Chapter 37

Her feet were cold and felt wet as she walked slowly through the inside of the enormous tree. It could have felt like an entirely different reality where she was, except that she knew deep down that she was still heading in the same direction – heading for the same destination.

She felt things crawling across her feet with legs too numerous to count with her eyes unaccustomed to the blackness. She felt things slithering above her head and occasionally through her hair.

She felt every nerve screaming from her flesh but could not form the sound. She knew it would do no good to scream, no one was around to hear her scream.

Images flashed before her eyes which caused her to stumble to her knees. The man she had watched crucified up on the mound. Pain. Blood. Mercy. Compassion. Passion. Everything she had ever wanted and everything she was denied. He opened his bloodied eyes and looked down upon her weeping face and smiled. “You are the last,” he said to her and she looked up at him, not understanding why he was saying this to her.

“Touch my body and you will know,” he called to her and she obeyed.

She crawled over and gently took hold of his bloodied feet, avoiding the spike which had been driven through them, and closed her eyes.

“Open and understand,”

She opened her eyes and found herself no longer standing at the foot of Christ, but instead inside some room. It was familiar – very familiar. It had a large fireplace, a stone altar in the center of the room, a chair, and two doors. She saw that she was not standing here alone. She saw Orion’s father kneeling before the altar. She saw Orion, not a day older than she had seen him from his own memory. Perhaps sixteen. And then she saw a naked woman shackled to the fireplace. She looked closer and saw that it was Queen Nanaac.

Mykella could read Darvon’s wicked thoughts. Orion didn’t know that this was his mother – he just thought she was his enemy. Orion had no knowledge that Nanaac was his mother. If he had…well, maybe he would still have done his hideous act anyway. She realized that the young Orion was very good at hiding his emotions.

They could not see her, she knew, and so she watched in disgust as Orion had his way with Nanaac and that was when her vision altered.

From some strange revelation, she became aware that she was inside Nanaac. More accurately, she was inside Nanaac’s womb. And from there, she found that she was no longer inside Nanaac, but rather lying on the cold floor wrapped in nothing except a dirty brown robe.

Mykella didn’t understand anything that was before her eyes, even as she was picked up by invisible hands and brought back to her own self, kneeling down inside the darkened tree.

She no longer knelt in front of Christ. She was alone. Except for the crawling things which made love to her flesh in the dark.

Please, she prayed, what does it mean – those visions? Somehow she knew that she would receive no answer. Answers are for every soul who has reached the end of their existence. When she meets God, then she would have all the answers she ever wanted to know. All the why’s finally answered.

And yet she did receive an answer of sorts. A hissing voice spoke into her ear in a delicate and seductive voice. “Allow me to show you what He denies you,” said the snake in the dark.

Mykella opened her eyes, realizing that she had closed them, and found that she was now standing in an open meadow being drenched by the rain. Red rain? She looked around and became petrified that what she thought was typical rain was, in fact, a shower of blood. Everywhere she looked, humans were being torn apart by monstrous Dreamkillers.

In fact, she really didn’t see too many humans left alive. She looked up and saw, to her surprise, her father hiding in the trees with an empty bow in his hand wearing a shocked and drained expression on his face. He had watched everyone he knew being led to slaughter and he felt it was his entire fault.

Tears fell from her eyes as she watched her father hanging tightly to the branch he was hanging from. Now she understood why it was so easy for him to give himself to Orion. There was no way one man could carry that much weight on his shoulders.

And then she saw Orion glide across the meadow and noticed that the battle was over – only three humans were alive. Several Dreamkillers forced the humans down on their knees and faced Orion. Orion leaned down to the middle prisoner and smiled beneath his hood (she could feel his sadistic smile). “Henceforth, I am your God,” he exclaimed and grabbed the man’s head and turned it completely around, laughing as he heard the several snaps as his neck broke.

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He dropped the lifeless corpse and turned and walked back the way he had come, allowing the monsters to have their way with the last two humans.

She closed her eyes from the atrocious sight – she didn’t need to see what they were doing, she could hear it.

“Is this what you’re supposed to be saving?” hissed the snake as she kept her eyes closed. “In a matter of days there won’t be any souls left to save. And you know this, yet continue to fight for their salvation.”

Mykella opened her eyes. “You took Orion once before, didn't you?” She had a pretty good idea who was talking to her now.

“I thought it was Orion, yes.” A short pause, then, “I took Allen Corgan instead, unintentionally. It seemed that Orion and Allen had switched bodies.”

“How do I stop Orion?” She didn’t know why she was talking to the devil, Orion’s own nemesis, but she had to try.

