by Greg Curtis
Of the little he knew, all except Hermen had entered the lair. All had lost. All had been caught and branded something none could bring themselves to speak about, not that that surprised Mikel. It was something he himself could barely bring himself to recall. Every time he tried, the feeling of overwhelming horror possessed him, making him want to run, to be sick. It grew no weaker with time.
Instead he spent his time shying away from the horrible darkness of that time, and instead tried to focus on the positives. And despite the air of gloom that seemed to surround him, there still seemed to be a few bright sparks to cling to. For a start while he was down, - well down - he still wasn’t out. Mikel still somehow held a glimmer of hope. He still had every intention of trying to rescue the prisoners, to finish his mission, even though it might be nearly impossible. Perhaps it was a genetic thing, perhaps just false bravado, but he knew that that hope, was the one thing that could save him, and he clung to it with a fierceness he’d never before known.
Hope was something the others no longer had. He could see it in their eyes when they stared back at him, and perhaps more importantly, when they couldn’t meet his eyes. It had left them to be replaced only with a terrible sadness, an overwhelming melancholy. A resignation and an admission of defeat. As if on some level they had given up. As they had. Perhaps he couldn’t blame them for that. But in doing so, they had also given up on life. The five of them were now effectively sitting here, rotting. Waiting to die. The terrible part was that they one and all knew it. It shone out of their eyes. They all knew it and could do nothing.
It depressed him. But more seriously, it scared him. For they had been here much longer than him. They had adapted. Every question he had asked, would ask, they surely had already asked and had answered. Was he destined to follow them down this bleak and foreboding road to death? Every fibre of his being resisted it, no matter how bad the pain became. Every single atom knew he had to move forward.
Yet the pain caused by the brand was unbearable. It hit him daily, perhaps twenty or thirty times. It brought him to his knees screaming uncontrollably, and left him vomiting with reaction afterwards. In the depths of his mind he knew the same questions as they must have known. How long could he resist before it broke him. Before he became a babbling idiot. Logically he knew he had to break free and break free soon if he was to have any hope of surviving this. But logic thus far had been useless.
After weeks of struggling to find a solution he had gotten precisely nowhere. He still didn’t have a single scrap of a plan.
All he did have were ways to minimize the pain, to decrease the number of times it hit him each day. But he also knew instinctively, that if he used them they would leave him further behind the eight ball. For while they were effective against the pain they crippled his ability to fight back, and ultimately wore down his will to live. And they were ways that the others had started to use, just to survive.
There were certain things he couldn’t think of. Things that would bring the brand screaming back into life. Yet things that he had to think of, or give up.
Highest on that short list was anything to do with the angels, with Sherial. The merest thought of her brought an inferno to his face, and an answering response from the imprints where her hands had held him as they made love. Yet he was unable to stop thinking of her. A free moment, a stray recollection and he was on his knees screaming. Even knowing the pain, he knew not knowing of the glory that was Sherial would be intolerable. He prayed it would always be so.
Positive thoughts were also frowned upon. Love, hope, happiness all were an anathema to the brand, and it told him so daily. This then was its purpose, he knew. To drive away all hope, all love, all goodness. To leave behind the bitter and twisted empty shell of what had once been a man. It was something he fought with all his might. But for how long?
How long could he remain defiant?
At the start he had forced all his energies into understanding. Into learning everything he could about the village and the villagers. Learning about the brand and finding ways of living with it. He’d used every possible means he could think of. He’d begun by interrogating the others, yet had gotten nowhere. They knew no more than him. Despite months and in one case more than a year of having been stuck in this village with the damnable demon brand, they’d discovered not a thing.
Determined to learn, he’d carried out experiments, mapping the intensity of the pain against his distance from the lair. A difficult job at best since there were no units for pain. Thus far all he’d managed to discover was that the pain was normally unbearable anywhere in the same valley as the lair and only a little better in the village. Yet it was barely any less bearable elsewhere. As far as he could tell, distance didn’t really matter to the thing as long as he stayed away from the demon lair.
Next he’d tried putting together all the resources of all the villagers and arranging them into some order, trying to merge their talents into a cohesive whole. All in the hope that they could perhaps put together some sort of assault. It was of course doomed. Even before he began he should have known that much. One look in their eyes and he should have known they could never go in again.
When that had failed he’d tried to learn the sum total of all their knowledge, hoping to put it all together in at least his own mind. It had been hopeless. Even when they wanted to talk, to share their knowledge, he found he couldn’t understand them. It was as though their skills, their knowledge were based on principles that didn’t apply on Earth. Weeks later, he knew no more now than he had at the start.
