Realm Wraith (19 page)

“This is the Abyss after all,” Rayne realized, ducking away from biting mouths. He recognized the snakes now, for they were the same monster that had attacked him out in that field. It had not occurred to him that they were all part of a single creature. Rayne grabbed a loose piece of wood and struck at the snakes before they could get close to him. The wood hit the surface of the mirror with a loud
crack
, shattering it into a thousand tiny pieces that rained down into the dark, and the monster disappeared. Where the mirror once stood, there was now a black hole, and with incredible force it sucked Rayne into its maw.

He fell from the world, where emptiness became pale clouds in a golden sky, tinted a sickly shade like some form of smog. His body smashed against a hard surface, and a loud clanging rang in his ears. He still felt as if he were moving, even though he was no longer falling, and he struggled to his feet, only to topple over in a random direction. A strange pole stuck out of the ground nearby, and he grabbed it, clinging as everything around him spun.

The clouds around him tilted in all kinds of random directions. Was it the clouds that were moving or the ground? Rayne clutched the solid metal pole, made of the same material as the ground. All around him were bits and pieces of an immense metal structure formed of moving parts, creaking and clanging and groaning with rapid effort. His grip slipped, and everything shifted so the ground was now above him, and empty skies below him. If he lost his grip, nothing would catch him.

“I can’t die if I fall, right?” he muttered.

He didn’t know that for certain. It was safer staying put, he rationalized. He struggled to pull his body up over the pole, only for everything to wrench again, sending him tumbling forward. The ground returned to horizontal, lessening the threat of a nasty fall. He glanced around him as fast as he could, but the thick yellow clouds obscured all but the largest parts of this metal contraption.

He saw a towering structure of interlocking metal beams in the distance, and scrambled towards it, no time to think. The ground shifted again and he felt himself tipping over. The structure was so close, only a little further. The ground was almost sideways now, and he began to slide down it, towards the clouds. Struggling to stay on his feet he sprinted forward before the ground became a vertical wall, and grabbed at the protruding metal beams, saving himself from tumbling over the edge.

Safe for now, he wedged himself between the beams to keep from falling. The interlocking metal surrounded smaller bars that twisted around each other to form a spherical structure. Inside, anguished souls wailed as the great contraption holding them spun and whirled. Several of them reached out towards Rayne, trapped inside a rusted cage, just a pile of misery tossed about by some unseen force’s whims. Further away, more of these spherical cages, filled with more of the damned, spun around and around chaotically. Rayne had only been here for a few minutes and it was already maddening, and he couldn’t help but wonder how many centuries some of these poor fools had been stuck enduring this amusement park ride gone mad.

A shadow passed overhead, and like the cry of a great bird, there was a cackling shriek. Rayne glanced up to see soaring creatures above him, demonic entities with leathery appendages, like spider-legs, only long and flat, allowing them to glide around the contraptions, landing near the soul-filled cages, where they ripped the grasping limbs from between the bars and joyfully feasted on their prey. Sometimes, they would drag out an entire person, and multiple creatures would swarm together to feed upon it. Rayne’s safe spot suddenly didn’t feel so safe.

One of the avian beasts landed right beside him. He looked up at its empty black eyes, sockets dripping with an oily tar that flowed down across a beak. It tilted its head, and let out a long howl. Rayne backed away, but the support beam he sat on shifted in the opposite direction, dangling him out over the eternal void of clouds below. The single creature was joined by its fellows, all cackling as they stalked toward him.

There weren’t many other options. Rayne relinquished his hold on the beam, allowing himself to fall. The monsters dove from their metal perches, pulling back their flat limbs to chase after him. As the metal cages fell away Rayne saw the full scope of what he’d been standing on: a giant set of interlocking wheels connected together in the center, covered in cages stuffed full of the damned. The many wheels spun around each other like a broken gyroscope, in ways that seemed to defy the laws of physics, even passing through each other with no regards to spatial dimension. The soaring demons continued to dive after him as he fell, but then they spread their spidery limbs, screaming to a halt, and rapidly vanishing into the growing distance.

