BURN IN HADES (11 page)

Diamond Tooth guided the hellhound up to the A’raf.

“Turn away or burn, demon,” a voice boomed from within the great wall before she got too close. The guards hid behind an impenetrable veil and sounded as if they spoke through a speaking-trumpet.

“I have a divine sanction,” she said and waved her lumenite back and forth blindly. The glow of the rare stone pulsated with every color in the visible spectrum and hummed like a soul detached from its spirit.

“You stole it,” said the guard.

“No sir, it was given to me.”

“Sanction or no sanction, no demons allowed in paradise.”

“According to the Divine Laws, the righteous are permitted to issue a single lumenite to an underworlder that they deem fit for ascension. The guards of the A’raf are obligated to acknowledge this sanction, and never are they to deny passage to any lumenite possessor or they too shall be denied paradise by the Lord.”

Several seconds of silence passed before the guard spoke again. “Approach the A’raf slowly.”

She trotted the hellhound the rest of the way and met the wall.

“Pass your lumenite through the A’raf for authentication.”

She reached her entire hand into the wall up to her arm. The wall rippled like water but felt solid around her wrist. A hand snatched the pass from her from inside.

“May the Great Goddess have mercy on the soul that gave you this,” said the guard.

“Oh, I’m sure she won’t mind,” said Diamond Tooth. “That’s how you got your cushy job isn’t it? Don’t pretend like you’re so different from me. We’re exactly the same, except I’m out here and you’re in there.”

“Hellhounds are forbidden beyond A’raf.”

“But they’re so cute and cuddly.” She scratched the hound behind its ear. Her finger tangled in its matted hair. She left the saddle on its back. She’d steal another one if she needed it. She jabbed her tiger claws into the hellhound’s hind parts. The mangy mutt howled and trotted off into the underworld.

“You may proceed,” said the guard. “Step through.”

She stepped through the wall as if it weren’t there at all and appeared on the other side instantly, as though walking through a doorway to the next room. It was like going from a nice dark room into a room that was much too bright.

Light hit her at all angles. It illuminated from nowhere and everywhere at the same time, touching everything on its side of the A’raf with rays of pure, despicable love.

She almost turned back to leave. She shielded her eyes with her hand from the shimmering grass and forest before her, and paced through the roads and trails, squinting. Her drying eyes felt like they would soon split open from all her blinking. She splashed gross fresh water in her eyes. They sizzled with steam and began to itch. The more she scratched them, the more her vision blurred. She kept her staggering pace and in less than thirty minutes, she made it to the beach almost by shear memory.

The edge of the world met the beginning of the white void. The northern islands of paradise, Mag Mell, hovered in white space, while the southern islands of Jannah rested in sparkling waters. The islands of Aaru divided void from ocean. Half of the main island of Aaru floated above the white void while the other half sat on the crest of Anima Falls, an endless waterfall where the entire Oceanus emptied into the white void.

Pure light emitted from deep within the void and was too bright for her to stare at directly or even indirectly. It was not meant for her, and she was jealous. She forced herself to look into it, and the light seared her eyes and bruised her lids.

Black robes waving in the breeze caught her attention. An Ankou waited down the road in front of its ferry. The pale horses that drew the boat across the white void to the various islands neighed.

She approached the Ankou. The top of its pointy hood rose way over her head. Its robes fully covered its gaunt skeletal frame, shielding all the dead from the sight or touch of the being.

She would have stolen its cloak for her own protection from the piercing light, if Ankou’s weren’t so powerful. They worked for Death itself, one of the few deities that could keep the master at bay.

She paid the Ankou an object of the dead to ferry her over to the floating islands of Mag Mell. She tucked herself into the dark corner of the cabin area of the boat and shut her eyes until she arrived at her destination.

The ferry docked on the main island of Mag Mell. She tumbled out of the boat in a rush and proceeded to trample over endless vegetation, kaleidoscopic gardens, and virginal forests. Paradise was the real Hell. The fresh air scalded her lungs. It felt like hot coals swam in her chest with every breath. The water was too poisonous for her to drink. Holy water burned demons to Nothing.

