by Jae Vogel
Finally, I felt teeth sinking into my neck, and I was forced to yield in my assault.
An abdominal wound is never something that you should strive for in battle. I struck at him, and I did some serious damage. My hands were both stinging from the caustic blood of my victim, as I'm sure his mouth was stinging from tasting my flesh. The final break away from that deadly embrace resolved itself through expanding my wings. Impulsively, both wings shot outward from my back. The position of his claws was such that they were both pushed to the side from the force of my extension. The wind currents caught me and lifted me upward into the air, dragging my dagger upward along the inside of his abdomen. The blade got caught on his sternum, dragging me back down toward the ground after him. His weight was too strong for me to pull up into the air, but I refused to let go of the blade of the weapon. My muscles strained, but my grip held fast. Two hands clutched at my own and yanked the blade from its place in his chest cavity.
"You thought it was going to be so easy, you bitch!"
With the hands on my wrist still, he strained downward, gripping more of my arm with each pull. The wind buffeted in circles. Instead of fighting to pull me down, he grinned, and opened his own wings. An explosive leap into the air pushed us both into the mercy of the wind currents.
My body was raked against the side of the cliffs and debris fell downward toward the ground. Darkness swelled all around the two of us. The blackness grew as we flew upward, to the point where it was difficult to see anything more than the light of his eyes.
Xavier was strong enough to hold onto me with one hand, which as soon as he realized was the case, started using to his advantage. His left hand was a gauntlet which was armed with several blades and spikes. Not something which a Fae would typically wear, but most definitely something a cruel fucker would wear if he wanted to strike fear into the heart of his enemies.
I felt the edges of that cruel metal dig into my own body. He wasn't able to get a good strike in, as our weight and momentum was tied together in an upward spiral against the currents of the sky. However, between the cliffside, and the gauntlet, I ended up shedding more than my share of blood into the darkness below.
His teeth flashed in the reflection of a lightning bolt, and I saw my opportunity.
Inverting the handle of the blade with a quick flip, I brought the tip of the dagger down dead center on the hand that held onto my body. The timing was critical, as I needed him to be in mid-attack, and not securing my body with his gauntlet hand. The blade actually pierced through his hand, and into my own forearm. Just then, I released hold on the blade and folded my wings inward.
I fell backward toward the cliffside, and as I fell, I dug the claws of my feet inward on the sides of his body. The vicious gauntlet swung over my body, missing a blow to my face by inches. My feet dug inward into him, along either side of his lower flank. He pushed into the cliffside in response, trying to beat my body against the stone until I fell into submission. I twisted my body around and then opened my wings once more so I came up behind his body. In that upward thrust of motion, my claws reached out and dug straight into the connective tissue of his wings.
With a cry of pain and anger, my claws severed his wings, totally destabilizing his flight pattern.
Thousands of feet into the air, he had just lost his ability to fly, giving me the critical advantage I needed to move into my own killing strike.
I grabbed either side of his abdomen and pulled with all of my strength. The knife wound moved deeper with the tear, driving into the core of his body. Muscles tore, and a shower of blood and entrails fell downward beneath his body.
Even as he was being disemboweled, he struck out at my body with the knife. No matter the piercing pain into my arms, I held on tight, and refused to compromise in my hold. Both of us were falling downward now, dead weight plummeting toward the ground of the Hell Realms. Refusing to yield until I saw the faint blue flash of the portal, I committed to the dive, and every bit of fear it entailed.
At the last possible second, I let go of the body, and opened my wings once more. The impact still hurt, but I was able to hit the ground at an angle and roll off the impact. Xavier on the other hand was little more than a twitching mass of broken bones, crumbled up on the bottom of a cliffside that reached toward the sky.
With my eyes narrowed, and a limp in my step, I walked over to the fallen body of Xavier, picking up the dagger that was now held weakly in his hands. I placed the dagger between my teeth, not even caring that his blood now tainted my mouth. With both hands, I dragged him viscerally against the rough, rocky floor, until the two of us were placed in front of the portal.
The sound of clapping brought my attention out of the moment as Thane stood there, applauding my apparent victory. In the light of the portal, I could see that he held Erol in his arms, with his own sword at the ready. While Thane was watching with a look of dark amusement, Erol had a look of horror in his eyes. He wasn't staring at the woman he had known, but a murderous demon, covered in blood, and dragging the body of her victim to sacrifice.
I saw all of that in his eyes, but it didn't phase me whatsoever.
Without so much as glancing in their direction a second time, I pulled Xavier's body up toward the edge of the portal, and slammed him down on the ground in front of the glistening blue light.
Feed your spirit into the rifts between dimensions...
With a single thrust, I brought my blade across his throat, and into the ground below. Blood pooled out onto the floor around us, and I shoved his broken corpse into the portal.
White light exploded all around us, and lightening came down from the sky. The atmosphere smelled like Iron and burning amber. The portal expanded into an iris the size of the missing sun, and blinked in my direction.
