Chronicles of Eden - Act XII

by Alexander Gordon

  “You’re right,” Shadow fretted while finally ceasing with her shaking of the ant girl. “I have a job to do. But I can’t do it with you. I can’t do anything with your soul. Which means… we need to go see the boss. She’s the only one who can help.”

  “Is that right?” Squeak huffed as she and Shadow caught their breaths. “Fine, let’s go see your boss then. Anything so I can get some answers here.”

  “I’m sorry,” Shadow groaned, running a hand down her face before smiling weakly at Squeak. “You’ve surely been through enough at this point, I don’t mean to burden you with my troubles. Come, let’s get back to Vexus and see the boss. Hopefully she’s in a better mood now…”

  “Vexus?” Squeak asked as Shadow turned to lead them down the trail. “What is this Vexus you all keep speaking of?”

  “Oh, that’s right,” the elf mused with a playful glance back at her. “I never told you. You see, you’re in the underworld now, and Vexus is the capital of this sector in the underworld. It’s where newly departed souls are brought to pass on to their fated afterlife. Come, you’ll see.”

  Squeak followed the elven ranger as she led her along the dirt road, the two running together through the forsaken valleys where not a single plant or critter was seen the whole way. Absolutely nothing but lifeless rocks painted the canyon floors and walls while the sky always remained cloudy and perfectly dreary. After a while however Squeak noticed other people making their way along the trail and many other pathways set atop and below the valley. Elves, trolls, goblins, arachne, witches, ant girls, and even some humans were seen marching along the roads, all of them seeming understandably depressed and even afraid as they trudged towards their final destination. Several horse riders were seen trotting along next to the trails and moving the crowds in the right direction, the horses being of black fur and glowing blue eyes as they were clad in white steel armor and saddles, while their riders were various races of human, elf, and even gremlins, all wearing dark leather armor and tunics as they kept calling to stragglers to keep moving forward.

  “Stay close,” Shadow ordered as she took hold of Squeak’s hand and helped her weave around the passing souls that only gave fleeting glances at them. “It’s not normally this crowded but there’s a whole lot of killing going on up there, as I’m sure you’ve noticed.”

  “I certainly did notice,” Squeak had to agree with. “I just pray my beloved mate doesn’t find his way down here today. Oh I’m so worried about him.”

  “You had a man, huh?” Shadow asked with a sharp smile. “Very nice. What was his name?”

  “Daniel Sorres. He… he wasn’t by chance on your ledger, was he?”

  “Daniel Sorres,” Shadow repeated as she thought about it. “Hmm, nope. Doesn’t ring a bell. He at least wasn’t one of mine to collect down here according to my list.”

  “I see,” Squeak replied with a teary-eyed smile. “That’s wonderful to hear. I pray his name never does appear on your list.”

  “Well that prayer won’t work forever, but I wouldn’t count on finding him down here with the other fallen souls today.”

  “That’s as good an answer as I could hope for,” Squeak reasoned. “I’m sorry to trouble you with such questions, and with being an irregularity down here. I promise it was never my intention to come down here at all on this day.”

  “Don’t worry about it. As far as wandering souls go you’re one of the nicer ones I’ve talked to today, so it’s not so bad. Anyway, we’re almost there. We’re going to avoid the crowds and take a bit of a detour, follow me this way.”

  The two veered off the path and ran towards a trail that went up along the rising mountainside past where the main road led down into a narrow valley that the fallen souls were being funneled into.

  “The boss has her place up on a nice overlook above Vexus,” Shadow explained with a smile back at Squeak. “You’ll get a great view of the city before we speak to her. Um, Squeak, was it?”

  “Yes, that’s right,” Squeak said, watching the large herd of souls walking down the valley beside them before looking at Shadow curiously. “Um, so who is this boss of yours? Is she in charge of the underworld? Wait, are we going to meet god?”

