[Demonworld #1] Demonworld

by Kyle B. Stiff

  Saul closed his eyes for a long time. Wodi touched his shoulder, and he opened his eyes and saw that they had crawled into a square tunnel lit by a dull, red blood-light that radiated not from a single source but seemed to ooze from the chamber itself. The tunnel stretched straight before them, and they rose and walked the red path together. Their pain grew with each step. Wodi gritted his teeth and took the lead. They did not know how far they walked. As in the tree, time and distance lost their meaning. There was only bleeding red, an endless corridor, and a feeling that rooted under the skin: Go away.

  Eventually they reached what appeared to be a dead end. Saul watched Wodi turn and enter a cleverly concealed turn. He gasped and stepped back suddenly. Saul went to him, looked, and saw

  What? said Blindness, riding atop the experience. What was it?

  The tunnel turned into a chamber of red rock. A large, feral, almost bovine skull hung upon the far wall, and chaotic wreaths of long-dead honeysuckle and lilac were laid about the thing. Darkness stared out from the jagged, empty eye-sockets. A powerful, malevolent forced radiated from the skull, and Saul felt his ears hum with deep discord as he looked upon it. The room shivered, and the blood-light clotted in Saul’s eyes. He thought he saw Wodi falling into a pool of blood, then realized that he was slowly approaching the skull. Saul fell against the wall for a moment and closed his eyes against the sickness. He opened them suddenly and saw that Wodi’s hand was stretched out to touch the skull.

  “Don’t do it!” Saul rasped. “Don’t! We shouldn’t be here! That thing is the king of the dead!”

  He felt dizziness seize his guts and vision, and fell to his knees. He stared down at Wodi’s feet, heard him yelp and back away from the...

  What did he do? Why couldn’t you watch him?

  “It’s going to eat your soul!” Saul screamed, but could not hear himself over the skull-shaking hum that jarred inside his head. “It’s bigger than we are, it’s going to eat us and change us!”

  Saul away crawled on the stone floor. He was half blind and felt the floor turn soft in his hands. He forced his eyes open and saw that his own intestines were streaming out all around him in thick, wadded cords. He crawled through himself, breathing in his own blood, choking on it, drowning in it. He felt Wodi move away from him. He knew that Wodi had disappeared into a great and unimaginable darkness, a place that should not exist.

  He was alone. He crawled with his eyes closed until he was in darkness. The pain receded. He rose onto his knees and crawled upwards. His body was whole and intact. When he felt the cool mist of the stream and the kiss of the night sky on his cheeks, he laid down to sleep.

  * * *

  Thirty-Four Years Ago

  “Oh, please don’t tell me you’re writing science fiction,” said Didi.

  He shook his head and chuckled, and Sevrik threw his head back and thundered laughter, but Korliss beamed with patronizing pride. “It’s a misunderstood art,” he said, “and besides, I’d go insane if I didn’t work on a steady stream of multiple creative projects.”

  Men in fine suits cheered and laughed in the ballroom, and Rabbits popped open an unending battery of Champaign bottles. They cheered and sang old Guardian songs of victory, and red-faced they chased one another while the ladies laughed. Even the Rabbit who had lost his bid for Prime Minister shook with the thrill of conquest and slurred a rousing speech into a microphone he had snatched from the live band.

  “But Korliss,” said Didi, “that’s the stuff the laborers read so they can forget the tedium of their lives.”

  “Like I said, it’s misunderstood. It’s only become escapist because even artists neglect it! Look at it like this. I want to popularize the idea of the hero, but can I do that by teaching students who’re worried about cramming for exams, or by writing papers seen only by my over-the-hill colleagues? Take yourselves, for example. You, Sevrik, have put your life on the line for your people and our way of life, but this goes unnoticed by many because of their misconception of the Guardian as a brute, shallow man. And you, Didi, work diligently to add quality to our lives through the advancement of knowledge and technology, but you work so quietly in your underground lab that nobody really understands where those life-enhancing drugs and gadgets come from. And I’ve worked to spread a pro-human ethos that the founding fathers would be proud of, but while I influence a life here and a life there, the majority of Haven doesn’t know and doesn’t care. But when I hide my philosophy within an action-packed novel, the common man who reads them will absorb a strong ideology - even if it’s on a level that he doesn’t consciously understand.” The two thought for a moment, and Korliss said, “I want to raise us above the level of the demon and the demonic culture of fear and obedience. Art may be the best way to do that. I can’t help it if it’s not boring!”

  Sevrik said, “You’ve got a quicksilver tongue, professor.”

  “But still, it’s fiction,” said Didi. “It’s made-up. Real life is exciting enough.”

  “Art is real life,” said Korliss. “Art is entertainment, entertainment is culture, and culture is a facet of the human experience. And we can all agree that the advancement of the human is the agenda of our circle.”

  Sevrik nodded vigorously. Before Didi could respond, a Rabbit stumbled into the friends and said, “I just wanted to thank you all most rightly!” He grabbed Korliss’s hand and shook it, shook Sevrik’s hand, shook Korliss’s again, then hung an arm around Didi. “We couldn’a done it without you guys!”