That much he probably should at least have expected from the outset, the task was simply too huge for any man. But it wasn’t only his failure that made it impossible. It was everyone’s. The others couldn’t bring themselves to say much of their lives, their knowledge of the universe. That way led to hope, which was swiftly followed by pain caused by the brand. Instead they hid themselves away whenever he even looked like he was ready to try again. It didn’t stop him trying though.
His personal development had no more been left alone either. He had practiced his mantra’s, his mental discipline night and day, trying to overcome the pain, but that too was proving fruitless. Whatever else it was, the pain had nothing to do with any of the parts of his mind and body he could consciously control. It sheared right through his concentration like a hot knife through butter. The best he could achieve with his rituals was to recover more quickly. He still practiced them, either unwilling or unable to give them up. They were after all, who and what he was.
He’d worked on his fitness too, trying to hone the power of his body at least, and there he had had some small measure of success. He’d built his own gym in the nearby trees, and through it and his knowledge of physical education, thought he was holding his own against the battle of the bulge. He didn’t feel any weaker anyway.
His martial arts practice was also benefiting from his time, as he used the pain, the memory of his failure and his anger to focus his mind and body into a weapon.
The others had watched him as he trained occasionally, no doubt all believing him insane. But none pointed that out. Besides he put on a good show. He’d rebuilt almost all of his gym over time. He had bars and weights, benches of a sort, and a running track. Swimming was out, it was simply too cold, but in turn he’d begun his martial arts training with weights attached to his hands. Physically his body at least was holding its own, and through that small measure of success he held a small measure of hope to him.
He’d tried to interest the others in his training, but none had had the will. Abrax couldn’t even understand the concept, apparently fitness for him was done in some completely different manner. The rest had utterly different concepts of power and strength, one and all quietly laughing at him and trying to hide it. Grould perhaps summed it up best one day, in that incredibly soft, caring voice. Why would you want to be able to kick someone in the head when with a single thought you could fry their brains?
&nb
sp; Yet with his single thought he hadn’t been able to. It was something that Mikel ached to tell him, and yet couldn’t bring himself to. The man had already suffered more than enough.
Above all Mikel knew that everything he could do to keep himself moving forward, was vital if he was to have any hope. So despite the apathy around him, and the pain of going against the brand Mikel carried on training knowing that no one there had any better idea. The pain hit him hard, repeatedly, and he had no answer for it, but he refused to give in. Every time he fell down screaming, he just got up, stronger and more determined, refusing to let himself fail.
As he told the others, and especially Abrax who still seemed to revere him, he wasn’t just tough, he was stupid. But privately he also worried; for how long? For the one thing he knew for certain was that this place was a death trap. Every day he was here it sucked a little more of the hope and the life out of him, and sooner or later if he didn’t break free he would wind up as an empty shell of a human being.
He had to break free.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN.
“In pride, in reasoning pride, our error lies;
All quit their sphere, and rush into the skies.
Pride still is aiming at the blest abodes:
Men would be angels, angels would be gods.
Aspiring to be gods, if angels fell,
Aspiring to be angels, men rebel.”
~Alexander Pope. 1688-1744
Mikel sat on a log in the clearing not far from the village. In theory he was out looking for more berries and vegetables to bring back, but in reality he was just sitting, feeling sorry for himself. It wasn’t an unusual thing.
Months had passed, with fall slowly becoming winter, and then after the last of the cold had passed the first buds of spring arrived, bringing with them warmer nights, bird song and strangely perfumed air. But for some reason the cold of winter had never left Mikel.
In that he knew he was no different to the others in the village, though they all showed it differently. They all lived with winter in their hearts.
Mya wasn’t the sort to give into depression. She got angry instead. Rip roaring furious in fact. And whenever she began to rage the world trembled. Broken trees, burnt rock faces and wrecked buildings multiplied as the awesome power of her staff came into play.
There was a place she went to, when she felt the rage descending, a broken rock valley, filled with the reminders of her moods. Mikel had seen it – once. Once was more than enough. It was shortly after he’d arrived at the village, still at a time when he’d hoped to think of a way to beat the demons, still at a time when the pain was driving him crazy. He’d seen puddles that had once been massive rocks, melted all over their neighbours. There was a cliff face, so destroyed by the pulverizing action of her staff that it resembled a mountain of gravel held together by heaven alone knew what.
It had stunned him, the first time he’d seen it. It still did. He’d known before then of her ability - he’d even felt some of the power of her staff. But he’d never before understood it. He’d somehow thought when she told him what she was, that magic, for want of a better word, was akin to a bag of party tricks. Full of surprises and perhaps even holding a few practical applications. But this, - her magic was something completely other. This woman carried the power of hurricanes and volcanoes at her finger tips. She could decimate a city as efficiently as a nuclear bomb, - with magic. And she’d still lost.
