It’s funny how in one day you can lose everything you had the day before. When I walked out of that alleyway I was a murderer who lost the only friends he had. But I had the damned crystal. I clutch it on my hand hoping it would break. All the bloodshed, all the guilt just for one crystal the size of a brick. It was pale blue, and was polished enough to reflect my face back at me. Apart from that there was nothing special to it. I couldn’t believe Seg, Twig and Mole were dead just so I could get a stupid crystal.
While I was walking back I thought of a lot of things. I tried thinking over and over again about the situation I was in. But when I walked back to the alleyway my mind was clouded back again. My knees buckled and I fell back to the cold stone floor. I thought I would be able to sleep, but my eyes weren’t heavy at all. Even when I found a shelter in a far corner of the alleyway all I could do was to sit on the floor and stare at the Opal Palace that lay ahead.
You see, the thing with murder is, it’s very easy to think about when you have no choice left. But once you finish it you have it coming behind you like a ghost, poking your skin over and over again, forcing you to draw a clear picture of the dead corpse in your mind and suffer from it. Sometimes I thought the dead corpses would come walking at me, grab me by their arms and choke me till death. Even when the shadow of a stray cat walked across the street I felt like pissing in my pants and running away.
I didn’t know how long I waited there, but I vaguely remember my eyes closing. Somewhere in the distance I heard city guards running towards something, but my eyes became to heavy to notice. I didn’t know for how long I slept, but I dreamed of getting trapped in a lonely forest, nowhere to go. It was strange dream, but it became way creepier when I heard the soft panting of something.
I woke up with the sound of growling behind me. I snapped my eyes open. It wasn’t raining, but the sky seemed cloudy, like a storm was about to land in the city anytime soon.
Storm?
Something barked from behind, which threw me off my hideout. I stood up, felt drowsy, slipped on something and fell upon the garbage bin behind me. A few short seconds later my senses started to return. I blinked twice, and noticed a black, rabid dog with gleaming red eyes and dagger like teeth growling at me.
“The hell-”
It was twice as large as a normal dog, and what was more uncommon was its forked tongue which lashed to and fro throwing saliva to the ground. The beast began to close in on me.
A monster? No, monsters only lived outside the city.
“Stay away!”
My hand gripped the crystal I was carrying, and I threw it with all the energy I had. It hit the beast right between its eyes, and it howled as it scuttled back. I took advantage of the moment and dashed out, running towards the opposite direction.
The street seemed strangely empty, which was unusual. But what horrified me the most was the rapidly approaching footsteps I was hearing behind my back. The beast was closing in on me, and from its barks and howls, I could say it wasn’t happy about being hit by the crystal.
I quickened my pace. Thunder rumbled in the sky and lightning illuminated the street, all of it looked strangely horrifying.
The beast’s footsteps were alleviated by a much larger one. The ground shook. I felt something closing in on me. A massive shadow appeared below, and I looked back in fear to see what it was. It was more horrifying than the rabid dog.
Somehow the dark clouds in the sky had merged together to form three heads, each resembling a face similar to the beast I had seen. One of its foot rested on top of a tall building, and the other on the roof of the inn. Its eyes were glowing with a mixture of crimson red and orange.
What was more horrifying was how the three heads glanced at me in unison. I needed to move, but my legs felt numb.
“STOP!” I screamed, my voice echoing through the street. “STAY AWAY!”
The head in the middle opened its mouth wide, giving me a view of the forked tongue and the canine teeth covered with gruesome blood.
“HELP!” I yelled, but no one came. The city itself seemed to be fading.
I screamed until my lungs went dry, but nothing couldn’t stop the huge mouth of the beast covering me and snapping itself shut.
§
I never believed in hell. Most of the homeless said the streets were hell, and the heaven was the rich mansions and palaces. The older buggers in the streets said hell was right below us, and the Demon King was there to greet all the criminals.
I never cared for any of it. When you’re in the streets begging for money with a churning stomach, Gods and Satans go very down in your priority list. But it definitely came up to the top when I woke up in front of a large room made of granite with burning fires, and a man with crimson eyes sitting on a throne stared at me.
“The mortal Magnus,” his voice sounded old and mature. “You killed one of the tower lords, something no one has dared to do. What are your reasons?”
My eyes were still ringing from my own screams. My legs were trembling, and I sensed two spears locked tight into my neck. I couldn’t move my hands, and my face was frozen while looking at the man who stood before me. He was probably in his late nineties, with a bald head, a walking stick and a hunched back. His eyes glowed crimson, boring down upon me, and there were a set of rings on his fingers.
“W-Where am I?”
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“Lord Lucifer,” a tall man with draping black robes who stood beside the man in the throne raised his voice. “I suspended him in a dream sequence. His mind can be hazy and dull.”
The man called Lucifer stood from his seat, and walked forwards in a slow gait, assisted by his walking cane. When he was near me, he lifted my face with the cane.
“I asked a question mortal. It is very rare for people to cross the threshold of hell and the mortal realm without the intervention of death. Yet, you killed one of my people. You killed an immortal.”
“Someone told me to rob him,” my voice came as a croak. My memories were returning, and none of them were pleasant ones. “He overpowered us. I had to do something.”
Lucifer’s lips curved to a smile. “Is that so?”
He bent down, still holding to his cane and kept a hand on my chest. “You better have spoken the truth boy.”
His hand fingers began to flash white, and with a flash of a beat his hand punctured through my skin, spurting out dark blood. The pain spread through my nerves, and before the tears hit my eyes I started screaming. I felt his fingers wriggling inside me, touching my bones. My memories flashed in front of me, from the time the mysterious stranger appeared to the moment I killed the stranger. When Lucifer finally dragged out his hand the pain instantly vanished, and the blood flow stopped. But the puncture hole through my heart still remained.
