Hell's Pawn

  Together J ohn and Dante ran down featureless gray corridors, and here the plan fell apart. They didn’t know what they were looking for or what they would do once they found it. Had things gone according to plan, ten of the most powerful gods would be here instead of J ohn. They would have divined the correct path and confronted whatever hid at the maze’s center. J ohn had nothing to go by, no godly sense of direction, and no magic to defeat a being powerful enough to control an entire realm.

  S till they ran, for they could do nothing else. The halls were silent and empty, as if the ba le raging above had been a fleeting dream. That is, until a loud thrumming noise a racted their a ention. J ohn remembered it. W hen they had fled with B olo to the edges of P urgatory, he had heard the sound of a machine. He hadn’t thought much of it at the time, but now it was the only clue they had.

  “Think that’s it?” Dante asked as they paused to listen to the deep thrum, its steady rhythm hypnotic.

  “Must be.”

  They followed the sound as best they could. B efore long the floor was lost in fog, and soon after so was everything else. The world became a gray cloud, forcing them to slow to a walk. They squinted into the fog, jumping occasionally at shadows passing before them. The thrumming noise was their only beacon, growing in volume as they stumbled after it, a vibration that filled their very being. The floor below slanted so steeply they often slid and fell. Wherever they were headed was deep underground.

  W hen the ground leveled again, they saw something new in the fog. B lue flickering light, rectangular. They paused, taking it in and debating if it was a trap. E ventually they crept closer, and J ohn saw it was a door. They could taste the electricity on their tongues as the blue light hummed, and the taste was familiar. This was the poison P urgatory used to numb its victims, except stronger than ever before. The door ahead of them was a barrier that could turn away any kind of soul, be it god or human.

  E xcept J ohn was no ordinary soul. His ties to the physical plane would allow him to pass through. He felt this with absolute certainty. The masters of P urgatory didn’t fear the army he had raised or the mighty gods in this realm or any other, but they would fear a person who could pass through this barrier to reach them.

  S omething stood, silhoue ed in the blue light. The shape was humanoid, and for one brief moment J ohn thought one of their friends had beaten them here. O ne of the clever gods or maybe even R immon by some miracle, but then he noticed the unnaturally long appendages. W here the tips of a person’s arm would normally end was a second elbow, another forearm a ached to it. The being bounced on elongated legs as it approached, leaning forward through the fog to see them be er. I t was a glass man, and yet it wasn’t. There was something inexplicably feminine about the long, narrow head that bobbed on the end of its stretched neck. The eyes were huge and penetrating, devoid of life one moment and mad with interest the next. The mouth was a long comical “O ” and inside of it something moved. Fingers, teeth, worms. J ohn couldn’t bear to look any longer. He knew it wasn’t good. The creature, having finished its examination, began advancing again, its long arms extending outward.

  “S o that’s the guard dog, huh?” Dante grimaced. “Ugly bitch, isn’t she? Think you can get through the barrier ahead?”

  “I know I can,” John said. “If you hold my hand I think I can pull you through.”

  “I told you I don’t swing that way,” Dante said, but he wasn’t smiling. “You go. I ’ll hold her off. We’ll never both get past her.”

  “If we both feint—”

  “It’ll never happen. Besides, what’s the worst she can do to me?” A memory of pain throbbed in J ohn’s abdomen where the glass man had played inside him. I f a normal M inister was capable of such atrocities, he didn’t want to know what the abomination in front of them could do. He wouldn’t leave Dante to face that alone.

  “I ’m about two seconds away from betraying you to save my own ass,” Dante snarled. “You either go now, or I turn tail and run, leaving you as a snack for this thing.

  Go!”

  B ut it was Dante who ran forward first, leaping on the creature and wrapping his arms and legs around its torso. J ohn didn’t hesitate. He ran for the barrier, mentally bracing himself to pass through it. The glass creature turned as he passed, but its hands were full of Dante, who was doing everything in his power to be a nuisance. Dante managed to free a leg and kick the thing in the face, sending its head bobbing backward, but it recovered quickly, turning an angry eye on its prey.

