by T. R. Briar
“Rayne? What about him?”
She only made more gurgling sounds, not really being helpful.
“Is there any way we can help her speak again?” Rayne asked. “Maybe take those stitches out of her mouth?”
“They’d only come back, I’m afraid. It’s just how she’s deteriorated. Even if we did take them out, I don’t think her voice works anymore.”
Apolleta had been silent up until now, just watching them talk. She finally decided to speak. “Why does that happen? Why do we deteriorate?”
“It’s the madness of this place. Corruption from being exposed to all this demonic power. It strips the soul bare, and warps it into a more twisted version of itself.”
“So, it’s different for everyone.”
“Well, yes, you can already see it.” Darrigan’s bladed hands pointed at both Gabriel and Rayne. “Both of them are starting to experience the effects, but it’s not identical.”
The two men exchanged looks. Rayne could see Gabriel had lost more of his hair. His face looked haggard, with dark black circles under jaundiced eyes. The cut across his forehead was not only still there, it had widened, and he still bore the scratches on his arm where Rayne had grabbed him just a little too tightly. His skin too, seemed more ashen, with a sickly green tint to it.
Rayne looked down at his own hands. They were a pale shade of grey, but had a faint hint of blue to them. His skin felt smooth and cold to the touch, and he thought he felt very slight bumps and crevices here and there, but couldn’t be sure. He wondered how his face appeared to the others, as he couldn’t see it himself.
“You’re right,” Apolleta said. “Gabriel’s practically a rotting corpse, and Rayne’s like some kind of frozen specter. I don’t want that to happen to me. I have to get out of here! Please tell me how to get out of here!”
“I only bring souls into the Abyss,” Darrigan said. “It’s not my business to take them back out. You need to find your own way to make it let go of you.”
“How?!” she screamed, trying not to cry, shaking with anger.
“We’re all here because we did something wrong, how many times have I got to tell you all this?!” Rayne snapped at her.
“That may be true for you, but it’s meaningless for me! I’m a good person! And even if I did do something, it doesn’t mean shit, ‘cause I can’t leave this place!”
“Only at night—” Rayne started to speak, but Apolleta cut him off.
“No, I mean all the time. I haven’t woken up like you said I would, not since I was shot! I’ve been trapped here for God knows how long!”
“You mean you’re still—”
“Sometimes people are in comas for a while,” Darrigan said. “But, if you were dead, we wouldn’t be talking to you.”
“I was out for at least four days,” added Rayne, approaching her. “For all that time, I think I was here, but most of it, It was as if I were falling. I don’t know if time passed or not, but it seemed like I was falling forever. Then I was here, and when I woke up that’s what they said. That I’d been sleeping for four days.” He sat down next to her. “When you wake up, you’ll wake up. And then maybe you can do something about your situation.”
She grunted, not sounding reassured. “Do you have to sit so close? I’m freezing my butt off just being next to you.” She saw look on his face as she said that. “Sorry. I know you can’t help it.”
The embarrassed look on her face changed, and her mouth dropped open, then closed again, like a confused fish. Her eyes went wide, trying to comprehend something. Rayne looked at her strangely, but then he saw the reflection in her eyes. Himself, pale, eyes hidden in shadow, and a darkened black mass, spreading behind him, like billowing smoke rimmed with a violet light.
“Uh, Mercer?” Gabriel’s voice quaked.
He whirled around, face to face with the darkness that had appeared out of nowhere. Beside him, he felt Apolleta putting distance between herself and whatever this thing was.
“Oh hell.” A dawning sense of understanding spread into Rayne’s mind, as he knew what this thing was. Seeking to confirm his suspicious, the center of the black shadows cleared, forming a rift surrounding a burning violet eye. Twin tentacles shot out around him and yanked him from of his seat into the blackness. He heard the shocked screams of his companions, but they were drowned out by the shifting world, buried beneath the louder voice of a more powerful being that simply whispered.
“Found you.”
