by Drew Foote
Walter slowly regained his strength. Orobas’ motion was smooth and fluid, pressing ever deeper into the darkness, and Walter breathed a deep sigh of release. He felt peaceful and safe atop the spider’s back, shielded from the cruel assault of the mist. Walt knew it was only temporary, that fate awaited him with murderous intent, but he was thankful for the temporary respite. He was thankful his friend had come to rescue him.
Friendship: the most fragile of spider webs, and yet one that sometimes had the strength to move mountains. It often shattered like ice when trod upon, but it could also resist the passage of the ages. It was the one thing that tied their worlds together: Demons, Angels, and humans. Tiny, transient beings clinging to one another amid the blinding gale of eternity, granting each other strength in the face of oblivion.
Their bonds were all they had.
Tears welled in Walter’s eyes as the profundity struck him. He was so grateful that he had the opportunity to experience such a connection before everything fell apart. Paimon, Kalyndriel, even Barnabas and Arcturus, in their own way … and Orobas. They were each beautiful in their own right, beings with nobility and astonishing worth. They were feeble creatures that railed impotently against fate, but they also possessed limitless strength and determination.
Walter would finish it. Not for the world that had treated him so unkindly, or for the God that had forsaken him. Nor for the countless masses unknown to him. Those vague concepts were meaningless in the dead of night.
He would do it for his friends.
“Thank you, Orobas,” Walter called weakly from the spider’s back.
“Yesyesyes, of course!” Orobas chittered happily. “We are friends, are we not?”
“The very best,” Walter replied, and he truly meant it. He fought to subdue his emotions. “But you know I must finish this alone.”
The spider halted suddenly, and his myriad eyes fluttered with concern.
“I must object, Walter! You will not face the Empty One alone, not while faithful Orobas yet draws breath!”
Walter shook his head sadly. “Can you stand before the Empty One, brave Orobas? Can your eternal soul withstand its gaze?”
“I … I do not know.”
“You do know, Orobas … and you know that you cannot. This fate is mine, and I won’t have you lost,” Walter gently replied.
“I must help!” Orobas insisted. His eight legs trembled with emotion.
“You already have, Orobas. I ask you this one, last favor, as your friend … let me handle this. This is how it’s meant to be.”
“Meant to be? There is no meaning, Walter …”
“I refuse to believe that, Orobas. I cannot.”
Orobas said nothing. The faithful arachnid stood still and frightened in the depths of Limbo, afraid of losing the one creature that had ever showed him kindness. His giant heart beat swiftly, full of apprehension. He could refuse Walter nothing, however, and he began walking once more.
The spider moved deeper into the darkness.
Walter breathed another sigh of relief. Although Orobas might be lost if Walter failed, he was thankful that there was the smallest glimmer of hope for the arachnid: the slightest hope for them all. He patted the spider’s enormous back reassuringly, tears tracing his cheeks. He rested his head against Orobas.
In the midst of his damnation, the human knew love. In the depths of his darkness, he saw light. The hatred surrounding Walter could not touch him. God could cut him down, but he would persist. Walter was above it all.
~
Walter could not tell how long they traveled. An hour? A year? The river of time was more akin to a bottomless lake in Limbo; it was filled with turbulent eddies and unseen undercurrents. He did not know how long they had been walking, but he knew they were getting close.
He could feel the invader lurking on the horizon, a twisted and broken thing known to him. The Empty One, the God of Nothingness. Walt felt it pressing upon his mind, an agonizing singularity of oblivion. The Void called to Walter, his old friend. Their reunion drew near.
Walt was acutely aware of the fragility of his new body. The rhythm of his weathered heart pumped tiredly in his chest, its beat accelerating in dismay. He could feel the brittle frame of his bones, as delicate as gossamer, threading through his flesh. That flesh had seen better days, but the strength of Walter’s colossal will now drove it forward.
His body would hold strong … he would hold strong. He must. He was almost there.
“Stop, Orobas,” he said quietly.
The giant spider halted silently, and bowed his head. Orobas lowered himself closer to the ground as Walter slid gracefully down the gentle curve of his abdomen. Walter’s feet, now bare, touched softly onto the insubstantial surface of Limbo.
Walt stood before Orobas. At first, the spider would not meet his gaze, mandibles chittering in agitation. Orobas’ massive heart plummeted with an unfamiliar fear of loss, an unknown emotion. The spider longed for nothing more than to go with Walter, but he knew that he could not. He knew that Walt was right; he must go alone.
“Go now, my friend,” Walter whispered.
Orobas turned to regard the tiny human, and his head sagged in defeat. Tears sparkled in the depths of a thousand eyes, a planetarium of longing. He raised an enormous arm, and touched Walter’s shoulder gently.
“I will wait. Go, Mr. President, and remember your promise.”
Walter clasped the spider’s arm, and nodded. He turned from Orobas before his emotions could betray him, before he could doubt his own resolve. Orobas was just one more reason why Walter must succeed. He had work to do.
Walter walked deeper into the mist, alone now. He did not weep. There would be no more despair, and there would be no more doubt. Neither he nor the world could afford them. Now was the time for resolve and unflinching courage. Walter walked with his head held high.