  J ohn couldn’t watch further. The doorway was directly ahead of him, unobscured except for the electric blue light that sizzled and snapped. The thrumming was deafening now, but John focused only on the barrier ahead.

  I ’m alive, he thought. I ’m alive and P urgatory is nothing but a ghost to me. T here is no obstacle in my way. Only light that I can, will , pass through.

  J ohn closed his eyes to express his apathy toward the object he refused to acknowledge. G iven more time, he might have passed through it effortlessly. I nstead he slammed into the barrier, only half of him squeezing inside like he had run into a wall of electrified gelatin. His body arched and burned, the light coursing over him and demanding he submit, but J ohn’s will was true, his mind clear. An inhuman roar sounded from behind him; stomping followed. J ohn could imagine the creature dropping Dante and reaching to pull him back out. J ohn utilized that fear, let his mind burn with it, and shoved the rest of the way through the blue light.

  The thrumming changed, the difference between hearing a muted song outside a nightclub and stepping inside to discover the full force of the beat. J ohn heard it all now, and it wasn’t pleasant. A million drums pounded in unison, their rhythm dominating, enforcing only one subjugating sound, one tyrannizing tempo, one bullying beat. This was the heartbeat of O rder, and it made J ohn want to go running, crying, whimpering back to his comatose body.

  The walls were crystal. E verything here was crystal, mathematically perfect in shape and form. The room was small, a triangular chamber without decoration except for three hideous sculptures, one set on each wall. J ohn barely considered them, turning his a ention to the middle of the room and searching for the reason he was here. He saw nothing. He walked to the center and turned on the spot, looking for another door, a mysterious item, the magic button, anything.

  “John Grey,” many voices said in unison. “You do not belong here.” The voices were coming at him from every side. J ohn flinched at the sound before giving the sculptures on the wall fresh appraisal. They were like the other M inisters of O rder, except they weren’t beautiful men or crystalline skeletons. W hat hung on each wall were glass corpses, emaciated bodies the color of muddy water and run through with cracks. Their bony arms and legs were splayed wide, as if they had been crucified to the walls. Their zombified heads were fixed in place, too, the dull red points of their eyes straining to keep up with John as he examined each of them in turn.

  “Rejoice!” the voices continued, eyes flaring. “R ejoice and be free, J ohn, for you are not dead! Your physical body is in a coma, but you may return to life. You can go home.”

  “Already been there,” John murmured. “Decided to come back. Nice try though.” S omething inside each ro ing sculpture beat to the head-spli ing rhythm. No! They were the rhythm, the source of the sound. I nside of them something pulsated, throbbing like a heart and in the same location, but they weren’t the right shape at all.

  The hearts were rectangular. What were they?

  “You meddle in affairs beyond your comprehension,” the creatures intoned. “A child kicking angrily at the parent who has its best interests at heart.”

  “B est interests?” J ohn scoffed. “How was being locked up in P urgatory good for me?

  Or how about being a brick in a wall of souls? That was in my best interest as well?”

  “I t was not your destiny to remain there. We saw that, as we see everything. We foresaw you gaining your freedom, and it plea
sed us.”

  J ohn scowled. “S o why didn’t you let me go in the first place? W hy all the struggle if I was never meant to stay here?”

  “No human willingly embraces predestination. Your egos demand the false belief that every path taken is forged by your own will. T he fragile ego deludes itself, clinging to its perception of singular importance.”

  J ohn walked as they talked, looking at each of the beating hearts and trying to ignore the uneasy feeling that he wasn’t being lied to, that his story had long ago been wri en from start to finish. How else had they predicted his arrival, trapped his army, and dealt with the gods in such short order?

  “You were meant to bring them here,” the voices continued. “T he end of the disorderly realms began long before you came. C ut off from each other and from the minds of men, their demise has been slow but steady. T hrough our grace we allow them to die here, to embrace their destiny now rather than fade away.”

