Eighty-two years as Mallory. The old woman thought as she saw her life go by in a flash. And only several summers as Nivin. My mom always liked Nivin more than Mallory, and I did too. Until she died, and I can’t bear the name anymore. I buried it along with her and everything else, and I guess I buried him as well until now. What would mom say to something like this? Maybe laugh, ask me if I’ve been drinking. I think she would want me to go for it, just for the hell of it. ‘You only die once, after all’, as she put it so eloquently.
Before Mallory could think further, however, an immaculate recreation of a clock tick-tock-ing away came from the men standing to her left and right. It was just the right amount of annoyance for the old woman to make up her mind. She mustered all of her strength to lift up her hands, which the men took as a sign to help her get out of her bed. Minutes passed which Mallory was sure meant her end was imminent come the return of the angel of death, but nothing happened. She took it as a sign that whatever was going on, she was only going to get any answer from the man that started everything.
“May God forgive me for what I’m going to do.” Mallory muttered as she glared at the two men named Di’at. “Now you have me, standing, shaking like a leaf, but standing anyway. Are you going to make me wait any longer, Devil, or are we going to get this show on the road?” Di’at smiled as his two bodies walked into one another, becoming singular once more. He held out his hand and made a motion like pulling upon a thread, whereupon a dark portal appeared in the air. The man stepped forward first, going through halfway before looking back and waiting for Mallory to follow suit.
“ … If there ever was an entrance to Hell, that would be it.” Mallory commented before moving forward and following Di’at through the portal. On the other side was a gray, desolate plain that seemed to stretch on forever. While the place looked right, Mallory was also expecting to feel searing heat, maybe the wails of the damned filling her ears from everywhere. That those two things were remarkably absent was both a relief for the old woman and unnerved her in a way she never felt before. Di’at never stopped walking, which prompted Mallory to catch up and walk beside him.
“Is this Hell? I imagined it-“
“Are you still on about that? I told you, I’m no Devil, no horns nor tails here to see. And this isn’t Hell, as you put it. This is just where we need to go through for a bit before I can bring you to our actual destination. Think of it as a transient location, like a cloud or a sea. Oh, and you can stop looking like that now. Freshen up before some really judgmental folks come around and see you. Their barks really bite.” Di’at gestured to all of Mallory as though the old woman’s looks were shabby clothes.
“ Why, I’ll be! Just the sort of thing a Devil would think to say about someone like me.” Mallory spoke with unrestrained venom, “There will be no sorcery, trickery, or bedevilment done to me of any sort. Do you hear me, Devil?!”
“Something of the sort is already happening to you, my dear. Are you not wondering how you’re able to move right now? And my name is Di’at, though you seem insistent on matching me one-to-one to the Devil himself. There is a limit to rudeness, you know.” Di’at’s words rang true in Mallory, which shocked her so much she had to stop and think. This gave her the chance to examine herself, specifically her body, and what she found frightened her. Wherever she checked, she was finding signs that her body was very slowly becoming healthier, restoring her to when she was at the prime of her life.
“W-What have you done to me, Devil?! Release me from your spell, at once!” Mallory shrieked as she collapsed to her knees, her hands clawing at her arms as she shivered from the great fear gripping her heart. Di’at stopped and turned back to where Mallory now sat, looking down on her with clear pity on his face.
“This is simply the nature of this realm, Mallory. I’ve never stayed too long here for obvious reasons. But I need you to stand up and keep walking a little bit further for me, just until we can get out of here and on to the next part of our journey.” Di’at extended a hand out to Mallory, who was tempted to swat the hand away from her, but instead chose to remain in her small cocoon, hugging herself as she cried tears of sorrow.
“I’ve been tricked by the Devil. Forgive me, my Lord, for I’ve been led astray. Forgive me, for I couldn’t see the way even though it was right in front of me.” The old—now turning young—woman spoke in near-delirium as her mind kept replaying the moment she decided to follow this man that was the Devil through his portal to Hell. She remembered how close she had been to salvation as the angel of death closed in, only to have him interfere and even banish the angel away by some method she knew not. And now she was here, in Hell, where her body was being transformed into an abomination of nature, in defiance of the accord between Man and God. Any further thoughts Mallory might have had was interrupted as Di’at scooped up the woman up into his arms and carried her like she was a lamb.
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“I mean you no harm, truly, Mallory. If, by at the end of all this, you still do not trust me, then I will hand you a sword and you will run it through me. I was never the Devil, but for you, if it will bring you peace of mind, I will die as one. This, I swear upon my name.” At that moment, Mallory could feel a certain bond formed between her and Di’at, which spoke to her exactly the terms the man had said, with no falsehoods or lies to be found. Without meaning to, her heart weeped with joy upon learning that she wasn’t in Hell, that she wasn’t kidnapped by the Devil, that she was in fact in the arms of a stranger that meant her no harm.
