Eternity

by Nealis, James

  I don’t know how long I have been playing. It could be just hours or perhaps days. I only know that my mouth grows parched and dry so I remove the reeds. I once again accept the sound of silence as if it were a warm blanket on a cold and windy night.

  “It’s like the Origin is here with us,” a familiar voice says.

  “The Origin isn’t concerned with you,” another voice reprimands. “He’s left us here to die.”

  “Perhaps,” the familiar voice says. “I just cling to a delusion I suppose.”

  “What are your names?” I ask into the darkness.

  For a moment I am greeted with nothing but silence.

  “Names,” an unknown voice rings. “What good are names in a place like this?”

  “They remind us of the Origin’s care and concern for us,” I say. “I choose to believe that he will save me.”

  “Do I know you?” the familiar voice asks.

  “I’m Michael,” I say. “How is it that I know your voice?”

  Laughter rings out from the voice. “Michael?”

  “Who are you?” I ask. Feeling slightly annoyed now that he hasn’t had the decency to respond already.

  “Has it been that long that you no longer recognize my voice?” he says. “It’s me, Auro. It’s been so long! You have no idea how wonderful it is to hear a friendly voice. What are you doing here?”

  I don’t know whether to feel joy at the sound of a friendly voice or shame at the fact I put him here. I cast him down here after he prevented me from attacking Cephus. Another casualty of my empty but unstoppable thirst for vengeance.

  “Auro,” I say. “I put you in this horrible place.”

  “You did indeed,” he says.

  “You hate me.”

  “I do sometimes,” he says. “But in other moments, my heart breaks for you. You carry the scars of loss. How could anyone endure the loss of a parallel?”

  “But by putting you in this place, I took your parallel away from you.”

  “I will see her again.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I say. “But I admire your hope.”

  Auro laughs. “I’m a Scribe. I’ve read countless stories of the Origin’s goodness. I cannot conceive that it could possibly cease in its constancy over something as trivial as my own existence.”

  “I wish I saw it that way,” I say.

  “But I can’t believe they threw you in here. Who other than the Prince even has that authority?”

  “It was the Prince,” I say. “Auro since you were cast down here, things got really bad. It’s dark.”

  “Good, then the Origin will light a fire.”

  “I believe they threw Gabriel in here somewhere too,” I say. “Or I suppose you knew him by the name, the Frosted.”

  “If they did, he must be far down the chamber, because I haven’t heard or seen him.”

  It dawns on me that it’s possible Gabriel isn’t just locked away. Could Sal have really allowed the Prince to kill him? I know there is a lot of animosity between the two, but this seems really horrendous.

  “Why would the Origin let this happen?” I ask.

  “We are imperfect. Perhaps we deserve this torment, but He is holy. The greatest one of all. I will not turn my affection from him over because of bad circumstances.”

  I am completely shocked at the goodness of his heart. I grip the bars and bring my face to the bars and prepare to speak, but I am interrupted by another.

  “What good being would leave you and abandon you here? If he were so powerful and good, wouldn’t he remove this torment from you?”

  “I suppose creatures will ask that question for all time,” Auro says. “Why do bad things happen to the good? But we have free will and what we do with it is on us. But that doesn’t mean I won’t pray for salvation. I believe He will answer my prayer soon.”

  “Your faith amazes me,” I say. “You are steadfast.”

  “Never let go of faith.”

  “But we are stuck here and there is no way out.”

  “It’s a dead end,” an unfamiliar voice says. “There is no escape for those the Prince condemns.”

  “But have faith,” Auro says. “Maybe the Origin will move upon the Prince to release us.”

  Silence lingers until I break it.

  “How can he think he would succeed?” I say. “How could he possibly take on the Lord of Heaven? He is a created being that plans to rise above the Creator?”

  “Pride must have corrupted his thoughts,” Auro says. “It clouds our vision and poisons the heart. But I daresay that I would not expect the Origin to sit back and watch. He will not be threatened by any created being. He will want to watch the system he created rise up and stop this. He loves to watch free will play out before him. He loves to see good triumph over evil.”

  “I would face off against Lucifer if I could win,” I say. “But he already defeated me. He is far stronger than any of us ever suspected.”

  “Surely a time of firsts,” Auro says.

  “All of this is a side issue. You always have good ideas. Do you have one for getting out of here?”

  “Yes, there is a way out.”

  “There is?”

  “Yes.”

  “What is it?”

  “Pray,” he says. “Humble yourself and pray.”

  I look down and shake my head.

  There is no hope.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  The End of Days

  THIS WILL BE MY LAST DAY in this cell. I cannot take another minute. The only difficulty in devising my escape was finding the perfect method of my own death. I don’t fear the pain but I want it to be effective.

  What I believe to be a month has now passed by and it’s given me a lot of time to think.

  For awhile, I found purpose lightening up the great chambers with my gift. I did it in cycles, as if to alternate days and nights. The others, they thanked me. It helped them to fight off the monotony and the madness of constant darkness.