“W-what did you do?” I asked, surprised to find my voice still functioning.
“I accessed your memories. What happened to you is….interesting.”
“Did you see anything my lord?” the tall man asked.
“Nothing for you to be inquisitive of Mahorth,” Lucifer looked at me. “The man who tried to kill this mortal is not someone I know of, but his presence is of one of the hell lords. And I cannot sense who the other man who warned him about this death was either.”
“But someone disrupted the flow of the realms,” the tall man offered. “Perhaps we should investigate-”
Lucifer waved his hand and walked back to his throne, the taps from his cane echoing across the room.
“You didn’t answer my question,” I said. “Where am I?”
One of the people behind me grabbed my head and pushed it down to the floor. “Where is your respect mortal?”
“Release him,” Lucifer said. “He is an inquisitive one. Someone who clearly has a lot of questions.”
The grips lightened, and suddenly I felt I could move my hands. Right in front of my eyes, the puncture hole in my body grew smaller in size until it was sealed shut. Bizarre things were happening around me, and I didn’t know what to do.
But I knew I had to play it safe. I looked around the room built with granite walls and draped with red curtains. I only wanted to know one thing.
“Am I in hell?”
Lucifer crackled into a loud laughter. “Didn’t you realize it till now boy? You are in hell, and in the throne room of the lord of hell,” he cocked his head. “You’re such an interesting fellow. Mahroth, leave us alone, take the guards with you.”
The guy called Mahroth didn’t look so pleased. “My lord, this mortal can be dangerous.”
Lucifer glared at him. “Are you telling me I cannot defend myself against a mere mortal? Are you insulting me?”
Mahroth paled. “N-Not at all your liege. I will take my leave immediately.”
He bowed down and walked, glaring as he moved past me. The steel clad guards moved behind him, strapping the spears to their backs.
“So Magnus,” Lucifer asked as the footsteps faded into the distance. “Do you know why you’re in hell?”
“I killed a man. I’m here for punishment.”
“Oh, I wish it was that easy. Hell doesn’t work that way anymore child,” he stood up from his seat and walked towards the thick curtains that hung from the walls in the other side of the room.. “The person you killed was someone special, and that is why you’re in here as an early arrival. But if you believe hell is a place where we torture souls, then that’s not true.”
He swung open the curtains, and the light from the outside arrived like a camera flash. I closed my eyes, and slowly opened them, letting them adjust to the new light.
Hell was different. There were no devils or torture racks like the old men in the street used to tell. Instead it was a city covered in a thin white mist. Structures similar to ancient forts rose from the distance, flags with different symbols flapping to the wind. There were even smaller buildings similar to palaces and mansions dotted across the city, some thickly covered by the mist and the others completely open.
“What the bloody-”
“Hell?” Lucifer had a creepy smile. “The mists appeared a few decades ago, and ever since then I have been using the souls in hell to stop it from spreading.”
“What’s creating the mist?”
Lucifer’s bony finger pointed across the window to the something similar to a large snake that was coiling in a hill on top. I squinted my eyes, and when I couldn’t take a good look at it, I walked towards the window.
It was like a giant maze, moving through the hills like a snake coiled around it.
“What’s that?”
“That’s the maze we call the Labyrinth. You’re seeing only one part of it, and it’s a hundred times large that what you see. It has entrances everywhere, and each cycle there is a new entrance appearing. And out of these entrances come the monsters. All these years I’ve been using an organized system of soldiers to stop these monsters. That is done by assigning each entrance a Tower Lord.”
He spared a glance at me, and his gleaming crimson eyes told me to figure out the rest. I was trying to…but at the same time I wanted to pinch myself to see if this was all a dream.
“And I killed one of them? But what were they doing wandering in….my world? And why was he trying to kill me?”
“Tower lords aren’t allowed to wander between realms. Which is what brings me to the second question…why that person had wandered into your mortal realm, and what purpose he has with your death.”
“So I have no part in this,” I said, relaxing my shoulders.
Lucifer’s smile disappeared. “Not so fast boy. Didn’t you hear a word I said? The man you killed is a tower lord who is supposed to stop monsters invading his area. Now that you’ve killed him, I need a replacement.”
I realized what he was saying. I wanted to pretend I didn’t understand his, but Lucifer’s eyes were starting to brighten up for some reason.
“You want me to be a tower lord? B-but this is all bizarre! I didn’t even believe in hell a few hours ago, much less a crazy dungeon.”
“Ah you mortals,” Lucifer said with a chuckle. “Always putting questions after questions. It is up to me to beat you all into shape. In hell we follow order and discipline. I say something, that is final. You will become the new tower lord of Court Blackheart. And then you’ll free that area and come back to me. I’ll spare your crimes and let you have another life in the mortal world.”
“With this body?”
“No, a new one. I’ll control the flow of souls and help you be born in a wealthy family. I checked your memories Nero. You are a boy who lived by licking everyone’s feet, and when you see opportunity you grab it. So grab this, and show me you are someone who can do something.”
I didn’t want to ask the next question, but it escaped my lips before I could stop.
“And if I fail?”
Lucifer grinned, and for some reason that perfect row of white teeth was anything but wholesome.
“Ahhh, then I’ll show you how hell works according to what you just described. Torture in hell makes torture on the mortal realm look like a touch from a feather.”
My heart was beating fast. I had no choice.
“I’ll do as you say.”
“Of course you will,” he tapped my chest with the end of his cane. “Your mortal surname will now be abolished. You will go to your Court with the name of Nero Blackheart. And you will bring me victory.”
He tapped his cane for each word, and when he pulled it back, I was disappearing into a black smoke. My body was going numb, and my last view was Lucifer crackling a laugh.