“ … But, if you’re not the Devil, then what are you?” Mallory said as she struggled against Di’at’s grasp, which the man took as a sign to let her down. “I don’t understand. Are you a spirit then? A ghost? Why did it take you eighty-two years to find me again? Why-“ Mallory was silenced as Di’at placed a finger upon her lips. His eyes gave her a plea to wait most succinctly, as he directed her attention towards something in the distance far in front of them.
“We can talk some more over there, once we’re in some shelter.” Di’at spoke just as the wind started to pick up suddenly in the desolate plains. “There’s a storm coming. A big one, if I’m correct.” He put a finger on his mouth upon his tongue, then put it up in the air as though tasting it for something. “There’s going to be ice as well. Bigger than anything you’ve seen before. Can you run?”
Mallory frowned as she almost answered no to the question. Looking down, her hospital gown parted easily to reveal a pair of toned legs she hadn’t seen since the 50’s. She nodded to Di’at, who took that as the cue to immediately start running, which caught Mallory by surprise for a second before she too took off like a bolt, cursing her luck all the while the wind start whipping the ground and lightning whipped the clouds.
Mallory couldn’t believe she would be running again after so long, even if it was while she was in another dimension with a man that, minutes ago, she was convinced was the Devil himself. Granted, all those times spent being sedentary took its toll on her stamina, but even catching up her breath felt new and exciting again. The wind clung tightly to her form as it tried its best to blow her away, though never for too long as soon it would go somewhere else and make way instead for the cold to creep in and rain hell upon Mallory’s exposed body. The lightning were content to stay above her, though sometimes a single bolt would land several miles away and shake the earth, causing Mallory to stumble and almost fall on her face.
Time felt once again like it was crawling as she saw Di’at’s back in front of her move with no breaks, a veritable juggernaut undaunted by anything the elements threw at him. Mallory found herself finding comfort despite her reservations, allowing her to move forward and on as the weather really started to pick up steam. The storm winds now moved much more orderly than before, striking the ground and anything it could find with almost animal-like intelligence. Ice crystals were starting to fall on the ground from those the size of small pebbles to enormous boulders that plough through the ground like it was clay. The lightning joined suit in this mad circus, raining as rain would upon the ground in fences that scour the earth in lines after lines of voltaic destruction.
“In here, Mallory. Into the ground!” Di’at suddenly shouted as the place the two had been going for now suddenly loomed over them, an ancient complex of sort that the ground had mostly swallowed up. Mallory saw where Di’at was pointing and grimaced, as it looked very much like a hole that would collapse on someone and bury them alive. But the man, sensing her distress, gathered something into the palm of his hand before slamming it into the fissures above the hole. Immediately the hole started becoming bigger, growing upward until all Mallory had to do to get in was bend down and get herself on her knees, crawling away from the light and into the darkness.
Except, some kind of light permeated throughout the ancient complex, as Mallory found out once her eyes adjusted to the dark. It led her to keep moving until the hole exited into a room of sorts. With nowhere else to go, Mallory pushed on and made sure she had one leg out before she removed herself fully out of the hole in the wall and into the room proper. As she looked around and tried to figure out where she was, the hole in the wall shuddered and groaned before it spat out a thoroughly disheveled looking Di’at, his previously sharp attire now quite scuffed and banged in all sorts of places. He sighs and dusted himself off before moving onto the hole in the wall and knocking once against the wall, which quickly moved in close to fill the gap and the hole was no more.
“That was exciting.” Mallory spoke before she realized what she was saying. “I mean terrifying. That was terrifying. What were you thinking getting us into this place? It’s practically a tomb!” Di’at frowned and walked closer to Mallory, who suddenly felt very small compared to the much taller man. Before she could say anything, the man tapped her on the shoulder once before moving away, a sensation enveloping the woman as she felt her hospital gown somehow melt and move across her skin. Once it was done, Mallory found herself wearing an ensemble reminiscent of one Indiana Jones.
“There. I figured you’d be more comfortable in these moving forward. You’re welcome.” Di’at spoke with clear pride in his voice. “All of that is real craftsmanship you know. No shoddy construction here. It can even stop bullets.” Mallory checked her new gear one by one, noting how everything fit her remarkably well. Then something hit her and she frowned, glaring at the man known as Di’at with extreme disappointment.
“You let me run through a desert in nothing when you could’ve made this?! Oh, I’ve got you know. I know what you are, Di’at.” Mallory stomped on over to where the man was standing and promptly slapped him, catching the man off-guard. “You’re a moron, that’s what you are! I’m through with you. I don’t even want to know what you are anymore; I’m getting out of here!” Di’at stared wide-eyed as he was left behind in the dim darkness of the room while Mallory stomped on ahead.