I held no fear, and stood there, honoring my own integrity above all else. The eye expanded upward toward the sky, outward in all directions like a static field, cutting the realm in two. Geometrical formations emanated outward from that central locus; throbbing outward like the after-tremors of an orgasm.
One glance at Thane, told me all that I needed to know.
Erol was horrified, and Thane was drunk with the power and awe of possibility.
"IT'S WORKING!"
The time for compassion and peace was past. I knew which side of this conflict I had to fall on in order to survive and make the best of the situation. I knew what would be asked of me moving forward, and I knew that if I showed the slightest qualm in performing the action, it would throw the entire operation at risk. From this moment forward, I was working for myself, first and foremost.
Xavier had to die as an example, and I knew what needed to happen next.
Walking over to Thane, I glared at him in the brilliant light of the portal and took Erol by the collar of his robes. Erol had lost all composure. He was absolutely terrified, and for good reason.
My eyes spoke more than my words could manage, besides I didn't feel like screaming over the storm or the violent cracking of the portal.
With one hand on my dagger, and one hand on Erol, I dragged his body toward the portal.
Time to finish this...
Chapter 21
Gold and murderous, without the slightest inkling of care for what the future might hold, I brought the dagger up into the air. This strike would be for myself.
Not for Erol.
Not for Thane.
And not for some blood-thirsty portal.
My offering of the first sacrifice was for the portal. Xavier and whatever dark entities feasted on his soul were meant for one another. As for Erol, he ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or perhaps this was his destiny. I couldn't tell, and at this point, it didn't really matter.
The dagger was brought down at a spot just to the left of his heart, while my other hand wrapped firmly around his neck. I brought my index finger and thumb upward on his jugular vein, and pressed into the space between his jaw and his neck. I watched dispassion
ately as he struggled to breath, and then stopped. The dagger was pulled out of his chest, and I watched as he collapsed onto the ground.
More blood poured into the portal, and I watched as the body began to disappear.
Thane walked up behind me and dared to put his hand on my shoulder. The interpretation of my actions meant that I had succeeded. There was no reason for anyone to believe that I was under the command of anyone but myself. I pushed his hand off of my shoulder definitively, and turned around to meet him eye to eye.
"Don't you ever push that shit on me again. There is no reason for you or anyone else to tell me what to do. And if you ever draw that sword on me again, you had better be prepared to run me through. I swear by the names of whatever Gods are left after all of this, that I will pull your own hear out, and eat if I have to. Do I make myself clear?"
The silence that surrounded us was deafening.
The storm and the portal had merged into one, and darkness came out from the center of the portal.
I saw the reflection of the portal in Thane's eyes, causing the effect of a strange illusion.
His eyes in demonic form were slit, just like mine. We both had the eyes like a serpent, but with the reflection from the portal, the eyes looked like the eyes of a cat.
He didn't respond to me, except to turn me around and face the portal itself.
The brilliant blue outer ring, and arcing rays of light were still there, though the portal had shrunk in magnitude since its initial expansion. From the inside of the portal a darkness had expanded outward from the center. The effect was similar to staring into the heart of an eclipse.
The image reminded me of the saying "Careful not to stare into the Void too long, lest you find it stares back."
However, the horror did not stop there.
There, in front of me, Erol was levitating in the center of the portal. His body was hung upside down like an occult crucifix. Blood streamed from his side, and his hair was pushed about in either direction. I couldn't tell if he was alive or not, but the pulsating rays from inside of the Void itself caused his body to shift and undulate as though he were still breathing.
The sound of the atmosphere around us grew to a deafening series of percussive blasts. All the while, the edges of the portal became more and more wild in their expression. The boundaries between the void and the outer ring of blue began to dissolve, and the void from inside of the iris began to leak outward onto the ground by our feet. That same inky blackness poured out slow at first, and then stronger so that a deluge had formed.
The desert of the Hell Realms was being flooded.
Transformative action was taking place, and all the while, Erol floated there like a martyr for a lost realm.
The void clung to our legs and climbed upward to encase our bodies. The moment it touched us, it held our bodies fast to the ground. No amount of struggle could undo the connection to it. No matter how hard I tried, I was not able to free myself.
My mind flashed back to the first time I had been here inside of this world, and of the creature that had dragged me through the bottom of the tar, and into the human realm. As Erol had died, I figured that I might as well resign myself to my own fate.
I stopped fighting, and decided to sit down instead. The void flowed over me then, like a river, off the side of my body, and into the landscape behind me. The rain that fell from the sky, mixed with the fluid from the void, and swirled around either side of me. I looked down and saw the liquid was rising and was just below my breasts.
"What are we going to do?"
Thane had lost his sense of composure.
My response was descriptive of my belief about what the right thing to do was, in a situation like that. I responded with nothing. I did nothing. I did my best to embody complete acceptance of my situation.
There was no reason to behave otherwise.