  “Haha! No, nothing like that,” Shadow laughed shaking her head. “She’s just in charge of this area of the underworld. You think the world’s a big place? Well so is the underworld. It takes a lot of supervision down here to keep things in working order, and that means many viceroys are needed to manage everything.”

  “Viceroy?”

  “Think of it like a queen of this dreary looking kingdom we’re in,” Shadow reasoned with a shrug. “She runs the part of the underworld beneath the region above us. She also manages the southern and eastern regions next to it.”

  “I see,” Squeak said looking up and around at the cloudy sky. “So she’s responsible for all the souls that die in Koskaysil and its neighboring lands. That must take a lot of work.”

  “You know it. People die every day you know. Human or monster, if they fall anywhere at all above us then they’re our responsibility to guide towards their next step in the afterlife. And let me tell you, it keeps us busy as fuck with having to run around wildly down here to get ready and catch them when they’re about to fall. There may be many cities up there in the land of the living, but there’s only Vexus down here. And it’s not always a quick walk from town to get to those who are destined to fall down here.”

  “It certainly sounds like you keep busy,” Squeak reasoned with amazement. “My word, and I thought my home nest had plenty of souls housed within it.”

  “As crowded as your ant girl nests can get, it’s nothing at all compared to the amount of souls we handle down here,” Shadow laughed.

  The two girls ran up along the narrow mountain trail, rising high above the neighboring valley that had large masses of souls marching through it. After a while they finally arrived onto a plateau and headed over to an overlook with a chain-link railing set up on it. Coming to a stop next to the fence Shadow smiled at the sight while Squeak stared with wide eyes of wonder. Beneath them where hundreds of souls were spilling out into from the narrow valley they passed was a gigantic crater with a stone city built in the middle of it. The blocky structures and towers were tightly set next to one another and nearly filled the expanse of the settlement with a large circular stone wall surrounding the city with less than a mile to spare between it and the rising cliffs that reached high over the settlement on all sides. From the overlook Squeak could make out several valleys leading down into the city from other directions, all seeming to be swarming with fallen souls who were slowly congregating towards the middle. Although the buildings of Vexus were just as bleak as the surrounding landscape it was the centerpiece of the city that truly stood out. Squinting and focusing her vision, Squeak was able to make out a glimmering pillar of light that protruded from the center of the city before vanishing into a sparkling haze as it traveled higher into the sky, the shining radiance appearing soothing and beautiful to behold even from that distance.

  “That’s Vexus,” Shadow announced. “It’s… well, kind of a dump if you go inside. But what do you expect? Only us grim reapers and waiting souls stay there, and the general mood of the populace we watch over is pretty bad given the circumstances. Still, looks a lot better than everything else around here. So that’s something, right?”

  “You live there?” Squeak wondered. “It’s so… big.”

  “It kind of has to be,” Shadow reasoned as she rubbed the back of her neck. “You remember me saying we take in souls from three different regions up above? Well here’s the kicker to people kicking the bucket; everyone has a specific moment in time that they can pass through the gateway once they die.”

  “Gateway? Are you talking about that tower of light in the middle of the city?”

  “You got it. That’s the gateway, or as everyone down here calls it, The Horizon. Makes sense really, every soul’s future is just past t
he horizon. Well, technically through it, but you get the idea. Every underworld city has one. The Horizon was created by the real angels and demons, you know, the ones you either prayed to or cursed their existence when shit went wrong in your life. It takes your soul to either heaven or hell when you go through it, depending on your life choices. When a person is destined to die that means their moment to be taken by either heaven or hell is officially set and given to the viceroys to be enforced, which they then give to us that we use to go out and collect the souls when they fall to guide them to the gateways.”

  “So you’re… angels of death?”

  “Trust me, we’re not angels. We don’t do what they do. If anything we’re more like… wardens; just trying to keep things in order down here. We were chosen for the job just as the viceroys are, and when the higher-ups tell you to do something, you do it.”

