Chapter 709: The old man and the girl

The old man wandered through fire and shadow. He hid behind some jagged rocks outside a cave, not because he was afraid, but because he knew he was being watched.

The old man had forgotten most of the things he once knew. His name, for example. The major details of his life. But he knew there was a time when he lived beneath a blue sky, and saw things that were green, and spent moments without risk of being caught by demons.

He’d had friends. Family. Reasons to live beyond a desire to avoid suffering. Those days were gone. Now he wandered. He hid. He killed those creatures weak enough to handle in his pitiful state.

He was powerful once. He knew that, too. But his abilities now barely worked. The blade that was once half of his soul flickered beneath his ragged robe. Every few seconds it tried to re-ignite, only to again discover its wielder was hollow. Empty.

The other half of the old man’s soul had been stripped, locked away somewhere in this hell. It was why he was here, no doubt. He wondered what sort of person he must have been to deserve this fate. Had he been a thief? A murderer? A betrayer?

His other half called to him endlessly. He could hear it, telling him where it was, that salvation and redemption were within his grasp. That when they were together again they would escape this place. But he couldn’t get to it.

His soul fragment was locked behind a fortress of flame. It was guarded by beasts that could rend him to pieces in seconds. He had seen it from afar, stone walls squat and terrible, surrounded by a wandering army of awful creatures. He had seen no way through. No hidden path or terrain to sneak behind.

No. He had to hide, to evade, to prevent them from finding him and making things worse.

Be brave. We’ll find you.

They were words lodged in the old man’s memory like a scar. Words he knew were somehow true, but not why, or who’d said them. But only a friend would have told him to be brave. It must have been.

We’ll find you.

He didn’t know how anyone or anything could help him in this terrible place. He only knew he had to survive. To wander, and to hide. Because the voice had told him to be strong. And the voice was the only thing that was good. He believed that. He had to believe it.

So the old man covered his blade with his robes. And he covered his robes with the red dust of hell to mask his scent. He hid as the demonic scouts passed so close to his hiding place any normal man would have cried out in terror.

But the old man was patient. He was strong. And someone was coming for him.

He moved nothing, not even his eyes. And when the scouts and their hounds moved far enough away, he ran without sound or hesitation, moving to the back of the cave. And when it was time, he returned to the smoldering fields of hell. And he wandered again.

**

Annie woke in a dark room filled with mist. Her abyssal nature triggered, and she knew where she was. She remembered dying.

She knew this was her, but wasn’t. That it existed, but didn’t. She was really the manifestation of her soul, trapped in a place without her body. Fear crept through her, but died as it reached the void. It was the one power she still had.

She tried to move. Her arms and legs were strapped on some kind of table. She heard a creaking, then a skittering. A humanoid demon wearing nothing but a white, filthy and bloodstained apron moved beside her. Its body was emaciated and pale. It wore cracked spectacles and had knives somehow replacing most of its fingers. It smiled with a huge mouth full of broken, jagged teeth.

“Awake? Good. My master says I’m to break you.” It coughed as it cackled. “You were a good girl, weren’t you? You shouldn’t have had your soul taken. We don’t care about that here though, do we, Good Girl? No, we don’t.”

It leaned and leered, tracing knife-fingers down her chest, like it was deciding where to start.

“You should run now,” Annie said, feeling nothing as she looked away. “He’s coming fast. I think he knew where I’d be.”

“Who’s coming, dear? Nobody’s coming. Not for you. Not for a long time. We have all the time in the world.”

No. They didn’t. The mist lit with orange light. Demons screamed.

Arminius roared into the torture chamber, throwing guards against the wall so hard she heard their spines crack. The torturer cried out in horror.

“It’s…they said you were gone…”

Something wet splattered Annie’s face. She stared at the wall and didn’t try to move, not afraid, not anything.

“You tricked me,” she said when it was over, with no emotion.

Her cold, rational mind was working fast now. There was a deep hurt inside her, a horrible betrayal, but she couldn’t feel it yet. She didn’t know how long and how many lies. Had it all been for revenge? Something else?

“I’m sorry, Annie. There was no other way. I knew I could never harm Yalor. Not alone. And not on the prime. I had to…make him take you. It gives you special importance here. Put you where I needed you. I know you won’t forgive me.”

The fallen angel slit her bonds without the slightest effort, some sort of aura around him that could cut with air. She finally turned her head to look at him. He was different in the abyss. Horrible.

His red eyes leaked flame, the same as before. But his face was monstrous. He was like a gargoyle with wet, dripping skin. His beautiful wings…in her vision of him, and how he’d looked in the prime, they’d been made of fire. In reality, they were a writhing mass of dark tentacles.

“Do you still think me beautiful?”

His voice was sad, full of shame. And no, she didn’t. But not because of how he looked.

“I was young. I would have lived many years.” When he said nothing, she looked away and thought some more. “What did you need me for?”

“I needed your soul. It is a key to many locks I cannot open. Together, we can seek out the elder gods’ secrets here in the abyss. We can weaken them enough they can be destroyed. But we must hurry before your horned prince comes to save you. We can do it with his help. But we may have to trick him. Together, we can stop the cycle.”

None of it made any sense or interested Annie. Not in her void. But she didn’t like the idea of trying to trick Mason. He’d been a good man. One of the few.

“How do you know he’ll come?”

“Because I was like him once. The champion of the last cycle. I failed to stop the doom.”

She took that in and said nothing for awhile. But the deep pit of hurt she would one day feel had a question it wanted her to ask.

“Why didn’t you ask me to help you?”

“Because you would have said no.”

She wasn’t completely sure, if she was honest. But being alive seemed better than not being alive, even when it was colorless.

It didn’t matter anymore. She was here now. If Arminius was telling her the truth—which was a big if, given their circumstances—she would still have purpose. In any case, she was helpless without him. She sat up and slid her legs off the table.

“I have no choice. I’m weak, and need your protection. But it won’t be like before.”

The fallen angel, or whatever he was, stared at the floor, looking wretched.

“I know.”

Annie stood and looked around the torture chamber for a weapon. Finding nothing suitable on the demonic guards, she ripped off all the dead torturer’s fingers, and hid the knives away in her raggedy clothes.

“Everything you were is hidden in the abyss,” Arminius said, looking up at her. “We can find your axe. Return your powers. Everything. Then we seek out the hidden places of the abyss, one by one. The gods buried things here they wanted forgotten. I have been studying them for three centuries.”

Annie said nothing because she had nothing to say. If her former protector did as he promised, it would mean…well, more than nothing. When she was made whole, she would decide what to do. Could she escape the abyss on her own? And what would happen if she did?

If Mason was truly coming, he might be able to help her. Was her body gone? Had they shoved it in some fridge like they had with the old man? Could her soul be put back inside?

She didn’t know. But for now, she needed her betrayer. It was the only way.

“Show me.”

Arminius half floated, half slithered out of the torture chamber. Annie was about to follow when she saw a mirror leaning against the wall, and looked at herself. She stared at an insane person.

Wild, red hair caked with blood, clothes barely clinging to their form, the curves she’d hated because they made fighting more difficult. A piece of her screamed in familiarity—she looked as she had when she’d left the tutorial. That was her permanent appearance in the abyss.

It was mind-breaking. But it didn’t touch her now. There was no one to see her or care. Certainly not herself. Barefoot and armed with a dead demon’s finger-knives, she trailed Arminius into the mist.