  And surprisingly the conversations fostered a fondness for my eternal companions. Perhaps it was because they were all that I have, or maybe it’s because I was so broken that I lost the ability to feel contempt.

  Some of them were thrown in here for some dastardly deeds. For instance, Koryn was a Rogue. I saw him just before he was sentenced that first day I came before Lucifer in his Temple. He was the Rogue being sentenced that day.

  My conversations with Koryn enlightened me about why the Rogues really rebelled. It was far less sinister than I suspected.

  Long ago, the Rogues worshiped the Origin themselves. They had direct access to the throne. But when Lucifer grew in stature, he began to demand that the Rogues come through him for worship. The leaders of the Rogues refused. The conflict turned into a war.

  The merciless acts of killing and battle over time corrupted their hearts, creating a sense of unworthiness to seek the Origin himself. They grew secluded and alone. So when Cephus came, they were susceptible to his deceptions. They looked to him as a god, and they worshipped him in place of the Origin.

  Their callousness no longer seems like a great confusion to me.

  “I spend my every day realizing how deceived I was,” Koryn told me. “I raged against the Origin, but it was really the Prince who caused me so much pain.”

  So now I stand here in this cell suspended by the chain, feeling an intense loneliness and realizing that I fought for the wrong side in this great war. Perhaps the Rogues and Lucifer were both evil and cold. Both sought after the perversions of their souls, but I should never have allowed my hatred and anger to fuel me to fight for either of them. I should have gone straight to the Origin himself. But I didn’t. Instead, I allowed my anger and bitterness to take over my heart.

  I wasn’t fighting to help anyone but to feed my hatred. So now it’s time for me to take myself out of this story. I will lend myself the punishment I deserve. And in some slight way, I can’t help but hope that in the end, it will unite me with
Terra. I don’t know where angels go when we die, but I am willing to step across the veil.

  Anything beats this torment.

  I think about Terra as she cries out for me to stop trying to save her.

  “I will no longer try any more,” I whisper.

  My shoulders ignite brightening up the chambers.

  “You ready Auro?” I ask.

  “I am ready my old friend,” he says. “Let’s do this.”

  I begin to shift my weight to the left and then to the right. With each rock of my body, the cage swings the direction I lean. Back and forth, back and forth, the cage in which I’m confined swings farther and farther until finally my it falls within arms-length of Auro’s cage.

  He reaches out and grabs my cage.

  I quickly grab the tie which held together the wind instrument that Terra gave me. My hands rush around the bars of my cage and his, threading the reeds until they are tight.

  “Hurry up,” Auro says. “I can only hold on so much longer.”

  “Let go,” I say. “It’s tight.”

  “Do you think they’ll hold?”

  “We can only find out if you let go.”

  He releases the cage and I hold my breath. I am not fully confident that the reeds will be strong enough.

  But they hold.

  I smile, perhaps it’s morbid to feel joy at the thought of one’s own death, but I have lived through far too much hurt to find joy in anything else.

  “Now, are you sure you can go through with this?” I ask.

  “You are my friend,” he says. “I don’t want you to feel any more pain.”

  I nod.

  The red light from the flames of my gift flicker on his face. Giving him an almost menacing look. The perfect look for a killer.

  I withdraw the five wooden pipes from the flute. I have whittled them down. They are shorter, but far sharper, perfect wooden knives, just strong enough to pierce through my heart. If Auro does this right, I should bleed out in a period of days. I expect pain but I also expect to be free from this torment.

  I reach through the bars of my cage and into the bars of his cage. He takes the sharp knives from my hand.

  “These aren’t large enough to be lethal,” he says looking down at the rods. “Don’t you have anything larger?”

  “It’s all I have but it will do. You’ll just have to use a lot of force. It’s not like we are supplied with a whole lot of materials down here.”

  I lean up against the bars of my cage. Close enough for him to reach.

  “You sure you don’t have anything else?” he asks.

  “No, I have given you all that I have.”

  A sinister smile rises on his face. His singular eye sparkles. He takes one of the knives and swipes it across the reeds and cuts it.

  I reach out to stop him but I am too late.

  My cage swings away from him.

  It then swings back toward him. I reach but it’s too far away.

  The cage continues its swinging until it comes to a steady stop.

  “What was that?” I yell.

  My skin fully ignites. A fury of flame nearly in tune with the time that I exploded near the Rogue.

  “I am not letting you kill yourself,” Auro shouted. “I did everything to protect you in battle and I will do everything to protect you here.”

  “That was my only escape!”

  “The Origin will save us,” he says.

  “That wasn’t your decision to make.”

  My flames burst even higher and wider now.

  “Someone make him stop” a voice yells. “He will burn us all alive!”

  I ignore the comment.

  I feel furious. How dare Auro do this to me? I clench my fist with anger. My teeth grind together so harshly, I feel my them flattening.

  The rising flames now seem to almost be pressing down on me under the pressure. As if the burn is forcing me downward. I feel the pressure building, higher and higher in me as I think of all that I have dealt with.

  I caused the death of my parallel.

  The Prince betrayed me.

  Uriel died because of my own flaws.

  My breed trusted me to his own demise.