  “Higher-ups? Who are… oh… you mean…”

  “Yep, you guessed it, the higher-ups. Not the angels or demons themselves, but the ones they report to. Anyway, we get selected and given the job of making sure everything down here runs the way it should, and it’s a fulltime job too. You see, more often than not we get souls that aren’t ready to pass on yet, they died too early from the date we’re given because of one reason or another. Freewill is a bitch that way. So until their time officially comes they’re put up in Vexus, usually with them crying and trying all manner of bargaining techniques with us to try and get back to the land of the living.”

  “Those poor souls,” Squeak empathized.

  “Yeah, poor them. Like I said, Vexus is a bit of a dump inside those walls. Sometimes people die earlier than expected, it can happen thanks to freewill and such, but it almost never happens more than a month in advance of their original due date, so it’s manageable for us down here.”

  “And the people that die after their due date?” Squeak asked.

  “That’s when those angels of death you spoke of come into play,” Shadow answered, with Squeak jumping in surprise. “If the higher-ups decided someone was supposed to die and have their soul pass through The Horizon, then it needs to happen. So on the off-chance someone manages to cheat death when they weren’t supposed to, an angel will be sent down to ‘correct’ the problem.”

  “Correct the problem?” Squeak feared. “Oh my, you mean they kill them.”

  “It has to happen,” Shadow reasoned holding her hands up defensively. “Sometimes if someone misses their due date the forces of fate can correct whatever problems that would have caused in the grand order of things, maybe with the lucky bastard getting to live a little longer in doing so. But from every instance we were missing a soul and reported it, that soul shortly showed up down here courtesy of an angel taking them out.”

  “That’s… that’s so horrible,” Squeak fretted. “How could angels do something so cruel? Taking away someone’s life when they’re so desperately trying to hold onto it. Why, they’re not holy maidens of hope at all, they’re just bloody assassins!”

  “It’s not like that,” Shadow argued. “Everyone is part of the grand order, and that order needs to remain in order or else real chaos will fill the world. I know, it sucks to hear that people are going to die like that, but it has to happen. You can’t live forever you know. Everyone has to pass on to their next destination at some point, it can’t be avoided. And if those souls are planned to be part of something important when they pass on then we need to make sure they pass on when they’re supposed to. We’re not trying to be the evil ones here, we’re just… we’re just doing our job. All of us are just doing what we need to in order to keep life and death in balance in the world. Can you at least understand that?”

  “I… I guess so,” Squeak worried as she lowered her head. “I suppose I can see what you mean. But still, I never imagined angels would be deathdealers rather than gentle holy maidens that they’re revered to be. That completely changes the way I picture them in ways I can’t believe.”

  “Well here’s something you won’t like to help take your mind off of all that,” Shadow hesitantly said, with Squeak turning to her uneasily from hearing her tone. “There’s a time limit to how long souls have to go through The Horizon after they die, and that’s just one month. Any longer and they can’t go through anymore. Those that miss their fated moment of passing, those that don’t enter the gateway in time for whatever reason, don’t get to pass on to their afterlife. They become stuck here.”

  “Stuck? In the underworld?”

  “Yes. Stuck here in this realm, forever. Some may think that surely being here would be a better alternative to hell, right? Wrong. A soul that lingers here in this realm for too long starts to ‘rot’, if you will. And that rotting stench attracts predators; predators that will make that soul wish they had gone to hell instead.”

  “They’re that bad?”

  “It’s ironic,” Shadow dryly laughed. “In the mortal realm we monsters are known to rape and torture humans. Down here, a rotting soul, be they man or monster, will learn what real rape and torture is like from real monsters. And there will be no rest for them for all eternity.”

  “That’s terrible,” Squeak worried. “There’s nothing you can do for them? You can’t shelter them in your city?”

  “Not even the boss could keep those nasty things from tearing down our walls if they come looking for rotting prey,” Shadow answered shaking her head. “Any soul that misses their time to pass on is exiled from Vexus; taken far, far away so they don’t bring certain doom down upon those who still have a chance to pass on.”

