CHAPTER TWO [PART EIGHT]
Hell
103 Years Since the Citadel's Founding
Year of the Void-Scarring Talon, Month of the Egg.
I said my farewells to the haven. Crust was appreciative of the help, and advised I find her again if I ended up staying here after all. To her credit, she did not express any further doubt on whether or not I’d succeed in leaving Hell, even if that was only a matter of courtesy, though Prawx was more confident in offering me a role as a guardian once I finally abandoned my pursuits.
I was glad I’d gotten used to the unbearable heat back within the Exaggerated Space Room, it gave me a chance to be more appreciative of the desert vista whereas my original self likely would’ve begrudged every second of the torturous sun bearing down on me. I was still taxed by that bright ball of flame in the sky, but it was more an irritant than a bane on my mood.
We decided to leave the tatoun behind and walked the journey on foot. Any supplies necessary, Gate could take care of thanks to her abilities, or so she said. I felt some degrees safer with her by my side and considered myself fortunate that circumstances had led me to her. On the other hand, if things turned south and she decided she could no longer trust me, I'd be in as bad a position as I had been when I first arrived in Hell. Guess that would mean having to find another Feasters camp. We began the journey mostly in silence, and it was only when we were a couple of hours from the haven that Gate spoke up. I likely would’ve been content riding in silence if she hadn’t. The thought of forcing a conversation had never done much for me, nor was it my forte.
“Tell me, Avatar. What’s the rush? Why exactly do you need to leave here in four days?”
I wagered there was no harm in being honest with Gate. “Have you ever heard of freelancers?”
“Some have been exiled here, from peoples that do not look kindly on them. Is that what happened to you? The qhimphals do not appreciate you being a freelancer?”
“No. Well, I'm not too sure about that. I'm not a freelancer, not yet at least. But I’m meant to attend an academy for freelancers in four days.”
“All this energy to attend a school? It seems a bit much, even for one who's been stuck in Hell for so long.”
“Perhaps, but I wasn’t sent here because I offended someone, or did something wrong.”
“Why were you sent here?”
“As a test.”
“A test?”
“I was told to escape by the time I had to attend the academy. That was the test.”
“Absurd. What monster would do that as a test? No one’s ever escaped here. They’ve condemned you to this place. A test? How idiotic.”
“They believed I could do it, so I’ll find a way.”
“Did they tell you how you were supposed to do it?”
“Not a singular hint.”
“Who are these people exactly? Your people? The qhimphals?”
“You could consider this person to be my mentor. Not a qhimphal. Come to think of it, I don’t know what he is.”
“It’s quite a process to move people here. How did he do it?”
“He… uh… he opened a door in thin air and pushed me through. And I landed among Feasters.”
“Something like that, I could perhaps believe it if he were here in Hell, and had been affected by one of the precursors, but as far as I know-”
“Maybe he lied. I haven’t known him for long, Gate. But if he can open a door anywhere, including Hell… if he’d gotten his powers here, then maybe he found a way out, and just kept it to himself.”
“If he did, it’d be unfair to expect you to find a way out on your own. These abilities are one-of-a-kind, you understand? None of the precursors do the exact same thing. No one else has a world within them as I do.”
“Maybe there’s something that can make me teleport, fly, or give me the intelligence to build a way out. Something that could work.”
“Even if there were, you don’t pick and choose what you can do. Each precursor is different, and there’s very little way to tell what can do what beforehand.”
“How do you even find these precursors?”
“To begin with, you don’t go looking for them, Avatar, they find you. And that's chance, really.”
“Alright, hoping I get lucky and get the right precursor isn’t a viable way out. I won’t bank on that, then.”
“It could be he simply wants you to survive here for five days and intends on retrieving you once those five days are up.”
“But I can’t hang my hopes on that either, can I? My mentor is a bit deranged. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d abandoned me here entirely. He's not reliable in that way."
“You should have chosen a better mentor.”
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“It wasn’t much of a choice, really. He kidnapped me. Just like coming here wasn’t much of a choice.”
“You must be as unlucky as the rest of us. Did you do something to offend this mentor?”
“Possibly? It’s hard to tell with him. You said you had another lead for me though.”
“I did.”
“What is it?”
“A moment, before I address that. Do you not find it too fortunate that you and I met not long after you arrived? That saving Crust earned you favor with Prawx, enough to have you sent to retrieve me? You must understand by now, that I’m not an ordinary resident of Hell. You’ll be hard-pressed to find someone who hasn’t heard of me, even in passing. But few meet me. Still, within a day, we find ourselves alone in Hell. And you are closer to your goal, though still far, make no mistake, but closer than most will ever get to finding out a method of escaping this place.”
“You think that my meeting you wasn’t chance.”
“That’s my safe assumption. You live as long as I have, and you don’t chalk too many things up to chance before ruling out the other possibilities. There’s always, of course, a chance that you are lying about many things. I’ve never heard of your people before. There’s not nearly enough evidence to corroborate anything that you’re saying.”
“I’ve been turned on often enough not to question your doubt. I remain confident that I have no ill intent towards you, so I welcome your scrutiny, as long as you give me a fair chance.”
“I won’t give you a fair chance, Avatar. I need to be certain. I’m sorry. You’ll simply have to bare that responsibility on your shoulders.”
“If you say so. Well, if not me, then you believe my mentor may have a hand in this? Or do you think the door he opened into Hell was somehow manipulated by a third party?”
