And Ruin Followed Behind Her

Chapter 19

Chapter 19

When my eyes open again, my wound no longer throbbed. In fact, nothing hurt at all. I felt nothing except the jagged rocks under me, and wet dewiness coating my body.

Everything around me was tinged red and orange, and it was hotter than the surface of the sun. I sat up too quickly and my head felt dizzy. I was on a cliff, overlooking a great city in the distance.

I looked down at my stomach. Two holes punctured it, but the wounds didn’t bleed, though dried blood caked my pants and shirt. My clothes were wet, but not from blood. It was from something that smelled of sulfur.

In front of me, a river of molten lava flowed down a rocky embankment toward a great black gate in the distance. Thousands of bodies filled it; the people screamed out from the river, swimming with all their might to make their way to shore, but the current was too strong.

Along the riverbed I saw demons, like the ones invading Chandler, busy stacking bodies on top of each other. Corpses covered every inch of the rocky terrain for as far at the eye could see.

“You should be down there,” I heard behind me. I turned to see a dark-skinned woman in a green tunic, with leather bracers on her arms and legs. She wore a red bandana around her forehead, and her pointed ears stuck out from her head. She sharpened my daggers with a rock as she stared at me with deep, emerald eyes.

“I almost didn’t find you before the current swept you away,” she said. “If you made it to the black gate, I wouldn’t have been able to save you in time.”

“And who are you?” I asked, pushing myself to my feet.

She pointed at me with the tip of the dagger’s blade and chuckled. “You really are my descendent, aren’t you?”

The woman closed her eyes. A pair of blue wings grew out of her back and illuminated my face with a soft glow.

“Akta?” I asked.

She nodded. “That is my name, Julia.”

“You know me?”

“Elka told me enough to get me by,” Akta said, scraping a smooth rock down my blade that sparked every time she reached the tip. “Said you might do something stupid and asked me to look out for you.”

Akta’s dark face cracked from years in the Hellish heat, but under those grooves she could have been my age, save for the clothing which looked straight out of an epic fantasy book.

“And where is Elka?”

“She is in another place,” Akta responded, straightening her headband.

“Heaven?” I said, confused.

“I can’t say, but she’s not here. That’s for sure.”

“Why are you here?”

Akta didn’t look up from her work, sharpening the blades with long, deliberate strokes. “I made a deal with the wrong goddess a long time ago, before Lucifer, and I can’t leave until I honor my debt to her.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s not that bad down here,” the wizened pixie said with a sad smile. “Especially if you can avoid Aziolith. He’s cranky most of the time and he’s never forgiven me for killing him.”

I took a step toward her. Even though she was family, her presence scared me. “He’s destroying Chandler right now.”

“I know,” Akta replied, stopping her sharpening for a moment. “He never should have been allowed to escape, but Lucifer can’t keep track of anything. He’s a horrible bureaucrat. Hell is a shell of its former greatness ever since Velaska ran off to live among the stars. Luckily, his incompetence affords me the ability to do what I want, so I can’t complain. Sometimes, when the moans stop, it’s downright peaceful here.”

I looked out over the valley of damned souls. Their bodies rose to the tip of the giant cavern like a great mountain range that stretched over the horizon. “Is that what I have to look forward to?”

Akta stood, my daggers now razor sharp in her hand. “Not unless you want it to be. You can go back, still. There is time to fix your mistake, kill Aziolith, and send him back beyond the gates of Hell, but time is of the essence.”

“Go back? But I’m dead, right?”

“Your soul is dead, but your body is alive, at least for a couple more moments. Right now, you are in limbo. Luckily, you are bleeding out slowly. A stomach wound takes a long time to cause death,” Akta said, twirling the daggers in her hand. “I’ve missed these over the centuries.”

“They are yours?” I asked.

She nodded. “They were mine, enchanted by the first pixies. They passed through my family for generations, until they made their way to you. Now, you must use them to destroy Aziolith again.”

“I can’t.” I shook my head. “I’ve already failed.”

Akta grabbed my chin. “No. My family are not failures. We do not leave things undone. There is still time for you to return, reunite with your body, and save yourself. Look behind you.”

Akta spun me around until I saw the portal to Earth. From the cliff where we stood, it only looked like a few feet tall. Hundreds of demons sat on its edges, waiting for their chance to pour through and wreak havoc.

“That’s so far away,” I said.