The righteous paraded around in the nude with the attitude that covering up was a sin. It was sickening. Not that they were naked. She was no prude. Outside of paradise, it was she who was young and beautiful among mangled beasts, pitiful souls, and deformed demons, but every soul in paradise was younger, more beautiful and more vibrant than she. Not one gray hair or wrinkle existed on any of them. Not an ounce of fat on their bones. Muscular chests chiseled on the men. Succulent breasts flaunted on the women. Compared to them, she was an old crone.

Their constant music playing and partying drilled through her head like an iron spike. Her temples throbbed, and her forehead pulsed. Even the white rabbits hopped to the beating drums, the tooting flutes and, worst of all, the plucking harps. She imagined snapping those strings and strangling the harp player. No one would even notice.

They were all so busy frolicking and serving themselves that they weren’t even cognizant of the fact that a demon walked in their midst. The same way the light blurred her vision, their joy blinded them to the corruption walking right past them. That annoyed her more than her suffering. Pain she could handle, but no one ever ignored her.

But it may have been more than just blindness to evil. She was that unaccepted in their world. They ostracized her with such intensity that they physically could not see her. Their glances slipped past her, around her and through her as if she were invisible. For a second she wished one of them—any of them—would acknowledge her existence.

She climbed up to her employer’s tree house and dry heaved before she walked in.

Rowings lay in his bed fast asleep. He was bald on the top of his head with hair on the sides that connected to his scraggly beard. His Tribulation uniform tunic was draped over the chair at his bedside and his hat sat on top. She waited beside him for a few seconds, watching him breathe and cough violently in his sleep.

He was another casualty of war, and she gathered great pleasure from his misery and his helplessness. The irony of him living in the land of no-sickness or disease and being bed ridden gave her an extra boost of satisfaction. She regained some of her sight, and saliva lubricated her throat.

Rowings coughed himself awake and upon the sight of her looming over him, he pushed back in his bed.

“Ah! Diamond Tooth,” he said, relaxing on his pillow. “So good to see you, although you don’t look very well.”

“You should take a look in the mirror,” she said.

“Did you shut the door?” He pulled the blankets up to his neck. “They cannot see me like this. Not yet.”

“Yeah, I shut it.”

“Good,” he said, and released his grip on the blankets with a wide smile. “So, I assume your presence means you have the information?”

She loosened her collar, but was still strangling her. She took a breath and dragged her tongue around in her mouth. It went dry again. “Tivoli is using the name Clem Balfour.”

“You did a very good thing.” Rowings leaned over the side of his bed and pulled out a burlap sack from his bedside. “Worth three objects.”

She reached for the sack and spotted the ring on his finger. The Sigil of Ameth flickered in its own heavenly light nearly scorching her eyes.

He hid his hand and snatched the sack of objects away before she could grab it. His smile turned to a shaky grin. “Did he say anything else?”

She massaged the back of her stiff neck. “He made mention of a gate.”

“Yes, yes. The Toran. Did he say where it was?”

“He didn’t know.”

Rowings slapped his fluffy mattress. “I told you he would lie. He wants it for himself. You should’ve done what you demons do. That’s why I sent you.”

“Don’t worry about that. He’ll never say nothing to anybody again.”

Rowings grimaced and rose off his pillow. “What did you do?”

“Oh, you only meant for me to rough him up a little. Sometimes I take things a little too far. Sorry about that. But you get what you pay for.”

Rowings wrenched his comforter and glanced downward at the foot of the bed.

“If it’s any consolation,” she said. “He was telling the truth. I know when someone’s lying to me. He sort of implied though, that Tivoli knows where to look for your Toran. He gave me this key.”

“Give it to me!” A sharp tinge of obsession and frenzied-persistence flared in his voice. For a man as cheerful as Rowings portrayed himself to be, it was a wonder why he wanted to leave paradise so badly. He must’ve known what she knew about its illusion.

She removed the astrolabe from around her neck and handed it to Rowings.

“Ah, the astrolabe!” His pupils dilated and he reached for it slowly with both his hands as if reuniting with a long lost love. He caressed the object in his shaking palms. The ring on his finger blinked in the light. “Why would he give this to you?”

“Maybe he thought I’d burn you, find Tivoli and then leave the underworld forever.”

Rowings laughed like a man drunk on life. She laughed with him. They laughed together, but for different reasons.