It gave him no pleasure to know that she too had failed. At least if she’d succeeded, he might still be an unworthy failure but he wouldn’t be responsible for those poor souls still being trapped within the demons’ lair.
Mya wasn’t the only one who raged. Herman also got angry, but given his specialty – technology, he couldn’t do much about it. Whatever world he’d come from, he couldn’t recreate its entire super science on this primitive back water. Not without his own tech. He was completely powerless here, another reason he raged.
Mikel had not seen Herman’s assault, but the others assured him it had been spectacular. Explosions, flashes of light, the beginning of world war three. He too had opened the outer door, like all the others, but had gone no further. The demons somehow had stopped him too, branding him with the same mark on body and soul as the rest. He fought the pain with drugs, pharmaceuticals he carefully manufactured out of the bark of local trees, but there was little else he could do with his technology gone. So his fury was completely wasted, turned inwards into self-hatred and loathing.
The same loathing that Grould lived with. He hid it well beneath that mild, almost meek face. But sometimes in his eyes, it showed through. He held himself together, Mikel knew, somehow, mainly by self discipline, but he could not let the pain of his defeat go, and so it ate at him too.
Abrax, for all his simplicity, was harder to read. Sometimes he seemed angry, sometimes turned inwards toward self-hatred. Sometimes he was just lost. Yet the big lug had something none of the others had, faith. He believed in the angels. He believed in Mikel, and so he endured. It made it that much tougher for Mikel to bear his load, knowing what the barbarian expected of him somehow, but he wouldn’t turn his hope away. That would be heartless.
Lea was a different kettle of fish altogether. The powers of his animal friends had been no match for that of the demons. They’d killed half his creatures and driven such fear into the rest that they wouldn’t go near the village let alone the lair. Moreover, the pain of his brands made it hard for him to maintain contact with them, as his concentration was impaired. And so he fought the pain as best he could and despaired beyond the ability of his friends to help. But at least he had friends. Lea of them all was the only one of them who’d brought companions, albeit lions and other assorted big carnivores.
Was that important he wondered? Did it matter that all the others had come alone into this strange land, at the behest of the angels, to do battle with the might of hell?
It wasn’t the first time the thought had crossed his mind. Each of them a solitary champion. Each the acknowledged or unacknowledged mover and shaker of his or her world. Each the master of his art, - or science or magic or whatever. Surely, he'd speculated before, that was why the angels had chosen them? As those with the greatest power, the greatest ability, they’d had the best chance of freeing the captives.
But again and again that concept had fallen apart. And it always fell apart at the same point, Abrax. Sure the guy was huge. Sure he was probably the fastest and most powerful man Mikel had ever seen. He could run like the wind and break boulders with those hams he called hands. But he had the brain of a gnat, though admittedly a good-natured gnat.
Any of the others, himself included when he’d had all his equipment with him, could have beaten him with one hand tied behind their back. Herman and Mya could have fried him without a seconds thought. Lea could have set an army upon him. Grould could have made him believe he was a ballerina in the nutcracker for eternity. Why would the angels have chosen the big lug? They must have known he’d never stand a chance.
And then again, why Grould either? The novel thought possessed him. He was powerful, no doubt about it. His psychic abilities made him perhaps the most formidable of them all. There was no one he couldn’t convince to kill himself, none he couldn’t turn against the rest. But he too was surely like the angels. They had those same abilities, - telepathy, telekinesis, tele-every bloody thing, and presumably more so. And they couldn’t beat the demons. So how could he? And yet even as he thought that, something in it struck a certain chord within him. There was a wrongness in his reasoning, but for the life of him he couldn’t spot it.
At least it wasn’t too hard to know why he’d been picked, and perversely why he’d failed. He was a thief. Someone who relied on both his wits and his knowledge. So technically he had both raw cunning and advanced science behind him. He should have been a good choice to make it through. But he hadn’t even come close.
Sure he’d opened the door. Sure he’d even entered a
little way, even made the dungeons. But a thief relies on not being seen. And he’d been seen. Probably from the first moment he’d even approached the lair. Seen and been laughed at. And then soundly thrashed.
A scientist relies on understanding and using the forces of his universe. And the demons, whatever monstrous forces powered them, didn’t have the same limitations. As far as he could see they didn’t have many limitations at all.
His gases, his darts, his grenades, his sun bursts, - all had failed because they didn’t really affect demons. They were so different that nothing he’d tried had had any lasting effect. Even the holy water bullets had barely slowed them down, and for every one that fell another ten would rise. Discipline and martial arts training had helped but little. What use is it to be able to kick in any two dozen heads a second when the enemy comes at you in the thousands? It was only the speed of his legs and a good dollop of luck that had got him out at all.
Or was it? Not for the first time that question troubled him.
