by Drew Foote
Kalyndriel readied herself for attack. She knew, without a doubt, that it would be a feeble gesture. The arachnid was a foe far greater than any she had encountered, and the best she could hope for was to buy time for the others to escape.
Coming here had been a terrible mistake.
“Yesyesyes, hello!” a high-pitched voice boomed merrily.
The words seemed to vibrate from the countless threads of the floor below. It was a deafening chorus that rang with unbearable volume, assaulting the travelers from every angle. They held their ears in pain as the awful greeting washed over them.
The spider halted in front of the cowering party, dipping its immense body down to peer at them. It tilted its shaggy head as it leaned forward. Its mandibles ground like a cheerful wood chipper.
“Hello?” Kalyndriel uncertainly replied. Her ears rang with the din of the spider’s voice. It appeared, however, that it was not going to kill them immediately. “Are you Orobas?”
“Yesyesyes! I am! Welcome honored visitors!”
The spider bobbed its tremendous head happily. Its eight legs danced a silent jig of excitement. Orobas leaned forward to inspect Kalyndriel closer, her tiny form reflecting in the mirror of its eyes.
“I know you, tiny Angel!”
She bowed formally. “I am Kalyndriel, and I am joined by Barnabas, Walter, and Arcturus. We seek your wisdom,” she said. “And if may, would it be possible for you to speak more softly? We are but tiny creatures, and your voice is overpowering.”
“Oh, yesyesyes,” Orobas replied sheepishly. He was still terribly loud, but it was slightly more bearable.
“It is a pleasure to meet you, Kalyndriel and friends! Long have the echoes of your fierce footsteps vibrated within my web. Archangel Kalyndriel, the Patron of Compassion. How surprised I am to see you; I thought you were killed by Apollyon!”
The spider nodded sagely.
Kaly was silent, unsure what to make of the statement. Was it a portent of the future that awaited? Barnabas and Walter exchanged baffled glances.
“I am no Archangel, Orobas. I am but an Avenging Angel.”
The spider chittered with agitation. “No, no, I’m quite certain! Apollyon murdered you most brutally, and how sad I was to see your lovely candle extinguished! I mourned greatly for your loss.”
“Or, perhaps I am mistaken!” the spider continued, his voice filled with sudden delight. “Who might you be, now? Kalyndriel the Black Queen of Hell? Or are you Kalyndriel the Kind, the Angel of Death? Perhaps another, as yet unseen?”
Kaly was at a complete loss. She had no idea how to respond to the confusing line of questioning. Orobas’ immeasurable eyes held her captivated within their gaze, their depths disorienting and mysterious. She lost herself within the mirrored pools.
She opened her mouth to speak, and then shut it rapidly as she felt the ground sway beneath her. Vertigo overcame her as the world twisted violently. Her vision blurred and darkened, and she forgot where she was.
Who was she, really?
Arcturus fell from her shoulder and began to reel and stumble on the ground below. His eyes rolled back in his head, and he started choking. He collapsed.
“Noble Orobas!” Barnabas called to the spider, who whirled his humongous bulk to face him.
“I am Barnabas! We come to seek your counsel regarding the fate of the Nexuses, and the material world itself.”
Orobas held Barnabas in his gaze as though the Demon was a tiny insect on display. “Yesyesyes! Well met, Barnabas!” he responded joyously, mandibles weaving. “Barnabas, the Angel of Humility!”
Orobas peered closer at the Demon. “No, that’s not quite right. Director of Greed? The Dark Prince of Terror?”
“Um, well, not exactly? Just Barnabas, a Demon of Pride.”
Waves of confusion swept over him, and he swayed unsteadily on his feet. What was happening, here? He felt his mind split into a thousand pieces, each separate, each unique. He fell to his knees, holding his head in his hands to keep it from exploding.
Walter watched the exchanges with puzzlement and dawning comprehension. He suspected he knew what was happening; perhaps the spider could see the multitude of paths that might have been taken. Perhaps Orobas could see potentiality.
“Orobas,” Walter asked urgently. “Do you speak of things that could have come to pass?”