Staring unblinking into the face of Erol, I saw that the void was consuming him. He had been suspended, and the outpour had been flowing out underneath his body. Now, when I saw him, it was clear to me that the substance of the Void was slowly working its way upward around the edges of his body. His complexion was pale, and his body thin. He looked like the Franciscan Friers in the textbooks of Occultism on the Material Plane.
Then, his eyes opened.
A shot of terror ran through me, as I saw that though the outer ring of light had all but faded, the light was now coming out from inside of his body. His eyes were the same brilliant fire as my memories of the sun. He screamed, and instead of a voice, coming out, all that was left was light pouring out from his mouth.
The Void seeped upward toward the edges of his mouth, and through the tear ducts of his eyes.
In my horror, I found that my bottom lip had been touched by the rising level of that thick tar which now covered all things. I closed my mouth in time to prevent it from getting inside of me mouth.
Tears flowed down from my eyes, and joined the deluge. As the fluid rose up over my own face, I remember the last picture in my mind was the fire of being coming out from inside of Erol. Those three points of light had burnt themselves into my retina, as I was overwhelmed by the darkness around me.
Once underneath the substance, there was nowhere for me to go; nothing for me to do but surrender completely.
I opened my mouth, and felt the liquid rush inward and threaten to fill my lungs. My own body was fighting against me, so strong was my will to continue living that I couldn't bring myself to open my lungs and allow the fluid to claim me completely. The deprivation of oxygen pushed my brain into panic. I tried to open my eyes, but they remained clasped shut. The haunting lights still pierced my vision and grew more brilliant still as I faced the swift approach of my own death.
Tremors ran through my body and my chest seized. I opened the back of my throat involuntarily, and gasped for the oxygen that I knew would never be there.
The Void rushed inside of me, and I felt my heart explode with the light that stained my vision. When the light burned out, there was nothing.
Once more, I was lost to time and space.
Chapter 22
The darkness to follow was not absolute. In all reality, I doubt that any darkness ever will be. Though, that doesn't mean that there won't be dark times in the future.
The theory comes from the place that says that things have existed in the past, and they will continue to exist, in the future, though their forms may modify. In addition to that theory, we also have the concept that there is a variety of content in this life.
Some content works for the destruction and degradation of other things, and other content works to rebuild. These sorts of things work cyclically, which means that for any progress to be made, there needs to be a certain level of destruction.
The difficulty comes not in accepting the components of destruction which are necessary to move forward, but in the way that we ourselves participate in destruction. What I mean to say specifically is that some destruction is fetishized, while other destruction is done out of carelessness.
As I lay floating in the void, a soft glow pulsed around me. I felt protection and a certain level of sacrifice given on my behalf. Something was protecting me from whatever elements were out there in the shadows. Large serpentine creatures swam past me, and inspected my body. I could not see them, but I could feel them. I could feel all things pass by me, and I had the freedom to reflect on their nature.
Even the monsters of the deep; creatures fierce and powerful from dimensions far away from the place where I grew up, you couldn't apply the concepts of good or evil to these things. The paradigm needed to accommodate them simply wasn't large enough to be effective.
There is a creature the size of a Leviathan who has just swam past a naked, floating body.
A body now bounces along the wake of the serpent.
There is no pain.
A soft, warm glow radiates from the inside of the vessel.
There is no fear.
Time it
self has ceased to hold any meaning.
Attachment to the world of the living is absent.
There is no realm of the dead. The vessel floats in an amniotic stasis in the Bardo between the realms.
That last thought echoed around in my mind for a while, pushing me along toward whatever reflections may be forthcoming. From that point, I moved into nostalgia.
I thought about all of the relationships I had been fortunate enough to have, and all of the pain that was associated with each of those relationships. Every single time I had grown close to somebody, there was this feeling of total and complete betrayal. The sadness was profound, and then I realized that there was no reason for the sadness, or the anger, or even the joy.
Holding onto those concepts was about as realistic as holding onto those friends.
If relationships and emotions are impermanent, and all of my states of mind are impermanent, then what is this thing that is holding onto me?
I looked down at my body.
That same body that I had reviled and despised throughout all of my experiences. That same body that had carried me when I had needed to achieve some pressing and ultimately futile goal. That body was outlined in light, a small, slow light that came out from the inside of my chest, and pushed me forward through the darkness between realms.
Light, of that sort, can only be called hope, because it refuses to part, even when all sensibilities indicate that reality should be otherwise.
Would I retain this light if I had been eaten by the Leviathan?
The thought bounced outward, but no response came back. No verbal response anyways. The light, on the other hand, continued in spite of my question, and I felt both petty and childish at the same time.
At that point, I realized that I was in a place that had been designated for myself, by myself. Or, at least, I realized that this might be a possibility.
I started to unfold myself, pushing my shoulders around a bit, and turning my neck this way and that. I wanted to try and wake myself up. To see if I could push my existence toward something different. I wanted to know if it was possible to move myself through space with the same freedom as was available for my mind to reflect on whichever topic came to mind.