“The latter is hard to believe. Your mentor can control where he opens these passageways?”
“As far as I can tell. He was able to open a door precisely to where I was when we first met, and into his liveship.”
“Not liable to be controlled by someone else, I think. And what does this mentor look like?”
“About five heads high, thick but well-built. A skull-like face, with tentacles protruding out of it.”
“And his name?”
“Lhu.”
Gate said nothing, thinking.
“Does it ring a bell?”
“No. No, it doesn’t.”
“I have another theory. Do you worship any gods here in Hell?”
“No. No one here does. Not for long, at least. Prayers don’t get answered in Hell, otherwise, they wouldn’t be here in the first place. I've met many people that believe that there’s something about this planet that prevents any measure of communication with the gods.”
“Shit. Well, that might rule that theory out.”
“That a god is manipulating you?” She chuckled at that.
“Not very devout, I take it?”
“Like I said, the gods have no influence in Hell.”
“Well, if you say so.”
But this sounded like something that would be in Weaver’s wheelhouse, didn’t it? If they need me so desperately, then maybe they’d have found a way to make sure I got out. Pulled some strings so that I met the right people. That was the most likely possibility I could think of. I’d doubted Weaver’s influence before, but I don’t think I would’ve survived Lhu’s training if not for that. The original me certainly wouldn’t have.
“Will you tell me about your lead?”
“Very well. I know someone who once attempted to escape Hell. No. Not just someone. I know the person who got closer than anyone, and who destroyed Heaven in the process.”
“They’re still alive?”
“Yes. But they long ago learned to accept their place in this world. Those deaths weighed heavily on them. Not to mention, a lot of people want them dead, now. It's best they stay out of the sunlight, and there's sunlight everywhere here in Hell”
“I understand why you'd hesitate to introduce us. You think there’s a possibility I’m trying to get to them.”
“I haven’t ruled it out.”
“And you think this journey to the next haven is going to give me sufficient opportunities to prove myself?”
“The time-sensitive nature of your affairs, and to attend a school? It doesn’t fill me with confidence.”
“No.” I sighed. “I don’t blame you. If you know this person yourself, then surely you know a thing or two about their attempt to escape. How they got so close.”
“There’s no harm in telling you that much, I guess. First, you need to understand that there were two principal factors working against their attempt to leave Hell. You know, beyond every other obstacle they took to get to the point where they could even open a doorway out. Firstly, there’s the obvious one. The angels.”
“Angels?”
“Yes. They were built to keep us in and to prevent anything that could entirely destroy Hell. Aside from that, they don’t involve themselves in Hell’s affairs. They were made by my people when we first began colonizing Hell. They’re called angels because they guard the way out of here.”
“And how dangerous are they?”
“Dangerous. They’re killing machines, and indiscriminate at that. Even I prefer not to get involved with them. If your mentor does try to recover you, then there’s a good chance you’ll need to deal with an angel then, too. In fact, I’d be surprised if they weren’t investigating how you got here in the first place. That’s a liability for them.”
“You’re saying there’s a chance they’ll be tracking me down, even now?”
“I’m not sure how they operate. They don’t communicate with us, ever. There’s no way to know what they think.”
“At least tell me the second bit is less intimidating than the first.”
“Not exactly. The one to have succeeded in preventing our lead’s escape is the second factor. Up until that point, no one knew this individual existed. It had remained largely hidden, and aside from the Ten Most Wanted who had been the first prisoners to arrive in Hell, no one even knew this person existed. We’ve come to call this person Zero, they were the very first prisoner to have been placed in Hell, but none of us knew that till then. And they made sure that the escape didn’t happen. I never learned Zero’s motivation, and there’s little else I can tell you. But there’s a reason they were the first prisoner, and there’s hardly anyone more dangerous than that person, here in Hell.”
“Maybe you should have just led your attempts to convince me not to bother escaping with that.”
“You’re ready to abandon those ambitions of yours?”
“Well, let’s wait to find out how hard it is to even get that passageway you mentioned opened.”
“That part involves some sort of ritual. It’s the aspect that they’ve been most privy about. I suspect they had to undergo some grim undertaking that still haunts them.”
“You think I’ll have a better chance of finding out what it is than you did?”
“Telling them you need to go to school might not help your cause much.”
“No. I expect it wouldn’t.”
“You shouldn’t worry overly much about that. You still have to prove yourself to me first. At the least, that should give them some measure of confidence in you.”
“They trust you?”
“They trust me with their life. And I wouldn’t betray that trust. Let me ask you a question: do you know how to use that machete, or is there a different weapon you’d like to use?”
“What?”
“We’re going to have company soon. Not pleasant company.”
“No way to talk our way out?”
“You already tried that before, didn’t you?”
“Gazon?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe they’ll be more amenable to my arguments this time around.”
“And if not?”
“I’ll be better off using my hands than anything else.”
She observed my webbed hand for a moment.
“I would offer you some gauntlets, but I don’t think I have anything that would suit you.”
“I appreciate the sentiment anyways. I still intend on seeing if there’s a chance this doesn’t have to get physical.”
“And if it does, will you handle it on your own?”
“That depends on if you see things the same way Prawx does.”
“If I have to get involved, I intend on killing all three and salvaging their corpses.”
“That’s dark.”
“This is Hell.”
“If I need help, I’ll scream for it. Unless they destroy my throat. In which case, you have my pleasure to get involved.”
“Best of luck.”