The clouds shifted in hue from gold to jade to sapphire to amethyst to ruby and finally to onyx as he plummeted. All around him, lightning bolts lit the sky in crimson shades. Several times they struck him, the heated intensity filling his twitching body with searing pain that coursed through every limb. But as he fell, he realized he had long since grown used to such pain.

Chapter 7

Hitting the ground was far less painful than being struck by lightning. In fact, Rayne felt almost nothing when he fell against the magenta-colored rock.

“You’re late.” He recognized Darrigan’s voice, and saw him standing there waiting.

“I didn’t know I was expected,” Rayne replied.

“I sensed your arrival and came here to wait for you. But you spent far longer than I thought you would in Tyris’s domain.”

“Tyris?”

“Aye, the wind queen. She’s one of the Abyss Lords, ruler over the skies. I was worried you’d encountered her. She tends to be a bit—lascivious, shall we say? But since you’re here, I’d guess you didn’t meet her. Quite lucky. I hope the Krael didn’t give you too much trouble.”

“Those bird things?”

Darrigan nodded.

“What the hell are you two even talking about?” On a nearby cluster of rocks, Gabriel sat with his legs crossed, head in hand.

“I brought him along. He arrived in the Abyss shortly after you did,” Darrigan explained.

“Yeah, drank myself to sleep. I had no idea your friend could hold his liquor like that. We both had the same number of drinks and I could barely walk straight, and he was just peachy.” He hopped onto the ground. “I’m amazed I made it back to my hotel before I passed out.”

“Yeah, David likes to joke that he designed his body to hold its liquor.” Rayne looked back and forth between them. “What about Apolleta? Did you find her?”

“Why are you so hung up on that person? Isn’t she just a stranger?” A sneer hung on Gabriel’s lips.

“I know her about as well as I know you.” An equal sneer formed on Rayne’s lips. He looked at Darrigan. “I can find her, and bring her back here this time.”

“Oh no, you’re not leaving us alone again,” Gabriel said.

“I agree with the idiot,” Darrigan said. “I don’t want to be left alone with him again.”

“Then you can get her,” Rayne said.

“Aren’t we bold today? Fine. But you still owe me, remember that.” Darrigan laid a clawed hand on Rayne’s shoulder and whispered into his ear. “Envision her, but do not go to her. If she’s here, I will find and retrieve her, and bring her back to you.”

“Wouldn’t it be easier for us to all go to her?” Gabriel asked.

“This is a neutral place. For the time being, it’s safer for you to stay here. She could be someplace very dangerous.”

“Every time I met her,” Rayne said, closing his eyes, “she was in fiery place. The heat was so unbearable; it was constantly crushing me.”

The persistent leer on Darrigan’s face vanished. “That sounds like Azaznir’s domain.”

“You know this guy?” Gabriel asked.

“He is—No, it’s not important.” Darrigan shook his head, replacing the serious face with his usual grin. “I can sense the woman’s presence. It’s faint, but I can find her.” His form faded into smoke. “You two stay here.
Especially
you, Rayne.”

The instant he vanished Gabriel pulled at Rayne’s arm. “What are you doing?”

“What does it look like? He’s willing to help, so I’m taking advantage of that.”

“But he’s a monster! You’re just helping him find more souls to do God-knows-what to!”

“How many times to I have to tell you? He’s harmless!” Rayne’s voice raised, but he didn’t care.

“And how many times do I have to tell you? Just because you got some bleeding heart feeling that he’s your friend doesn’t make it true! You can’t just make some demon into your pet like that! We’re both powerless here! They have all the advantages and they’re just toying with us! Quit being so freaking naïve, you idiot!”

“Would you shut it?!” Rayne roared. His voice was drowned out by the roaring thunder overhead, the storm he’d passed through now gathering above them. A bolt of red lightning struck the ground nearby. Black rain fell, and mist swirled at their feet.