  “G ods aren’t human,” J ohn countered. “E ven if I believed in predestination, which I don’t, you can’t tell me that gods are subject to it as well.”

  “T hey will die in ba le or they will kill the last child of C haos. E ither occurrence will mean the undoing of their kind.”

  John stopped. “The creature above, that’s the child of Chaos?”

  “T he last of its kind. Destroying it is beyond our capabilities, so P urgatory was requisitioned to contain it. P urgatory isn’t a prison for human souls. T heir only function is to enforce the barrier of souls. Purgatory is nothing more than a cage for the child of Chaos.” J ohn shook his head. “I don’t understand. That creature is the only thing that can kill you? Is that what you’re afraid of?”

  B ut it was more than that. J ohn was standing in the stronghold of O rder. I f the child of C haos was the only thing they feared, they never would have remained with it in P urgatory. He realized that the creature’s title wasn’t simply a creepy name. The beast above was literally the child of C haos, the embodiment of all that was unpredictable, inexplicable. They had said the gods would undo themselves by killing it. O nly order would remain. Their strange natures, their magic, their wonderful realms; all that couldn’t be pinned down, dissected, and explained in the universe would cease to exist. Maybe even love.

  J ohn turned to the door, intending to leave and warn those above to stop their fight, but the exit was no longer there. He had been so distracted that he hadn’t noticed his own imprisonment.

  “What are you?” John demanded. “You aren’t God! You can’t be!” The Wardens, for that is how J ohn now thought of them, chuckled in unison. “The fool mistakes his son for his father.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “We are your creation.”

  “My creation?”

  “T he creation of all mankind. S ince the beginning of time you have desired security, predictability, assurances against the terrors in the night that dragged you from your caves to eat you. You formed tribes, finding protection in numbers, but with so many personalities there were conflicts. T he only true resolution was to allow the strongest personality to lead. T here was always dissent, but for the most part, the rest of humanity was content to follow and serve.

  Anything rather than returning to those dark days when nothing was certain.

  “T he tribes grew in number while the leaders became fewer and fewer. L aws became necessary to keep the order. At first they were basic. T hou shall not kill. T hou shall not steal. B ut eventually there were rules for everything. T hou shall not stand too close when speaking to another, thou shall not belch at the dinner table, thou shall not accelerate thy vehicle above the posted speed, thou shall not utilize inside information in trade. R ules govern every aspect of your life, how you appear, smell, move, behave, everything. T hese rules were your choice, your desire.

  W ithout them you would return to being the weakest animals on the planet. W ithout us, you would be nothing.”

  J ohn walked to the nearest Warden, bringing his face as close to its chest as he could without touching it. He peered in at its rectangular heart, stared hard until he was certain that he was seeing it correctly. Then he understood.

  “We took it further than that, didn’t we?” J ohn said. “We made rules for the things we couldn’t see, for worlds we could only guess at. O ur entire lives were governed by rules, but we needed more, and so we made rules for the invisible, for when we are dead.” He tapped on the Warden’s chest without thinking. His finger clinked on warped glass the first few times. The fourth and final time it passed partially through, and with that came hope. J ohn walked to the next Warden on the wall and bent to examine its heart, just so he could be sure.

  “Tell me something,” he said as he squinted. “I f all of this is part of some grand plan, then what am I doing here? W hat reason did you have for bringing me to this room? The first thing you told me is that my body is in a coma. You were hoping that the shock would send me zooming back to E arth, far away from you. And why the guard outside? Don’t you want me here?”

  The resulting hesitation told J ohn all he needed to know. He reached into the glass Warden’s chest. I t wasn’t difficult. I n fact it was the easiest thing he had ever done, because J ohn suddenly believed in free will and this is what he wanted to do. His fingers wrapped around the spine of the book. I t throbbed under his hand like a living heart as he pulled. The Warden screamed, its eyes flaring with so much light that the entire room was cast in eerie red shadows. J ohn pulled it the rest of the way free, and two things died at once: The fire in the Warden’s eyes disappeared first and then the book stopped pulsating.