The spider pranced merrily in place like an excited puppy the size of a cruise liner. Orobas’ magnificent array stared into the depths of Walter’s soul.
“Mr. President! It is an honor! I’m a huge fan, although you really shouldn’t have accepted all those bribes; that was highly inappropriate!”
The ground spun dangerously beneath Walter. His stomach churned and his eyes watered, but he continued to address the spider. “I’m no president, but are you saying that I might have been one?”
“Yesyesyes!” Orobas replied gleefully, his legs quivering. “But no, that’s not it, at all. I’m saying you were one, and you’ll likely be one again.”
The spider turned his head quizzically. His alien mind had no idea what about this conversation was so difficult to gasp. A massive pedipalp, the arm-like appendage near his jaw, scratched his face in an eerily human gesture of confusion.
Walter groaned, and his knees began to tremble. Images flashed through his mind in a disorienting flood of colors and emotions. The world split into gibbering fragments.
Walter the President having dinner in the White House.
Walter the murderer slitting his wife’s throat.
Walter the trash collector making his rounds of the city.
Walter the minister preaching the word of God.
He saw himself revolving in an endless carousel of existence, on and on and on. It was a terrifying panopticon of infinite recursion, countless Walters, countless lives. They were different individuals, but they were also him, the Walter he used to be and the Walter he would eventually become again. He collapsed.
“Oh, shit,” he gasped in terror.
Walter had to shut the door in his mind that the spider had opened, for behind it lay madness. He could not be the ghosts in the mirrors of his soul, he could not encompass their endless lives; he could only be the Walter of this moment. His head creaked with strain from the staggering implications that dawned upon him.
Despair threatened to swallow him whole.
Orobas leaned over Walter, his face filled with concern. He whimpered softly and his pedipalps massaged each other nervously. “What ails you, little human? I meant no offense.”
The strange creature’s heart was of a size to match its mammoth form, and he so seldom had visitors. Even worse, he always seemed to have an uncomfortable effect on guests. There were few repeat visits, and Orobas was unbearably lonely. He was sequestered away in his cathedral of glowing web.
“You’ve done nothing wrong, Orobas,” Walter finally managed to reply through his disorientation, his voice a choking rasp. He could hear Kaly, Barnabas and Arcturus moaning beside him. They all suffered in the throes of the spider’s perdition. Walter swallowed his fear and steeled himself to ask a terrible question.
“Tell me, Orobas ... what happens after the world ends? What happens after Armageddon?”
“Why, everything happens again! Yesyesyes!” Orobas cheered enthusiastically. “Different, though, only not really,” he added.
Walter shuddered with jarring realization. The spider spoke of reincarnation, but not merely individual reincarnation. He spoke of the reincarnation of everything. The rebirth of every soul, every spirit, every planet and grain of sand. Another iteration of the same damn thing, stretching through infinity.
A cosmic mulligan, a galactic do-over.
“And tell me,” Walt continued. “You remember everything, don’t you? Every life we’ve led, every death of the world?”
“Precisely, Mr. President!” the spider crowed triumphantly, his voice echoing from the reaches of his web. He waved his enormous forelegs in the a
ir for emphasis. “Orobas sees it all, and he remembers it all! Few do, but he does!”
He spread his spindly appendages in a ferocious flex.
“Son of a bitch,” Barnabas groaned.
No wonder they called the spider ‘The Eyes of Madness’. He was as mad as a hatter, and who wouldn’t be? Barnabas could only catch glimpses of his past lives now, flickering and jittery motion from the corner of his eyes, but they still threatened to drown him in discombobulation. That damned Paimon must have known, and he had not even warned them.
Kalyndriel fought to regain her grasp on the present. She saw herself, black-winged as she was now, standing atop a mountain of Angelic corpses. She was screaming and brandishing her lance, howling with wrath. She was the Goddess of the Pit. She would be the one to bring the war to Heaven’s gates, cracking them asunder with her wicked might.