Chapter 10
Rayne found himself above a raging sea, where turbulent waves splashed in all directions beneath the eye of the storm. The shadowy mass that brought him here served as merely a portal, dragging him away from the neutral lands to the realm of water. He knew its intent, and it was not a friendly one.
“Did you think that if you left this place, you’d escape?” a voice sneered over the shrieking of the wind. The great eye burst open inside the swirling maelstrom, staring down upon him. “I have walked the Abyss for over eight billion years; there is no place you can hide from me. I can find you anywhere and bring you back to my realm!”
Hopelessness filled Rayne. This monster knew him now, and it didn’t seem happy to simply let him go. Years, months, the rest of his life suddenly felt a lot shorter.
“Please,” he begged. “I wasn’t going to return here anymore. You would have never seen me again! Can’t you just let me go?”
“Why? So you can gloat about how you, an insignificant speck, escaped my wrath? Your escape was a fluke, and I intend to fix that!”
“Why?! The Abyss already has me! I’m already damned! What does it even matter if you destroy me or not? Did this insignificant speck wound your pride so badly?!”
The eye glared at him as well as a disembodied eye could. So far up above in the sky, the razor sharp winds and clouds scattered around the eye broke its fire apart, diminishing its power over Rayne. He was terrified, numb, but his mind found its clarity here, allowing him to taunt the beast rather than cower in fear.
“You’re pathetic!” he continued, glaring right back at the eye. “Getting so upset over one tiny mortal, obsessing over finding it. For a creature so enormous, you really are small minded!”
Black tentacles burst through the clouds straight towards him. Not ready to resign himself to death, Rayne pulled himself away from the ocean, clinging to a faint hope that maybe he could get away long enough to think of something.
The Abyss shifted around him, and he fell into a world of a deep blue and turquoise, on sandy soil surrounded by tall rocky spires reaching up into dark watery night. He felt weightless, plunged deep within an airless realm. As he gasped, a bubble escaped his mouth, floating upwards into the blackness.
“Am I underwater?” he asked, his voice clear. He didn’t feel like he was drowning, but then again, breathing was optional here.
He floated upwards, though he knew he wasn’t safe here. But he also feared that even if he ran elsewhere, Tomordred would find him anyways, and drag him back. He didn’t know how the beast had found him the first time, or if running away was even an option now.
Forms drifted past him here in the deep. Waterlogged, decaying corpses floated among the tall formations of stone. There were larger bodies with more awareness, great underwater monstrosities whose burning eyes filled the water with shimmering lights, plunging all into darkness when they passed behind the spires. These sea monsters were hundreds of times Rayne’s size. Unlike Tomordred, they behaved more like animals without capability of higher thought, only interested in feeding on the floating corpses—or even each other, he noticed as he watched two savage eel-like monsters clash and bite at each other. He’d have to be careful not to catch their eyes.
As he drifted through the silent, underwater world, he found all manner of broken ships scattered in pieces on the sea floor, filled with giant holes that ruined them of ever being seaworthy again. They were ancient vessels, wooden galleons, antique battleships. More modern crafts of iro
n and metal, submarines, even aircraft carriers, lay here too. Rayne didn’t recognize some of them, for they were alien sea craft like nothing he had ever seen on Earth. They laid here in their final resting place, and the damned souls of their passengers rested among them, drifting around Rayne as he swam.
Out of the darkness he saw a twisting tentacle reaching at him. Staying calm, he grabbed one of the floating corpses and pushed it at the lithe black tendril. It seized the offered cadaver and dragged it, screaming, into the black void of the watery domain’s upper echelons. Rayne exhaled a tense breath, and started to swim. He didn’t have a lot of time. He had to focus himself out of here before Tomordred saw through his ruse.
The black tentacle lashed out from right in front of him, grabbing at him from the darkness. More followed, and a wavy violet light glimmered through the ocean darkness, watching. Tomordred had seen right through his ruse. Rayne’s mind went into panic mode, his thoughts drowning as more tentacles surrounded him. He didn’t have time to think, rationalize a logical escape. If he didn’t escape this place now, he was going to be eaten. The waters around him swirled, as Rayne’s frantic mind pictured the last place he’d ever want to go, the last place Tomordred would ever look for him.