No more tears.
~
The mists parted before Walter. Repulsed by the alien presence within, they formed a vaulting cathedral of swirling shadow. The atmosphere was heady with portent, a viscous soup that sapped his willpower. The clearing lay steeped in the perfect silence of eternity.
Walter felt as though he entered a temple to a foreign god, a god of silence and immutable still. A god that held no love for him or his world. It was midnight in the darkened parlor, and the devil’s terrible sermon was about to begin.
The high priest of that god, the weeping minister, stood in the center of the featureless realm. The Empty One: the foreign abomination that worked to undo creation. The monster’s back was turned to Walter, its bald head bowed between narrow shoulders cloaked in black. Choking sounds of what might be sorrow, or twisted laughter, tore from it in wracked sobs.
Walter froze, his heart hammering in his frail chest. Dread crawled through his veins as memories of the creature’s face slid across his mind. Walt knew what would happen once the figure turned, and he knew not what to do.
Would things be different this time?
Had his journey of a thousand lifetimes changed him?
The Empty One stood before a jagged tear in the fabric of Limbo. It swirled and twisted sickeningly, its edges blurring in and out of focus. The heart of the wound was absolute darkness, perfect and glorious. It was a window into a realm without sunlight, a place devoid of time; it opened into the Void, and it was the breach that had given birth to the Empty One.
It was the bleeding heart of oblivion, and it was growing larger.
The Empty One turned. Its face was wet with tears, and it gazed bleakly at Walter. A mouth that was never meant to speak opened, and it uttered a twisted word. It sounded like razorblades of rain falling from an alien sky.
“WHY?”
“I don’t know,” Walter whispered, and he stepped forward.
~
The Empty One was perplexed by the foolish creature, the spiteful insect that bit and gnawed. The mere sight of the wretch drove lances of pain into the Empty One’s
mind, and his material essence grated maddeningly like fingernails on a chalkboard. The feeble puppet was an abomination and, even worse, it sought to stop the Void’s blessed release.
The Empty One could not be stopped; it was far too late. Although the flow of souls into Limbo had slowed after Samael’s demise, they still poured in by the score. If there was anything that humanity did well, it was die. All it needed was for man to continue to perish. Soon, there would be enough pressure to rip the cosmos apart.
The monster did not understand Walter. It could not fathom why the child struggled against it, why it fought to keep the Creator’s chains around its soul. Every moment of existence was an agony that burrowed deeper into the skin, a wound that never clotted.
The Void was the humankind’s savior. They had all suffered for so long … was it not time to let go?
The foolish human continued to walk forward, a look of pathetic determination on her sagging face. The Empty One sighed. So be it. Humanity was not built to withstand the sight of eternity. It would grant the human its divine gift, and afterwards deliver to it the peace that its God would not.
Unlike the Prime Mover, the Void understood mercy. The Empty One’s face opened, and the abyss looked into Walter’s soul.
~
Walter felt his heart seize in his chest at the sight of the unraveling Void in the creature’s face. Tendrils of sinuous shadow bloomed, writhing in an incomprehensible symphony of agony. They called to him with gibbering screams, ripping at his sanity. A hungering maw clawed from the heart of squirming shadows, a mirror into the darkness that came before time.
Walt gasped as he felt his frail body shut down in the face of such madness. He stopped in his tracks, clawing at his chest, struggling to force his heart to continue its rhythm. His heart stubbornly refused his commands, preferring death rather another moment in the midst of perfect horror.
The monster’s face unfurled as Walter collapsed to his knees, the life draining from his body. Regret coursed through his collapsing veins as he felt hope slip elusively from his grasp. Twisted laughter filled his world as he felt himself dragged, once more, into death.
He knew this time would be his last.
“No!” Walter bellowed. Desperation filled him.
Walter had endured the trials of time and witnessed the birth of the world. His force of will was the shared destiny of Angels, Demons, and humanity. He was the master of his fate, and this broken vessel would obey his commands.
With a triumphant roar, Walter forced blistering life into the beaten hull of his heart, driving it once more into motion. A psychic scream of determination vibrated through his legs, forcing him to his feet. He clenched his fists and gritted his teeth in a rictus of righteous conviction. Neither fear nor weakness would be his undoing: this was what Paimon had prepared him for.
Walter took one step forward, and then another.
~
Disbelief flooded the Empty One’s twisted thoughts as the creature continued forward. It was impossible; no being of flesh could resist the allure of infinity. What was the horrible creature? It was clothed in material skin, so the Empty One could not devour its essence as it had the Angels and Demons, and it stubbornly denied the death of fear.
It could be nothing less than an avatar of the Prime Mover, the spiteful old sadist. Did His cruelty know no bounds? The Void was so close to release, to the blessed freedom from its pain, and now the Creator moved to snatch victory from its grasp. The Creator had allowed the Void to feel one moment of hope, one moment of blessed happiness, and now His servant would shatter its dreams once more.
Fear boiled in the Empty One’s hollow heart, and it screamed with a roar of gibbering fury. The heart of the Void reached from the Empty One’s face, pouring from the endless abyss, and it grasped desperately at the approaching human. The Void could not allow its endeavor to fail … the forces of good must prevail over the Creator’s tyranny.