  “Oh my word,” Squeak softly said, her eyes then slowly widening as she realized what Shadow was getting at now. “Wait, you said… when we first met you said… you said that I wasn’t supposed to be down here anytime soon.”

  “That’s right,” Shadow solemnly agreed. “Your time isn’t here yet, Squeak. In fact, it wasn’t going to be here for another 63 years.”

  Squeak slowly backed up against the railing of the overlook, her breathing now shaky as she fearfully looked back to the city below them then to Shadow as she felt a ghastly chill running down her spine.

  “I… I can’t go through The Horizon? I’m stuck here? I’m going to rot here? Those predators you spoke of, they’re going to come for me?”

  “Wait!” Shadow urged holding her hands out. “Before you freak out, know that you’re not fucked yet. Yes, you can’t go through The Horizon now. You coming here way before your time means you’re not able to pass on before your soul starts rotting. But, there is still hope for you.”

  “There is? How? What am I supposed to do now?”

  “Like I said before, we talk to the boss,” Shadow explained pointing behind her. Squeak turned her frightened gaze to the side and noticed something resting behind the overlook they were on. It appeared to be a large cobra head carved into the mountain, the dreadfully ominous looking monument having sharpened stone fangs protruding down under the mouth and red fires burning in its eyes. Beneath the cobra there was the face of a skull carved into the bleached rock with equally expert craftsmanship. The eyeholes had burning violet fires in them, the opening for the nose had wooden doors serving as the entrance into the dwelling, before that lay a dirt path that Squeak really did not want to walk across as it was littered with bones, and on either side were tilled patches of dirt with black, thorny vines that were slithering and rustling about through the ground as if they were alive.

  “That is absolutely terrifying,” Squeak blurted out. “Are you certain I’m not already in hell?”

  “Yeah,” Shadow sighed in agreement. “She’s actually new. My old boss had just a simple house here, but when the new girl showed up she redecorated and made… that. One thing I quickly learned about her, she’s got a real thing for snakes.”

  “I can tell.”

  “Anyway, she’s our best bet at getting you straightened out down here. She may not be able to bring you back to life, but if anyone can request your window of pas
sing to be moved closer to today with the higher-ups, it would be her. The viceroys down here can send appeals to have wayward souls sent through The Horizon in cases like this, my old boss used to do that all the time for me when this sort of thing happened before.”

  “This problem happened to you all the time before?” Squeak asked in surprise. “People were dying at the wrong times that frequently?”

  “Well…” Shadow sheepishly replied. “I may have contributed to a few souls almost missing out on their afterlives. But who’s to say for sure, freewill is certainly a mysterious mistress when it comes to this sort of thing after all.”

  “Is that so?” Squeak slowly replied with a raised eyebrow.

  “But it was never a problem because my old boss was really tight with her superiors, she could fix any discrepancy that popped up like it was nothing. Gave me a lot of freedom- I mean relief knowing she always had my back like that. Yeah, I really do miss her, not going to lie.”

  “I’m sure you do,” Squeak dryly agreed. “So is your new boss as much a miracle worker as your last one? Is she your good friend as well?”

  “Her? …no. Not at all. She’s super strict about everything. Strict about fate, about getting souls through The Horizon on their appointed dates, about keeping souls in line down here at all times, about me not sneaking up into the mortal realm to have sex with men, about a lot of things really. She’s also really scary to talk to… and be in the presence of… and generally think about.”

  “She’s that bad?” Squeak worried. “That doesn’t sound very promising for my dilemma. Wait, did you just say sneaking up to the mortal realm to have sex with men?”

  “She’s pretty bad,” Shadow had to admit while rubbing the back of her neck. “The first time I upset her she threw me into a pit filled with her snakes. They… crawled into places. Bad places for snakes to crawl into. I’ve tried my best not to step on her toes ever since.”

  “That’s rather alarming to hear,” Squeak nervously replied.