“Fog?” groaned Gabriel. “There’s been more and more of this lately.”

Rayne froze, his anger temporarily forgotten as he watched the vapor intensify around them, rising from its pool around their ankles to high above them. A feeling of dread washed over him, accompanying a sick familiarity.

“We have to get out of here,” he said.

“Why? Didn’t your ‘friend’ say it was safe here?”

Rayne grabbed Gabriel’s hand and dragged him in a direction. It didn’t matter which way they went, as long as they got out of the mists.

“Jesus, Mercer, calm down. Your hand is freezing and your nails are digging into my arm. That’s not gonna heal, you know.”

Rayne clenched his teeth but tried to relax his grip. The air around them weighed down upon his body, and he had trouble keeping his balance. Above the mists he saw a small grouping of dead trees

“Higher ground,” he murmured. “Maybe they can’t reach us up there.”

“What can’t reach us? Mercer what’s going on?”

“Shhh,” Rayne tried to keep his voice low. Too late, he could already hear hisses echoing around him, and long shadows moved through the haze. “If we can get to those trees—walk very carefully.”

A serpent darted from the miasma, snapping at Gabriel before the two men could so much as move, and a second one materialized right behind him, wrapping its long form around him. Gabriel clawed at the constricting coils, but they refused to release him.

“Let go of him!” Rayne shouted, grabbing at the scaly body with his hand. The startling electric sensation he felt as he touched it forced him to let go. The coils loosened, and he wasted no time grabbing Gabriel by the legs and yanking him forward. The snake hissed, baring long fangs the size of swords, eyes empty and cold.

“Run!” Rayne screamed, pulling Gabriel forward. The latter followed, stumbling over his own feet. They could barely see each other in the thick fog, and to Rayne, Gabriel appeared as a dark shape in a sea of clouds. Still more snakes materialized, beasts so large there seemed no end to their long bodies. Rayne looked straight into their empty eyes, and saw within them a hunger that made his blood run colder than it already did. He backed closer to the trees, afraid to break eye contact with those Stygian rifts. His hand still clutched Gabriel’s arm, so he tugged him along. They’d almost reached the trees. Great trunks towered high above them, littered with rotting branches and black bark, but they seemed climbable.

“Get up there!” he ordered. Gabriel wasted no time, gripping the decaying bark and hoisting himself upwards. Once he’d climbed up a ways Rayne followed, grasping rough tree trunk in his hands. The fog around them was twice the height of a person, but soon Gabriel had climbed free of its influence, and Rayne was getting close to the top as well.

Another serpent broke from the fog, its head rising through the mist to eye level with Rayne. Startled, he lost his grip on the side of the tree and plummeted downward.

“
Mercer!
” he heard Gabriel shriek. “Get back here! Don’t you dare leave me alone up here!”

He fell flat on his back, and for once the landing sent painful shockwaves through him. It felt like he’d landed on something bulky that had shifted his back into a bad position. As he struggled to rise back up, the same snake charged towards him, and he frantically grabbed it by the jaw before it bit his head off. He tried to push it away, and couldn’t help finding himself making eye contact with the creature again. A moment of stillness passed between them, and the creature ceased its struggles for only a moment. This was followed by a massive wave of disorientation, and Rayne felt as if he stood not in one place, but everywhere all at once, seeing many things through many viewpoints, including himself, standing there. The moment passed, and he found himself once again staring at the giant snake, holding its jaws a breath away from himself. The sense of fear and impending doom began to fade as he stood, facing his enemy eye to pit, and he felt a slight confidence stirring. He continued to maintain his defensive grip with one hand, fumbling with the other toward the tree, where he felt the rough, coarse wood of a stray branch in his hand. He snapped it off and whipped his arm backwards.

“Leave me alone!”

With a scream, he struck the monstrosity with all the force he could muster. The strength of his blow brought on a rush of bewilderment, a dizzying sensation he suppressed beneath pure adrenaline. The snake glared at him as it reared back shrieking and, with a loud roar, it vanished into the dissipating fog.