by Lumi Laura
*
The girl woke tentative at first and was then startled by a scream. She was stepped on and kicked about as she tried to struggle to her feet. She rose but could see nothing. Slowly she was able to make out hysterical shapes about her wrenching their hair and tearing at their skin. The shapes fled, and all she could hear was the cackle of hyenas. She was afraid and started to run, but not in any particular direction. She could only see smoke, smell rot and stink, and feel the sharp uneven rocks and debris at her feet. She stumbled about.
Slowly her eyes adjusted so that she could see dark flames all about her. Someone hit her from behind, and she fell forward into another shape that pummeled her with his fists. She had to fight to get him off, but others were upon her immediately, and she kicked, bit and scratched to get free. She didn't know who she was, why she was there or where she'd been. She could see the smoke of wars in the distance illuminated by explosions and hear the cries of great armies. She saw civilizations swept away, and the hateful shouts of warriors hung in the air. Everywhere the stench of death. She saw herds of great animals driven into ravines and clubbed to death to feed the armies. She heard the hymns of marching soldiers long at battle sung by the mighty voices of millions.
Someone dragged her up and with a great shout shoved her forward into a multitude of forgotten souls. She merged with them, and they ran for an eternity into the glow of a setting sun. She found strength in the shoving and hitting, and they cursed, hated and shouted great slurs at each other. They wielded fire in their hands and threw it at everything that would burn and killed anything that moved. They roamed the Land of Beelzeboul and with cries of great hatred they marched on, and she could see in the distance that it was not all blackness and desolation, not yet. She was behind the lines mopping up from an eternal war.
As the eons came and went, she found herself close to the front where the great destruction was taking place. She stumbled across the injured and clubbed and hated them for being alive, all the while coming closer to where the battle was being fought, where light shone and smoke didn't yet blacken buildings. They tore them down because they stood. They clubbed the walls of homes until they collapsed, set them afire to see them burn and killed those inside. They were a great swarm upon the land, and they killed those quickest who begged mercy, and caught those who ran and ripped and tore their flesh and beat their heads until their brains burst, and they stood among the flames and shouted a great cry of victory for all was theirs, and Desolation was their name.
The girl was lofted into the air where she saw wars in the distance, heard the rumble of magnificent explosions and great awkward machines walking upon the land crushing everything good beneath its mechanical feet. On they went burning and crushing and pounding, and she was consumed by hatred and insatiable thirst for destruction. She sought new ways to defile the countryside, to dig into the dark earth, to grind all above into the rotting ground, to hide forever the order and enlightenment of the ages.
She heard a call from behind her, a foreign desperate voice, the ring of everything she hated. It spoke a single word, that most hated and despised of all words, spoken here among the ruins.
"Alexandra."
She loathed it, she loathed that it had been given voice and turned to crush whomsoever it was that spoke such malediction. She saw a woman dressed in hated white, a blinding flow in the deep darkness lit only by that of wars, and she advanced upon the white glow and struck out at it and hated it and hated the person in it, the white flow of the soul who dared make the pronouncement, "Alexandra." She swung her club to smite the word from the air, to kill the word, to knock it and its hated letters to the ground and crush them into nonexistence so that it could never again be spoken.
But the woman didn't fall under the girl's might. Her blows didn't knock the woman in white to the ground. They didn't still the voice that now said, "Alexandra Marie Eidyn." And a great power overcame her, and she fell to her knees before the woman she hated, and she gnashed her teeth and growled in great hatred in her submission.
"Alexandra Marie Eidyn you are hereby commanded to turnabout and go back from whence you came."
She hated the woman in white for she knew not and cared not from where she'd come for she wished to never return to any place she might have been. But in her groveling and whimpering, she heard a greater voice speak to the woman, one of greater authority that would save her from this voice of sweetness and light.
"Leave this land. You do not belong here and have no dominion or authority over my souls. This soul belongs to me."
But the woman in white was not deterred. "I know I don't belong here and that I have no authority over your subjects, and I can see that she is one of your greatest warriors of destruction. But you can see that I am greater than she, for she cowers before me. I am among the greater spirits of the Universe and even you have no dominion over me but I dominion over you, although I have no authority in this your world. Yet, I will trade my soul for this one. I will take her place, and I will grovel at your feet if you will allow her return from whence she came."
"So be it done!" the great dark voice shouted, pleased beyond measure, he was, and the girl felt herself uplifted, and she stood briefly before the woman.
"Run, Alexandra. Run back in the direction from which I've come. Run with all the strength you have and don't look back. You are to never see what is to be for this has been ordained in Heaven, and so shall it be done."
The girl felt herself running, why she knew not, to where she knew not, and she did run like the wind, but she did look back, no matter the command not to, and what she saw was amazing beyond telling, for a dark image of a giant stood over the crumpled woman, her light dimmed to but a glow, and he beat her with a whip in one hand and a mace in the other, and others came to help him and they beat the woman with such force that it would have crushed anyone but she. They knocked her to her hands and knees and she withstood the blows though she trembled and shook at the great violence that was dealt her and that she would suffer now for all eternity.
The girl ran as she had been commanded although she would have turned back to help, for her heart had been lightened, and she felt great sorrow. She knew not where she was running, but she ran anyway because she could do aught else. Up in the distance she saw a figure, all black but with a pale silhouette who waved to her, and she could but follow, and the dark figure with the soft glow turned and ran before her and motioned again for her to follow, and they ran up an incline to stairs among a giant hole in the dark mountain, and up the steps he went with her following.
Up and up they went, a stairs without end, an eternal climb until she could no longer run, and so he slowed and they walked, and she became weaker and couldn't make the climb and so he returned to her, took her into his arms, withstood her weight and carried her up into a light so bright that it blinded her and hurt so bad that she cried out. It was too much, and she begged him to stop and let her return to the darkness, but he would have none of it, and the light crushed her, and she knew no more.