  Sal allows me to be falsely imprisoned.

  Auro betrays me even in suicide.

  I HAVE HAD ENOUGH!

  My flames explode beyond any level they have before.

  My cage blasts downward under the force of the explosion and the metal chain that holds my cage rips from the ceiling. Suddenly the cage is tumbling through the air. I try to stop the fall by catching the wind with my wings, but they won’t expand in such tight quarters.

  I feel the wind blowing against the flames and I reach out and grasp at the air as I fall.

  Slam.

  The metal bars clank against the stony ground.

  I close my eyes and just breathe for a moment. I try to regain my ability to think despite the trauma and rage of the past few minutes.

  What just happened? Where am I?

  I try to reorient myself.

  The floor to my cage is compressed from contact with the jagged rock covered ground. It’s a miracle that I was not crushed. But an eternity in a bent cage will feel far worse than the misery I dealt with before.

  “You ok down there?” Auro yells.

  I refuse to answer him. He is a traitor who could have put me out of this misery but-

  I see them.

  The wooden knives that I crafted are now sitting just four arms-lengths away from my cage. I can’t reach them but I see them. If only I could somehow open this cage, then I could walk over and get them to put myself out of my own misery.

  I examined the bars on the cage. They are tight and firm. There is no way that I can break them, and I have no tools by with which to cut them. Even if I could get one of the wooden knives, they could not cut through steel.

  I rest my head against the steel bars and press forward. The cage starts to tip and then falls back into position. It dawns on me; I could flip this cage and role it until I reach the knives so that I could end my life.

  It will be hard, but I am desperate to end this torment.

  I rock back and forth and force the cage onto its side. It hits the rocks hard. The vibrations from the fall cause intense pain and my leg jams against one of the rocks. For a moment, I nearly black out from the surge of agony but I regain myself and open my eyes. I once again reignite my gift so I can see.

  But wait, what is this?

  One of the metal bars appears to be bending now. One of the triangular rocks that I fell onto must of have lodged between the metal. It works its way up through the bars so tightly that the bars are now bending and widening. Perhaps if I could just pound this a few more times, it would stretch even more, perhaps far enough apart for me to escape. Then I could grab the knives and kill myself.

  I roll the cage over and over. It feels for a moment that it is hopeless but then it happens. The triangular rock beats against another with such a fierceness that it jams in farther and pulls the rods almost a full half of my shoulder length apart.

  I lower my head and press it through followed by shoulders which I scrunch and force through. It is incredibly painful but I force it and don’t stop until it’s done. I finally pull my legs and feet through and lie down on the jagged rocks.

  I can’t believe it; I have escaped the cages.

  I stand to my feet and pick up the wooden knives in my hand. I then by instinct stretch my aching wings.

  “Ohhhh.” I can feel the release of tension. It feels amazing.

  I look down at the knives in my hand, and suddenly I feel a sense of gratitude toward Auro. He did do me a kindness.

  I flap my wings, the fire still blazing from my shoulders.

  “I don’t believe it,” Koryn the former Rogue says. “You escaped.”

  “I’m going to get you all out of these cages,” I say. “And then, we are going to find our way out of here.”

  I rescue
Auro first and then Auro rescues Koryn.

  It only takes a few minutes and now I have freed more than 20 of them but there are thousands more cages left. We will rescue them all and won’t discriminate between those who were wrongly committed and those who committed real crimes. For I believe at this point we have the same mission: escape.

  I need every resource I can get.

  For my own safety, I have chosen to only give a knife to Auro and Koryn. Auro showed himself to be one who will not cause me harm earlier, so why would he now? I also gave one to Koryn. I don’t know why I put my trust in him but something confirms in me that I should. Perhaps it was his honesty, or maybe I just need to see a Rogue find redemption. For I am as vile as any Rogue.

  The others all make the same collective sigh of pleasure when they feel their wings expand. Some of them begin to weep right in front of me. They are all broken spirits. An eternity of torment will do that to a soul.

  I direct those whom I’ve rescued to follow my lead. If they each go and rescue others and command others to do the same, we will be able to quickly release all the captives. I show them how to find the large angular rocks and force them between the bars and within moments they get to work.

  “Gabriel,” I shout into the large hall. “Where are you?”

  He doesn’t respond. But I do hear another excited voice.

  “Savior!” he shouts. “I know where your Gabriel is, I do, but please don’t overlook me. Savior, prince, lord!”

  For a moment, the words bring me pleasure. It is the first time in a very long time that someone has recognized my hard work and labor. Not to mention, it is true; I will be releasing him from his cage.

  Who has ever escaped from Lucifer’s dungeons? Surely I am the first created being to have every pulled off such an amazing accomplishment.

  But the vision of the Prince with his pride and arrogance is the most pressing vision in my mind. At the moment, it is even more vivid than the sight of Terra being taken from my care. His pride, arrogance, and love of self transformed him into a beast of an angel who is willing to battle the Origin himself.

  “No,” I say. “If you say one more word that threatens to fill my world with pride, I will leave you in that cage forever.”