  He leaned his face into Didi’s as he spoke, and Didi moved away, for he smelled an entire distillery inside the Rabbit. “I thank you, too,” said Didi.

  “And I thank you too, too! You just wait, Dada, we’re gonna reinjuvinate the sciences! We’re gonna, you’re gonna have so much to do with, you’ll... head’ll spin!”

  Sevrik pulled the Rabbit away from Didi, then crushed him in a bear hug and said, “Just make some changes, boy!” and pushed the man into the crowd. The Rabbit ran and plowed into a group of drunks, cheering even as they slid across the floor.

  Korliss and Sevrik laughed. “Even though they didn’t win the prime seat,” said Korliss, “they took nearly half the senate. And since their opponents aren’t unified, that means they control the government. Thanks to our help.”

  “Thanks to your help,” said Sevrik.

  “I spoke to many groups,” said Korliss, “but you two got my foot in the door with the scientists and the Guardians. And now that we’ve helped the rulers come to power, they, too, will help us.”

  The three were silent for a time, then Sevrik said, “We’ve always watched after one another. We’ve never made a move without the counsel of one another, and we’ve never been in a pinch that the others couldn’t help with. That’s... true friendship.”

  “And more importantly,” said Didi, “we’ve never dragged one another down.”

  “That’s what separates us from normal friends,” said Korliss. “We have strong egos; I’ve heard Sevrik say this many times, and it’s true. Our egos don’t need to be supported. They don’t need to be patched up. We’re strong, and we help each other become stronger.”

  Sevrik laughed and put his arm around the two. They watched the politicians dance and sing like children.

  “An alliance,” said Didi.

  “What?” said Korliss.

  “It’s called an alliance. Comparable to friendship. Different from friendship. More than friendship.”

  They looked at one another. Though the revelers danced and the horns and drums of the band blared around them, they seemed to sit within a shell of silent stillness.

  “Let’s make a solemn vow,” said Sevrik. “We’ve done well so far. You two have added more to my life than any other - and I want to do the same for you. Let’s make a vow of brotherhood, a sacred pact. An alliance.”

  “We’ve done a lot to help each other in our search for power and understanding,” said Korliss. “We need something more, though, in order t
o escape corruption. We need... an ideal. Something to live for, all three of us, as one.”

  “But all three of us are already idealists,” said Didi. “We always speak of our ideals.”

  “And what are they?” said Korliss. Didi and Sevrik knew that he was asking so that they could state them as well as he.

  Sevrik’s eyes hardened, and he said, “Pro-human. Didi advances human mastery of the world. You educate. I defend. We’re pro-human.”

  “But what does it mean, to be ‘pro-human’?”

  “To be strong at your core,” said Sevrik, “and to live as an example of good ideals that will strengthen your species.”

  “Not far from the ideals of the founding fathers,” said Didi.

  “And what keeps humans crawling on their knees?” said Korliss. “Why are we here, at all, discussing these things that should be self-evident?”

  “Weak ideals,” said Sevrik. “Weak ideals that lead to bad actions. And, also... the demon.”

  “We would not be hiding here at all,” said Didi, “were it not for the demon. And we would not be talking about this at all, were it not for the weak ideals that surround us.”

  “On this, we all agree,” said Korliss.

  “Let’s do it, then, god dammit!” said Sevrik, and he faced the others. “An alliance! Right here, right now - we think, we do, we speak, we make... pro-human!”

  “Okay,” said Korliss. “An alliance!”

  They both looked to Didi. He nodded once, sharply, and that was vow enough.

  The three allies knew they had stepped off the edge of some precipice. The world was now a blank slate, raw and unfocused, pure potential.

  Didi looked at the crowd once more. “The thing that strikes me as absurd,” said Didi, “is that we needed these undeveloped, buffoonish, power-hungry children in the first place.”

  * * *

  At the end of the red hallway, the skull of the goat dominated Wodi’s field of vision. The black, empty eyes grew and grew. The icon of death was overpowering, a warning that endless darkness would take the life of any living creature that set foot near the forbidden place. The warning pulsed in his mind, hateful and evil.

  Wodi wanted to turn back. He knew that he would not have come at all if Saul had not pushed him to do so. But now Saul lay in a heap on the floor, and Wodi knew, beyond the pain and sickness he felt, that the thing before him was not evil. It was a mindless guardian, a protector of some kind of mystery. And on the other side of that mystery, there was…

  Power, Wodi thought.

  Wodi left Saul behind and took one step forward. Broken glass tore upward through his foot. He took another step and the air was full of fire, burning his lungs. He took another step and molten rock dripped from the ceiling, burning the flesh from his back, stinging his nostrils with the stench of burnt hair and meat.

  It’s not real, Wodi thought, closing his eyes to narrow slits. The flowers on the wreath aren’t burning. It’s playing with my nerves, my body… just like the tree up above!

  The mystery gave him power to walk through the gauntlet of fire and glass. When he finally drew near the skull, he saw that it was larger than the head of any living animal. The great horns of the skull stretched on either side of him. He reached forward…

  “Don’t do it!” a tiny voice rasped behind him. “Don’t! We shouldn’t be here! That thing is the king of the dead!”