“Oh,” the snake laughed. “You already know the answer to that, my Child.”

“Ha,” she retorted behind sarcasm. “If I knew that answer I wouldn’t be asking you. Would I?”

“There are lots that you think you don’t know, yet if you look deep down, everything will be clear to you. You will not like where your search ends, but at least there will be no more lies.”

No more lies? “I’ve been lied to?” She couldn’t believe what she was hearing, especially from Satan himself, who has nothing to gain by telling her the truth.

“Whose idea do you really think it was for your father to bring his battalion to Orion’s doorstep? Your father’s? No, it was your God who made them go like sheep to their slaughter. Some shepherd, huh?”

“No, my father was trying to help me – buy me more time.”

“So you would like to think, I suppose.”

“No,” she said. “I can’t believe that God would just let them die for no reason.” Anger she had never felt surfaced in her soul. It was so fierce that she forgot all about the pain in her crushed hand.

“Oh, yes,” replied the snake behind seduction. “I can fix your hand if you will allow me the pleasure.”

Mykella closed her eyes and tried her damnedest to control her breathing. She knew that it was anger that the devil fed upon. Anger created sin. Anger created Orion. She sighed and opened her eyes. “Anger will not defeat Orion,” she whispered and stood up.

“Don’t you worry, Mykella,” hissed the snake. “I’ll be here to keep you company just so you know you are not alone in the dark.”

Deep down, Mykella was a little bit glad that the devil was going to keep her company. That way she could practice using her strength against Orion. She figured, if she loses to the devil, then at least it’s to him her soul goes and not to some low-key evil man who desired nothing except for being God-King Orion.

She knew that the battle in the meadow was not over yet – she could just feel it. If she hurried, she could still have time to save more than just a handful of souls. She could save a handful of lives, too.

But it seemed that God wasn’t through with her yet either. Instead of using his Son as the connector, he used the Sun, which damned-near blinded Mykella as she looked into it. But when she looked into the face of the sun, familiar images danced back and forth. Faces of those she knew and loved.

“Your mother loved you more than anything in my world, Mykella,” whispered a soft voice in her ear and the devil laughed.

“Oh yeah – you mean the one who was murdered by a Dreamkiller?”

“Your friends: Ben Krieger, Chris Fergenson, Karl Ramses, and Agnes Bernadette,” continued the soft voice.

“Dead, widowed, dead, and, let’s see, yes, dead.”

Mykella closed her eyes. There was some sick truth in what the devil was saying. Just about everyone she loved was dead. She wished there was some way around the death, but she knew Satan was right. She hated herself for believing in the devil. It made her insides want to vomit.

“Vincent and his mother, Tracy,”

To this Satan had nothing to say. He could have said that Vincent was almost gone in the mind and that Tracy should have been a ghost twenty years ago, but he didn’t say it – he was letting Mykella ponder these last two names.

Mykella opened her eyes finally and looked into the sun. “So, out of all those, there are only three that haven’t died by your command? Am I to save just three damned people?”

Satan heard something he thought he would never hear – the sigh of God. He was overjoyed by this sound; now Orion would take control of the universe and their partnership will end.

“Mykella,” whispered God. “Continue on your path and you will discover thousands of souls worth saving. I am not interested in lives. It is their souls that matter in the end of everything. Without their souls they could not live again in my kingdom.”

Mykella shook her head and came to an understanding she had not thought possible. From here on out she would not rely on her own instincts, but rather let the divine control her. “How much further?” she finally asked.

The snake shook its head and slithered back into the darkness and the sun glowed even brighter as she thought God was smiling.

“Not much further. But close your mind; otherwise Lucifer will try you again. The next time he won’t be so excited to be in your presence.”

Mykella grinned. There weren’t that many people who were excited to be in her presence these days. But that thought was cut short as a blast of sharp pain raced through her hand and she realized that Satan had been blocking the pain in her hand. She wanted to beg God to fix her hand, but knew that that would be selfish of her.

All of her senses came back to her at that same moment. She could feel the many-legged things slithering across her flesh (she was afraid, but she really didn’t understand why – she had never encountered any other living organism in her life, other than humans and Dreamkillers).

The bottom of the tree felt damp and spongy to her aching feet, although she could sense the sponginess soaking up her blood from the many cuts in her feet. It smelt damp and what her father would call “moldy,” although she didn’t know what mold was. And as the sun faded into nothingness, she was left in total darkness once again.

She closed her eyes and stood up. Everything was about to end, she thought. To kill Orion was to kill yourself. Must be another way to live.

She took a deep breath, held it for a moment or two, and then let it out and then placed one foot in front of the other and so forth until she realized that she was walking again.