“It is the only way.” Akta let go of my head. “You can stay here and take your chances with Charon. Or you can return and take your chances with the dragon.”

“What’s the point of going back? I don’t know how to close the portal. I don’t know how to stop this.”

“That’s not what’s important,” Akta said, handing me back the daggers. “What’s important is trying. You’d know how to close it if you thought for a moment. Unfortunately, we don’t have a moment, so I’ll just tell you how to stop this horrible mess. Only Aziolith’s blood can close the portal. Elka’s opened it with her magical blood in order to summon him, and only his can close it. Now, will you help?”

I didn’t have to think about it. I grabbed Akta’s daggers from her outstretched hand. “Yes. I will. But I don’t stand a chance against Aziolith. He’s shaking off guns and missiles like they are nothing. I’ll be eaten in a second.”

“He has a fatal flaw,” Akta said.

“The lining of his stomach, I know.”

“Not only his stomach. His wing is also his weakness. He used to be able to fly across the world in a matter of minutes, but I clipped his right wing during our fight. He cannot fly. He can only walk, and he lumbers slowly. In the sky Aziolith is unbeatable, but on the ground, he can be killed.”

My skin was turning a pale white hue. “I don’t feel well.”

“Your death is imminent. We must hurry. There is not much time.”

Akta grabbed me by the shoulders and we both lifted into the air. I closed my eyes and grew out my own pair of wings. They fluttered as fast as I could manage, right alongside Akta’s. Together, we bolted across the plains of Hell kicking up dust in our wake. Millions of damned souls moaned in agony as demons tortured them beneath us. Every moment Hell packed fuller with the damned. There were piles of souls, a thousand high, for as far as the eye could see.

“Soon, Satan won’t be able to fit all these souls in Hell,” Akta said. “I wonder what he will do with them.”

“Unleash them on the world, maybe?” I replied.

“Perhaps. There is plenty of room on Earth and it’s rife for an Apocalypse. The demons will have a field day with humanity, doughy and soft as they’ve become. Your kind has clearly lost their warrior spirit.”

I gripped my dagger tightly. “We can get it back.”

“I hope so.”

We neared the portal to Hell. The demons groaned as they mulled around the entrance to our world.

“When you get to the other side, don’t waste time,” Akta told me. “Pull out the daggers in your stomach. This will be the most painful part. Then, use the pixie dust to close your wound. Imagine yourself healthy, let your mind pull yourself toward it, and you will recover quickly. Then, swallow the last of what is in your pouch. Your body will do the rest. A fact I wish I knew when I was alive.”

“Shouldn’t I go to the hospital?”

We were only a couple of feet away from the portal now. “They are only good for the dying. Trust me.”

“Thank you.”

Akta let me go. “Good luck to you.”

I flew as fast as I could into the portal, and it sucked me right in. I tumbled through, experiencing every color imaginable—some I didn’t know existed—until I woke up back in my body, bloody and broken. I watched the ghost of Atka’s daggers spin forward and mold perfectly with those protruding from of my stomach.

My arms were weak, but I focused my mind to lift them. I wrapped my fingers around the hilts and yanked the daggers out of my abdomen. I screamed bloody murder. The blood gushed out onto the ground as I pulled the pixie dust from my pocket and sprinkled it over the wound.

I closed my eyes. It was hard not to fall asleep and dream again forever, but I imagined myself healthy. I reconstructed every molecule of my body, and then I let my mind pull myself toward it. A blue light flashed around me and I suddenly felt better. I touched my stomach, and it no longer bled. It no longer ached. There were no wounds or scars, either.

I was ready to carry out my mission. If the blood of Aziolith was the only thing that would close the portal, then I will make him bleed. I rubbed what remained of the pixie dust on my gums and swallowed. It gave me a surge of energy, and I found myself in a thousand places at once, fighting every demon in front of me with ease.

The blue light was me and I was the blue light. We were one and the same. I watched the blue light dance in front of me. I closed my eyes and I was there. The world moved forward, but in slow motion.

Monsters swung their swords like sloths as I disappeared and reappeared at will in front of them. I sliced one across the throat and stabbed another through the brain before they’d even moved an inch. My wings fluttered into the air as I stole the sword from one demon and stabbed it in the eye of another effortlessly. They didn’t stand a chance. I existed on another level.

I saw the dragon Aziolith in the distance, and I flapped my wings harder to reach him, killing every demon I came across along the way.