  He stuck his right hand into the empty eye socket.

  It was cold inside, unnaturally cold. He laid his hand on a round, steel orb, and in that moment an incredible surge of biting power shot into him. He saw stars and smelled ozone. He stumbled back and held his burning hand to his stomach.

  “It’s going to eat your soul!” screamed the tiny voice. “It’s bigger than we are, it’s going to eat us and change us!”

  “Then crawl away and stay the same forever!” said Wodi. Frustrated, he reached in once more and grabbed the steel orb. Cold electricity shot through him; he winced and held tight, forcing the pain into the back of his awareness. As his knees buckled, the need to let go and the inability to give up wrestled in his heart. As if leaping from a great height, he gathered his resolve and jammed his free hand into the other empty eye socket. For one terrible moment he felt something mechanical sucking at his fingers, threatening to jerk the skin free and grind the bones to a pulp. Another orb lay inside and, because his legs gave out completely, he clutched the second orb so that he would not fall.

  The pain lessened as he held the two orbs. His body completed some kind of circuit and, while the orbs still radiated strange forces, they no longer had any wounding power. Soon the pain disappeared completely. Exhausted, Wodi leaned against the skull and breathed deep. Wodi felt as if someone were speaking to him, but he was deaf and felt only the breath of a whisper near his ear.

  Wodi felt the whir of unseen gears and the hidden door behind the skull slowly swung open. Harsh, white light streamed through the crack, and Wodi pulled his hands free to shield his eyes. The door opened onto a chamber of pure white light; there were no shadows and Wodi could not tell if there were any walls or if the door opened onto an infinitely vast chamber. He looked back and saw Saul crawling back the way they had come. Wodi stepped into the room of light.

  Complete silence. He felt the floor under his feet, smooth and solid, but no sound of footsteps ever left its surface. He cast no shadow on any surface. He looked at his hands; the details of dirt, blue veins, and networks of red fiber were jarring on the background of perfect milky nothingness. He moved his mouth to speak, but he had either forgotten speech or the sound was swallowed up by the white.

  Then something shattered. He heard the thunder of brittle steel snapping, and the white turned to darkness, and the silence fell before the howling of something like atoms rent asunder. Wodi tasted metal on his tongue, felt something rushing into the pores of his skin, and he knew in the depth of his being that evil existed, and replicated itself, and did not change. He saw nightmares. His mind was a screen on which some mad god’s delirium was broadcast directly. He saw something like gears turning, gears of stars, gears of metal, gears of flesh. He heard the march of men armed for war. He saw the process of individuation come to a grinding halt as millions of minds were taken over by a virus, an ideology that unloosed a hatred that had lain pregnant within life for untold aeons. He saw one age come to an end, but there was not enough strength left in the world to begin a new age. He saw a black sun rising. The yellow sun died and fell into a sea of blood. Darkness triumphant. He saw animals born with flawed genes, animals with backwards elbows, animals with no skin and nerves punctured by thorns of bone, animals with painfully large eyes in their mouths, animals born pregnant and with lungs like oatmeal that could not handle air. He saw these animals form into humans, men and women piled on top of one another, writhing in pain and doomed to be erased by death for nothing. He did not know that the horrible cacophony of unnatural moans was the sound of his own voice, screaming and cracking in inhuman notes drawn out by insanity.

  There was thunder, a raging sound that warbled in chaos. There was a pattern in the crushing static. The thunder spoke.

  WAS THE FIRE IN THE PHILOSOPHER’S CAVE

  THE ONLY BRIGHT SPOT IN THE UNIVERSE?

  WAS THE ONLY LIGHT THE WARMTH OF HOPE

  AND THEN A SHIVERING SHADOW

  SOME FOOL MASTURBATING IN THE PALE LIGHT?

  DID OUR FIRST STEP

  CONTAIN THE DOOM OF OUR FINAL STUMBLE?

  HOW MANY LIE IN THE GRAVE ETERNAL?

  HOW MANY CORPSES LIE ABOUT HEAVEN?

  Wodi crawled backwards across the floor, swung an arm back, and it slammed into a wall. He felt about for cracks, for any way to pry open the door that had allowed him entrance. He found nothing.

  NOW YOU STAY AND PAY THE PRICE

  WHETHER YOU CAN AFFORD IT OR NOT

  SHOULD YOU PASS THE FIRST TEST BY WILL

  NO CHOICE BUT TO CONTINUE

  AND ENDURE THE
SECOND!

  Wodi sat with his back to the wall and gritted his teeth. For one moment the white room returned but Wodi saw that the walls were made of glistening white snakes intertwined about one another. His stomach lurched, then darkness returned and visions of the world’s death came so mercilessly that he was no longer sure which time and place were a part of his reality. The thunder spoke again.

  I KILL WITH A MIRROR

  I REVEAL SHADOW WITH LIGHT

  I GIVE NIGHTMARES BY OPENING EYES

  I PROPHESY WITH HISTORY’S RECORD

  LOOK AT YOUR WORLD

  INCREDIBLE A MIRACLE WONDERFUL

  FROM GLORIOUS GEARS A THING WAS MADE