The calming coolness in the underwater depths vanished, replaced by the most painful burning Rayne had ever known. He fell through red vapor, intangible, yet it stung his flesh terribly. The ground spread below him, dazzling his eyes with blinding light. It seemed like miles below, but he could feel the unbearable heat it generated. Was it the surface of some world? A lake of lava? Something far hotter than lava? He didn’t have to ponder where he was right now. It was the last place he should ever be. Well, second last. But he didn’t see Tomordred. If the beast had followed him here, he had hidden himself awfully well.
Black shapes floated in the red mist, standing stark against the blinding surface beneath. As Rayne fell further, they sparkled in the bright light, dark floating stones with smooth, faceted surfaces, like black crystal, roughly the size of a sedan. Rayne smashed into the nearest one, and rolled to a stop on hard ground, his bones aching, mind scattered as he still hadn’t grasped the reality of his situation just yet.
“Fucking hell,” he gasped when the world stopped spinning. The smooth ground burned his exposed flesh, but compared to the alternative, he couldn’t really complain. It was hard for him to keep his footing here, no place where he could find relief—cooler ground, perhaps shadow to hide in. The crystal drifted down slowly, the temperature steadily rising with every step closer to the ground. Rayne couldn’t see anything beneath him now, but every so often, crimson, fiery tendrils shot into the air, curling around itself like smoke, and dissipating into the burning haze. A hot wind picked up, and the haze began to flow, faster and faster, until it became a flaming tornado, roaring like a maddened beast. The sound was so loud Rayne’s hands flew to his ears, and he screamed to drown it out. Even if Tomordred hadn’t followed him here, he couldn’t stay. He would go insane if he didn’t leave this place.
The roaring intensified, covering Rayne’s screams, and he stopped as his voice gave out. Mixed inside the burning hellstorm, he thought he heard laughter. Like a low chuckle at first, it mocked him, louder and louder, until the roaring was nothing but the maddening cackles of an unseen beast. Smoke bubbled from the ground, spreading in pools around Rayne, rising into the vortex. At first, Rayne thought it was a reaper. But the overwhelming presence this smoke carried squashed that idea. This was something far more terrible than Darrigan’s kind. It stood before him without substance, but there was consciousness, without a doubt. The laughter echoing from this world centered on the smoke, which curled up, shaping into a skeletal creature, just a shadow of something far more sinister.
It spoke with a voice like smoldering coals, its words overshadowed by an alien tongue Rayne couldn’t fathom. It was all simply noise to him, and from the menacing tone, the creature wasn’t trying to be understood. It was spreading fear, tormenting Rayne, and he didn’t know if he was going to be eaten right there, or tortured first. His mouth opened and shut, but his voice would not obey. He knelt there gawking, forgetting about the heat as he could not even look away from this monster.
The creature hissed something, reaching out a vaporous black hand to him. Rayne still couldn’t force his vocal chords to work, though he still tried. The desire to live screamed inside him, but he could not bring himself to submit to this unknowable being. He glared, summoning up all his strength and feeling his voice, weak and raspy as it was.
“Tomordred’s scarier than you are,” he sneered.
The hellfire around him roared, and the smoke plumed to greater heights. It gestured, and the ground trembled, cracking open as massive chains burst free and seized Rayne. They were enormous, each link the size of Rayne’s own head, and they glowed red-hot, their searing energy singeing his flesh. His efforts to scream came out as nothing but a strangled squeak, his voice crushed by oppressive heat. He fell on his hands and knees as the blazing metal burned its way into his skin.
Smoldering orange light grew within each of the creature’s many eye sockets. Its voice rumbled, speaking final words as it rose into the sky, becoming part of the swirling flame that consumed the skies. A growing laughter followed, so loud, that when it ended, the ringing in Rayne’s ears was the only thing he could still hear.