“Funny thing is,” she said, “He was right.”

Rowings cut his laugh abruptly.

“You already know what I need from you,” she said. “And there’s only one way for me to get it.”

Rowings backed away in his bed. She shoved a pillow over his face, aimed her bank nakhs and sent tiger claws into his head, chest and neck.
sish.
When she removed the pillow Rowings gasped. A wheezing whistle escaped his lungs and his mouth quivered.

“Don’t try to talk,” she said. “You’ll just burn faster. And we can’t have that. I gotta make it out of here.”

She plunged into the stench of his convulsions, the sweet scent of his torment. Her mouth watered, the itching in her eyes subsided, and she took a much needed moist breath.

She pried the astrolabe from his cold hands, draped it around her neck, and tucked it in her shirt. She ripped the ring from his finger, slipped it into her pocket and tossed the burlap sack with the three objects over her shoulder. Now only she and Balfour knew of the Toran. And as soon as he told her where to find it, she’d burn him too. The Toran would be hers alone.

Before leaving, she indulged in Rowings’s agony one last time. She inhaled every drop of his evaporating life as he dwindled into the murky charred form of second death, staining the bed sheets black.

Strange web-like fibers reached out of his spirit, hundreds of them. They slithered across the bed, threaded through the wood-carved headboard and crept up the walls, never dethatching from Rowings. In a way, they were like arms.

Whatever the nature of this anomalous occurrence, it claimed the entire opposite side of the room and began to swallow the rest of the tree house. She backed away to the door fixated on this bizarre behavior too fascinated by it to run away.

The black strands of Nothing curled around the beams of light entering the window, avoiding a collision, and then squeezed through the slits in wood flooring. The tree wobbled. Her feet yanked from beneath her and she slammed to the floor.

She’d never seen the Nothing behave that way before. Usually a spirit burned and there were no fireworks, no grandiose show, just poof and a soul was gone. She had just witnessed something extraordinarily unprecedented and powerful.

She scrambled out of the tree house and climbed down the ladder as fast as she could. She raced past the nudists and turned back only when she reached the Ankou’s dock.

The Nothing bled out of Rowings’s tree house. The tree itself leaned and collapsed into an explosion of screams. She wanted to stay and enjoy this new work in all its glory, but there was a part of her that was unnerved by the sight. Plus, the light was cooking her again and the authorities would discover her as the culprit if she remained.

She rode the Ankou’s ferry back across the void and lurched back through the golden city. Outside the A’raf, she dropped her sack of objects and her hands fell to her wobbling knees. She inhaled the fine sulfuric smell of eternal rotting souls and slowly regained her strength.

“Halt Demon!” said the guard inside the A’raf.

She rose up from her knees and clenched her bagh nakhs, preparing to go down in a bloody battle to the finish.

“Do not forget your lumenite,” said the guard.

She sighed with relief. “Keep it.”

Diamond Tooth used the three objects Rowings had given her to pay for a ride on a domesticated colossus going to Duat. Riding a colossus was one of the fastest ways to travel throughout the underworld, which was why it was so expensive. As the largest creatures in the underworld—since the mountainous xrafstars had retreated with the ancient deities—the colossi, walking on all-fours, could cross vast stretches of land in one stride, covering a handful of sleep cycles’ worth of travel in hours even in their sloth-like motion.

She climbed the ladder up the monstrous foot and ascended the steep hill that was its leg. A tribal community of pygmies known as the Nwa-Efé lived on the backs of the beasts like fleas on a hellhound. The nomadic civilization bummed around from realm to realm picking up travelers along the way. Every soul had their own personal Hell in addition to the general ordeals of the damned, and the underworld inflicted the Nwa-Efé with wandering forever, incapable of resting or settling. They only stopped to hunt and gather. For them, no place would ever feel like home.

Ushers escorted Diamond Tooth through the wilderness of the colossus’s hair. It grew to the height of trees on the earthy back of the beast and the Nwa-Efé kept their land properly cut as a way of grooming the colossus. They used the excess hairs to build their community of domed huts and also weave their clothes. The hairs offered the traveling city protection from the blistering sky. It remained the only yielding material known to be immune to the heat the sky produced.