She then saw herself, with wings of pearly white, cleaved in twain by the black finality of Terminus. Kaly felt her essence unravel into the cosmos, waiting to be reborn. She saw countless Kalyndriels stretching back through time immemorial. Some were noble and true, while others were terrible monsters. She shuddered uncontrollably.
One by one, Walter, Arcturus, Kaly, and Barnabas slowly regained their composure. They struggled to control their breathing and center themselves on the present moment. The multitude of past lives slipped reluctantly, once more, into the depths of their unconsciousness.
Although they could no longer see them vividly, the weight of their previous incarnations did not leave them. The stains of their sins, the pains of their losses, their accumulation of despair; those things stayed with them, sleeping beneath the surface of their awareness like hungry crocodiles.
They whispered of futility, of never-ending tribulation.
Walter felt as though he truly began to understand what moved the terrible forces at work. “Orobas,” he asked softly. “What do you know of the Void?”
The spider’s mood changed immediately, going from exuberant to terrified. He hunched his body, curling up between his gigantic legs. His jaws clacked fearfully.
“I know it’s always been there,” Orobas whispered, his voice a hushed hum. “I can hear it, from beneath the web. It screams and cries, begging to be let inside. It’s in unbearable pain.”
“I know … and someone has let it in. Has that ever happened before?”
Orobas considered that for a moment. “No. Never. Which is wrong, because nothing has never happened before.”
Kalyndriel finally regained herself, and rose unsteadily. She would treat her aberrant memories as nothing more than daydreams; the other Kalyndriels were figments of her imagination, nothing more. She could not afford to dwell upon the spider’s implications at the moment.
“Do you know how it happened, Orobas?” she asked in a strained voice.
The spider nodded unhappily. “Uriel and Beelzebub tore a hole in the weave of creation, and the Empty One came in. Time, itself, will die, and there will be no rebirth. Everything will be emptiness, once more.”
Kalyndriel gritted her teeth at the mention of Uriel’s name. She felt her blood begin to burn, but she managed to control herself. There would be a time for reckoning, but she must be patient. Now was not the time to lose herself.
“Where is this … hole?”
“Here, in Limbo. Nearby.”
Barnabas grimaced, connecting the dots in his mind. This Empty One came through a hole in Limbo, and where would the multitude of souls end up once the Nexuses were destroyed? Limbo. That was no coincidence.
“What are this thing’s plans?” the Demon asked. “How will it destroy creation?”
The spider whimpered from between its arched legs. “I don’t know,” Orobas whispered. He saw everything ever woven in the tapestry of existence, but this was something that had no precedent. It was an anomaly, and Orobas had no answers.
“All that matters is dealing with this creature, this Empty One,” Kaly stated, her voice resolute. “Do you know how we might accomplish that, Orobas?”
“You can’t, brave one,” the spider replied sadly. He curled up tighter. “The Empty One is pure oblivion, and he will devour your Angelic soul into himself. You cannot resist. There is nothing you can do.”
Orobas shook his enormous head with regret. Tears glistened wetly in the multitude of his eyes. It was a shining field of stars, a night sky of eyes.
“I refuse to believe that,” Kalyndriel declared.
There was no foe that could not fall, no unwinnable battle. Let it try to eat her essence; it would choke upon her burning soul, and she would destroy it from within. Kalyndriel would not permit existence to end.
“I’m so sorry, little Angel, but it’s true,” the spider insisted. “Matter is loathsome to the Void, so perhaps a creature of flesh could stand against it, but you are all beings of spirit.”
“Way to go and die, Walter,” Barnabas despaired. “Your body would have finally been useful for something.”
The Demon looked down and shook his head. He didn’t want to disappear, to lose himself in the cold emptiness. The world was not perfect, true, but it was all he had.
Walter’s brow creased in concentration as his mind raced. He felt afraid, confused, and overwhelmed … but he also felt something else. He felt a strange sense of elation, a sense that something momentous was sliding into place. Perhaps he could fight against the Empty One.
Perhaps he was meant to fight against it.
“Barnabas,” he asked, excited. “Is there any way to get my body back?”
