and that there was no way through. I let my sight return to normal. The thing was stunning: featureless but beautiful. It seemed to be the opposite of The Void: pure matter condensed into something with infinite density and mass. Indestructible, immoveable; yet not created through any process I could fathom.
Our feet came down to the groun
d and we all stared up in wonder. Almost no one else in all of history had seen this. Despite why we were here, I felt privileged to be able to witness something so rare and impossible. I looked around. All the others were as transfixed as me. Germaine had his mouth open like a circus clown. Marlowe knelt down in reverent respect. Clytemnestra murmured her astonishment. Only Phineus watched it with a calm face. He turned back to the mountain range behind us to get his bearings before returning his attention ahead. Charlotte moved forward, walking over to the mass. She reached out to touch it, pressing her palm against the surface. Turning to us, she frowned.
“You all have to try this.”
We moved forward as one. I pressed my fingers tentatively against the wall. Puzzled, I took my fingers away and did it again. I watched the others, who were all doing the same thing. Each time my hand touched the wall it resisted, but there was no sensation that I was pushing against anything. It was as if I was being held back by an invisible magnetic force, but I could still see what I was touching. I could have spent years in this place trying to figure out its mysteries, but a deep hissing noise from above made me look up. High above, murky black and brown elements were seeping into Hell. I couldn’t see the gap that they were coming from because it was hidden by the clouds, but it was clear the first movements of The Guilt were starting. We were about to rise up to Heaven.
FOUR
MY COMPANIONS GATHERED TOGETHER AGAIN, our heads tipped upwards to watch the tempest of guilt begin to form. I had seen it with Charlotte and Clytemnestra in miniature back at Magdalene’s Mansion, but nothing could have prepared us for the true scale of the force coming through. Energy rippled, boiling and streaming down, gathering in eddies and swirls in the clouds. The wind around us grew and grew until it was howling in our ears and pulling at our bodies. The tornadoes started to form. They were like whirlpools in the clouds at first, lumbering into life before starting to twist faster. The first plume burst alight, spinning downward. The tail smashed to the ground jarring the earth at our feet, sending a tremor right through the ground and shaking the mountain. Rocks started to fall from the peak, adding to the thunderous violence all around.
“Quickly!” I yelled, my voice swept away by the wind before it had even left my mouth.
I had to physically pull everyone toward me with the elements to get their attention. We were now in a huddle amid the chaos of a category Hell maelstrom. I held Charlotte in one arm, tightly against my body. With my spare hand, I motioned for Germaine to hold everyone firm the same way, as one tight group. He nodded his understanding and pulled what elements hadn’t been ripped into the tornadoes back towards us, to help keep us in place. The bond formed, but I could tell it was a major effort for Germaine to keep it steady. I moved to lift us off the ground, but there wasn’t enough air pressure to rise up. Everything was being torn into the sucking storm, piling power into The Guilt that would soon explode over Hell. Our feet started to drag backwards, toward the closest fire-twister. I gripped hard to stop us, but the current of elements whipping past us was too frenzied to resist. Our group lifted up, skipping across the ground in a scraping motion, before Germaine held us tight again, helping our collective weight hold us back. We couldn’t stay this way for much longer without letting the opportunity to push through the gap in the filter pass. I searched my mind wildly for ideas.
Snapping over to an elemental vision, I could see every ounce of ungrounded energy whipping up into the storm. The momentum it was creating was astonishing. The glowing molecules were shooting past us at the speed of sound, looking more like tiny comets than single atoms. I could tell we only had seconds to make a choice. There seemed no way we could do it, though. All the elements I could use to help us were becoming part of the tempest. Somehow I had to pull them back. My eyes locked on the tornado that was trying to suck us in and an idea came to me. It was a long shot, but if I didn’t try we might be consumed by it anyway. I yelled out to Germaine again.
“Hold!”
He nodded as he saw my lips move and I could feel our bodies cling harder. Bending my legs, I pushed off the ground with all my strength, assisting the cyclonic winds to pull us upwards. Without the resistance of the ground, we started to spin into the air. The field holding us together slackened momentarily, and Clytemnestra’s body started to slip outwards. Marlowe lunged up and grabbed her with a powerful arm, yanking her back again. Once more, I felt Germaine deliberately hold us in with what strength he had. If one of us was lost here, they might never be found again in this wilderness of rock and fire.