The Void shrieked.
“I AM YOUR GOD!”
~
The horror screamed at Walter as the human forced himself forward. The world vibrated in the face of the Empty One’s wrath, the angles of reality distorting in the cold gale that erupted from its black maw. The edges of the tear in Limbo frayed, ripping apart. The universe was but one breath away from annihilation.
Walter grimaced as he struggled onward, the frozen wind buffeting him and threatening to push him back, but he would not retreat. The determination of the ages filled his limbs. They were the legs that carried Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, the legs that Lucifer used to climb the heavenly Stair.
They were the tiny legs that helped carry his mother’s coffin. They had known journeys more difficult.
Walter was close, now. The tendrils of the Void gripped him and sought to drag him down into a silent lake, but he refused. He had visited that lake once before, in his dreams, and he knew what slept within those welcoming depths. He rebuked the sweet song of oblivion and the beckoning caress of dissolution. There were things in this world worth saving, buried in the black mire of existence, and Walter would preserve them.
He would preserve the gift of friendship, so frail yet so strong. He would preserve the gift of beauty, made all the more poignant by the desolation that bloomed around it. He would preserve the gift of hope, that impossible dream that rose from the ashes of eternity.
For those things, and for many more, Walter struggled onward.
Determination burned in Walter’s heart, but it was joined by pity. He felt the Void’s anguish and its never-ending pain. Walter could not fault it for lashing out, for seeking the destruction of the cosmos. Had there ever been a thing that had known such torment?
One step further. Oblivion was within reach. Walter realized the Empty One was his comrade, his fellow passenger on the eternal runaway train, and he would grant it mercy, if he could. It would be the last gift Walter could give.
Walter did not do this for God.
Walter did this despite God.
With a howl of effort, Walter leapt forward and wrapped his delicate arms around the screaming monster. He gripped the Empty One in an unknown embrace, a touch filled with both excruciating pain and bottomless empathy.
For a moment, the Empty One was silent with violation.
“NO!” it screeched. The universe began to break apart, atoms turning inside out.
Walter gave one, last push. His mighty legs could move mountains. His will was unshakable. His arms were a vise of compassion. Both he and the Empty One fell through the tear in reality, plunging into the Void.
~
Cold.
Empty.
The soul of the undying Void.
Time was foreign and forgotten, nothing more than a footnote to a nightmare. Each moment was stillness, each possibility frozen in the moment of its birth. The sweeping arms of the universe fanned wide across the emptiness, but at its heart … the Void.
Walter floated in the darkness, a mote in the eye of infinity. He was trapped in the belly of the whale. His lungs forgot how to breathe, his heart forgot how to beat, and yet … he persisted. Death did not exist in there, in the vacuum between the universe’s synapses.
He felt a massive and malevolent awareness focused intently on his tiny form, a colossal will that was older than time. Rage and agony filled it, and Walter knew its pain. He wept from the multitude of needles driven through its skin; he could taste the copper of its blood in his mouth. The tent pegs of God’s nightmarish carnival pierced its flesh.
The Void could not see the beauty that dwelt within it. It could not hear the laughter or the cries of joy; each sound was a painful screech dragged through its majestic mind. Each pinprick of light, each tiny heartbeat, was a red-hot lance of misery. Creation was a disease that riddled its body.
Walter could touch the Void’s otherworldly mind. It was riven with despair, its one chance at freedom thwarted by the tiny creature now lodged within its craw. The pain of Walter’s presence in
its heart was an even greater torment than any the Void had yet known.
Walter’s material essence was not just laid atop its skin; he was inside the Void, defiling the innermost sanctum of emptiness.
The Void’s will lashed out at Walter, seeking to eradicate him, but the Void was helpless. There was no power in that place, not even wielded by its terrible ruler. The Void could do nothing but watch and rail against its violator. It could not harm the foreign invader.
Walter could hear the Void’s screams inside his mind. They were feeble and plaintive things, the cries of a forgotten child. They begged and raged, they cursed and pleaded. The screams asked him to deliver mercy. Walter quailed before the enormity of his situation.
What could be done, now?
As Walter looked into the innermost heart of the Void, so it, too, peered deep within him. It saw a pain within Walter that mirrored its own torment: the powerlessness, the misery, and the chains of tyrannical slavery. They both dreamed of an end to suffering, but they both knew it could never be.
It was impossible; pain was the thread that the Creator used to weave his tapestry.
Pain was not all the Void saw. Walter felt the Void’s frozen will parse through his mind, and he opened himself fully to the abyss. He unhinged his soul and poured his life into the hungry darkness. Before, the Void had always witnessed creation as a tortured spectator, distant and removed, and now it saw the world from the vantage of the insects within.
After his stay in the Tower, no one had seen more than Walter.
It was wondrous and horrifying. The Void beheld the rise and fall of humanity. It saw hands build both monuments that soared into the sky and cemeteries for the dead. It witnessed humanity’s struggle to survive and thrive against all odds, rising above the challenges laid before them.