“Nope,” Barnabas replied darkly. “It’s quite useless now. Zombies aren’t a thing, you know.”
Barnabas then had notion. Perhaps there was another way. It was certainly a long shot, but it might be all they had. “On second thought,” he said. “I might have an idea. We need to talk to Paimon about it.”
Walter nodded grimly. He had committed himself to the battle. He decided that this was his purpose.
Kalyndriel smiled proudly at the sight. Before this journey, she had assumed that humans were naught but feeble children, powerless before the primeval forces that lurked behind their world’s veil. She had protected them, but she had not loved them. She now recognized, however, that there might be much more to them than she had ever suspected. They might be ignorant, but they were not children, and some had a hidden virtue within them.
The same could potentially be true of some Demons.
“Orobas,” Walter asked. “Let’s say I had a physical body again; what could I do to stop this Empty One?”
“I’m sorry, Mr. President, but I don’t know. It doesn’t actually exist, so I don’t think you can kill it.”
“Maybe Paimon will know. Let’s go ask the old bugger,” Barnabas interrupted. He had plenty of other things to ask the Serpent, as well. He was already formulating a plan of action in his head, but there were still a great many unknowns.
“Mr. President,” Orobas called as they were preparing to leave. He rose up and padded slowly toward the miniscule human, who was barely more than an ant next to him.
“Allow me to … ask you a question.” Orobas’ voice trailed off, nervous and hesitant.
Walter smiled up at the arachnid. “Please, go ahead, Orobas. We are deeply in your debt.”
The spider shuffled awkwardly on its stilt-like legs. “I have seen the death of the world an infinite number of times, but it occurs to me that I’ve never truly had a … friend, such as you all are. Before everything ends … may I call you friend?”
Orobas’ giant, shining eyes were luminous pools filled with sadness and longing. He crouched down before Walter’s tiny shape and extended a massive foreleg toward him, hopefully.
Walter felt as though his heart was breaking, so deeply did he feel for the forgotten spider. He sat there in his web, watching the endless dance of existence pass before his numerous eyes, eternally alone. There was no voice to keep him company, or sane, other than the ravenous howling of the
Void beneath his web.
If there was any being in all of creation that had the right to wish to see it all disappear, it was Orobas, but there was no anger or hatred in his heart. The most forsaken of God’s children did not give in to despair. Here, at the end of all things, all he wanted was friendship.
Walter nodded, and he gripped the end of the spider’s colossal leg with two small hands. It was warm and soft beneath his fingers, covered fine gray hair the color of Limbo itself.
“It would be my honor to call you friend, Orobas,” Walter said, his voice thick with emotion, his eyes shining with restrained tears. “And if we all make it through this, then I promise I will visit you again. If I can.”
“Yesyesyes!” the spider hooted in rapture. He began dancing a manic jig, his behemoth bulk pirouetting in graceful delight. “This is the story of a boy and his loyal spider, the best of friends! How they will sing tales of our adventure, friend Walter!”
He clapped his forelegs together in joy.
Walter smiled and chuckled, wiping the moisture from his face. Even if it all came crashing down, even if the universe finally died, he was glad he had managed to do this one, small, good thing. All was ashes, in the end, but not necessarily meaningless. They had to take what meaning they could before night fell.
Barnabas nodded solemnly. They were friends, the spider had said?
He placed a warm hand on Walter and Kalyndriel’s shoulders so they might materialize at the Tower of Knowledge. Arcturus leapt eagerly onto Kaly’s spaulders.
Walter waved a hand in farewell to his new friend, who enthusiastically returned the gesture with an arm the size of a construction crane. Both the human and the spider desperately hoped Walter would be able to keep his promise.
But they both knew the universe cared little for hopes or promises.
Chapter 29
The Apple and the Worm
“So, you spoke with Orobas?” Paimon asked.
We sat once more in Paimon’s study at the top of the Tower. This time, thankfully, he had spirited us directly there without having us take the stairs. Presumably, I had finally reached the point of enlightenment where I didn’t need to climb stairs anymore; either that, or we were running short on time. Probably the latter.