I steeled myself for the heat that was rushing up to us, and heard Charlotte scream as we met the flames of the storm’s searing intensity. I shook the pain off, keeping my vision on the elements as we were tossed like a human tumbleweed into the heart of The Guilt. Elements of regret and pain lashed about us. Every other atom was there as well: earth, fire, liquid vapor and air. The wind carried us around one circuit of the twister and then another. I could no longer see the others, only feel them against me. Their features were lost in the torrent of elements sparking around us. Germaine held us with all his might. Now that the elements were closer I was able to gather some of them behind us, straining to pull them away from the storm, into my grip. I used their momentum to follow the raging flow upward and around, spinning in a dizzying cycle of anarchy. It took every ounce of skill I had to hold us on course, while I hoped Germaine could keep us united.
We rushed up to meet the clouds and the intensity of the tornado’s pull started to lessen a fraction. I could now make out the break in the barrier above. It was tight against the shimmering white wall that stretched up and through. Pestilence spewed out into Hell. With a shuddering bang the storm started to move towards our city. I held for a split second longer as our mess of a group spun around one final time. With a wrenching effort I sent a blast of the elements behind us, launching like a slingshot in the direction of the wall that marked the end of Hell. The burst of The Guilt moving away propelled us even faster forward and up. I braced for impact, but as we hit the wall there was no pain: the unusual property of its construction shielded us from its touch. Instead, our impetus propelled us, skidding upward against the final elements sifting through the filter. Emotion squeezed around us and our group slithered though the closing gap like a screaming baby being born into a bleeding world.
The roaring silence that filled my ears seemed as loud as the cacophony of the storm we had left behind. Sprawled out in a scatter of bodies, the six of us rolled to a halt on a grey meadow of grass. We had made it through.
FIVE
I ROLLED TO MY FEET IN AN INSTINCTIVE RUSH. Marlowe had done the same and was peering around us for attack, shrugging off the tumble of the storm as though it was nothing. I held my breath for another impact. Something. Anything. All was still. The gap had been shut off almost as soon as we had slid through. The white wall that marked the end of Hell continued upward next to us, into the sky of Purgatory. The grey grasslands around us stretched into the distance, seemingly unchanged. Above, the old filter that had once separated Purgatory and Heaven was no more. In its stead was a ceiling of spirit and earth which combined to make up a powder blue sky. Searching around I saw the rest of our party had made it mostly unscathed. The heat of The Guilt storm hadn’t done any severe physical damage, but the pressure of the pain around us had taken a toll. Clytemnestra lay on her side, breathing heavily, with her eyes wide in fright. Charlotte was sitting with her head between her knees. Germaine staring at the sky, gathering his wits. I knew he would have been drained from the effort of keeping us together through the tumult. Phineus scrambled to his feet next to Marlowe, using the African’s body to haul himself up. He dusted off his robes and blew out a sigh of surprised exasperation.
“Not even I saw that coming,” he said, his cloudy eyes locked on mine. “I think we were lucky you acted so quickly.”
I nodded silently, moving to Charlotte’s side to make sure she was okay. She flinched and looked
up as I touched her back. I could see some small burns on her face healing rapidly. The fire of The Guilt didn’t normally burn our ethereal bodies. In its pure form, so close to the source, it had done some damage to Lotte’s, which wasn’t yet as used to the heat as ours. I touched the red welts on her cheek, to assist her healing. She sucked in air, feeling the elements work. With my help her recovery was swift. She swallowed to regain some moisture in her mouth.
“Thank you,” was all she could manage. I helped her stand. She clung to me, more for moral than physical support.
Everyone’s clothes were smoldering, but not burnt. Like all garments in Hell, they were clothes built to withstand incredible heat. Nevertheless, I sent a fine mist of water over our group to cool us off. Phineus smiled his relief. Germaine coughed on the ground and some blood escaped his mouth. I left Charlotte and went to his side, using the elements to heal him too, and let some extra energy flow into his body. His eyes regained their shine as I restored him. He nodded his thanks and stood. One by one I went to the rest. Marlowe and Clytemnestra both brushed me away, saying they didn’t need to be healed. Phineus accepted an infusion of strength, although he didn’t seem to require it. Finally I used the elements, which were abundant here, to help build my own stamina. The vitality I was able to draw into myself easily offset the energy it took to do it. We were soon all completely alert, ready to continue towards Heaven. Mentally I was still exhausted, but I knew that would pass as we moved.
“We can’t linger,” I said to my friends. “The flow of guilty elements will start again soon. If I’m right it will grow stronger over the coming hours. We don’t know exactly how long it will take until it gets too strong to push against. Better we go now.”
“This way, then,” Phineus said without ceremony, and started walking into the meadow, directly away from the white wall.