  J ohn held the B ible up. “These aren’t rules,” he said to the two remaining Wardens,

  “These are stories, parables that teach morals. This isn’t the word of G od! I t’s the word of—”

  “MAN!” the Wardens shouted. “We serve man, not G od! T hese are your words that we obey, your will that we carry out.”

  “This isn’t my will,” J ohn said, approaching the next Warden, “and I ’m glad to hear it isn’t God’s will either.”

  He tore the next book free and placed the Q uran with the B ible in his left hand. The Wardens moaned and wailed, but J ohn ignored them. He considered the tomes in his hand and shook his head, amazed at how simple words could cause so much trouble.

  The books were just well-meaning manuals of morals from a time long past, not something evil. No book in the world was evil, no ma er how many people used them as justification for their actions.

  J ohn was reaching for the third and final book when the only remaining Warden spoke.

  “We pray for you, J ohn. E very M inister, every angel in H eaven. S leeping priests see your face before waking up in the morning, and they pray for you. We have this power and man has another. T hey pray for your swift recovery. Your body will awaken, and you will be taken from this world before your work is done.”

  “Then I be er not waste any time,” J ohn said as he pulled the Tanakh, the last beating heart of O rder, free from the glass chest and returned it to what it truly was.

  Just a book.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “We should run!” Dante said for the third time.

  John sighed. “There’s nothing to run from and nowhere to run to.” P urgatory had begun fading away the moment J ohn had taken the last book. I t would have been satisfying to see the crystal walls crack, for rubble to rain down around them as this realm was reduced to nothing. I nstead the walls had grown transparent before simply disappearing. This phenomenon was spreading outward, starting from the room John had been standing in. He was reunited with Dante as soon as the walls disappeared. The I rishman looked pale, and while he behaved like his usual self, John knew some injuries were invisible.

  “Are you all right? Did that creature hurt you?”

  “M e?” Dante puffed up his chest. “Nah. S tung me a few times and gave me some nightmares, but I came to as soon as the walls st
arted fading. S aw that thing running away too, and let me tell you, the back of her was no more pleasant than the front.

  Like a catwalk model gone wrong.”

  “But she wasn’t fading too?”

  “Nope. Solid as can be.”

  This worried J ohn. W ith the Wardens defeated, he had hoped the remaining M inisters of O rder would fade away with the rest of their realm, but it seemed this wasn’t the case. W ith P urgatory soon gone, the M inisters would be forced to flee, but to where? The final Warden had said every angel was praying for J ohn. Unless it was being poetic, maybe Heaven really was involved in some way, and yet the Warden had said that they didn’t serve God.

  Around them P urgatory continued to fade away. C ross sections of hallways were left exposed, as if the world were made of cake and someone had taken a slice. L ayer after layer disappeared, the process quickening as it continued. J ohn wondered if this would soon happen to him, if the well-wishes of his enemies really could heal his body. He’d heard of the power of prayer, of names passed around in churches and the subsequent recoveries. I f this was possible, J ohn would soon be drawn home when his body awoke. But he wasn’t ready to go. Not yet.

  “Hey, check out the animals!” Dante said.

  E xposed far above them was the endless warehouse that had once been filled with animals of every kind. All were free now. M any ran through empty space; others began to disappear to wherever they wished to go. B olo chased those that he could, barking with joy. S ca ered among the animals were P rops, no longer moving, that began to deteriorate and fall apart. They were only constructs, soulless manifestations fading away with the rest of their realm.

  “C ome on,” J ohn said. “We be er get you to the steam coach as quickly as possible.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’ll be pulled back to Hell. Purgatory won’t exist for much longer.” The floors had already disappeared, leaving them standing on nothing, so J ohn willed himself to rise. I t worked. He snagged Dante’s jacket on his way up, pulling the other man behind him.