He felt quite helpless now, which seemed to be a recurring curse. He struggled with full fury against the chains, but his actions bound the links to him tighter, their bright steel cutting and igniting his flesh to bring greater agony. He ceased his frantic thrashing to keep the chains from becoming even tighter, and flopped over the ground. He wanted to scream, to cry, to lash out and tear apart every single soul in this place to satisfy his anger, but there was nothing he could do anymore. He dug his fingers into the crystal beneath him, scratching it deep.
A frozen wind swept past him, a numbing, Arctic aura emanating from his very skin. The cold did not bother Rayne at all, but to his delight, the metal chains cooled, becoming as normal iron. They quickly began to heat again, the power of this realm far greater than anything Rayne could muster, but the faint relief helped clear his mind, allowing him to think again. His body trembled. That creature was far beyond him. What was he thinking, being so defiant?
But that wasn’t the issue now. He was chained to a falling rock, above a flaming landscape hotter than the surface of a star, and dropping fast. He had to get out of here, before the inevitable happened. Yet as hard as he focused, he still remained in chains, pinned to the rock. Whatever they were, they kept him from willing himself away, pinning his soul in one single place. His hands brushed over them, but they dug too tightly into his skin, and he couldn’t just wiggle free. He tried to freeze them with his hands, and though frosty ice crept from his fingers over the metal links, it only cooled them briefly, before the intense heat melted it into water.
“Dammit!” he swore, smashing the ground with one fist.
He paused, and ran a finger over the smooth surface. He couldn’t break the chains, that much was obvious. But what if he broke the ground? Each chain was embedded in the crystal. He didn’t know how deep. A cracked crater surrounded the point where each one had broken through. He ran a hand over the nearest one, and felt ice spreading from his fingers. It didn’t last long, and quickly melted. But there was a reaction, and he watched the cracks spread further. Again, he froze the ground, and the cracks spread further. He grabbed the chain and pulled, shattering the ground in a straight line. The cracks spread like spiderwebs in a chain reaction, covering the entire ground, branching deeper into the crystal formation. Rayne heard a deep rumbling, and a massive crack spread beneath him, as the crystal shattered with one final, dying shriek.
Suddenly he wasn’t on the ground anymore. There was no ground. The chains fell free, still wrapped around him, and the shattered remnants of the crystal plummeted into the boiling plasma far below. He plunged after it, his hea
rt rising into his throat as encroaching death stared him in the eye. He wiggled around in the chains, prying them free from his scorched flesh. Without being attached to anything, they had more give, and he pulled them off his arm, then over his torso. At last the final loops fell free, and the entire set of chains fell away from him. He saw the broken crystal fall straight into the molten surface below, set ablaze by incomparable fire. The chains fell quickly, and Rayne didn’t have time to waste. He closed his eyes and concentrated, imagining someplace far away from the very embodiment of Hell.
* * *
The fiery vortex vanished, replaced by a disgusting bog filled with rolling blobs of fleshy pink landscape and marshy areas filled with blood, surrounded by viscera covered trees, and pervaded by a rotting stench that floated on thick, pale orange fog. Incredibly unpleasant, but this was clearly the domain of another god, and Rayne hoped it would be a little harder for Tomordred to track him here. Not to mention that other monstrosity. He stepped back a little, closer to the trees, before he noticed the drooling, snapping mouths covering them.
“Ugh, that’s vile!” he spat. He had difficulty talking, as the stench was so overbearing it filled his throat the instant he opened his mouth, prompting him to almost vomit. His flesh still ached, badly burned from those chains, blackened wherever the metal had touched him. Brushing his fingers over the injury brought some relief, but the pain left him half-delirious.
Something clutched his shoulder, then. Rayne flung out his hand and grappled whatever had grabbed him, freezing it solid.
“Ow!” Darrigan roared, dragging his hand back. Rayne’s eyes widened.
“It’s you!” he exclaimed.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?!” The demon glared at him, clutching his frozen appendage.
