Infernal

Richard stepped out of the Rip. He wasn’t catapulted or thrown out—there was no sense of transition—just one step, began on one world and ending on another.

He was disappointed. There had been no light within the Rip. No soft and warm embrace. He’d sensed nothing of the presence, vast and unknown yet full of light and love, that he’d felt there before.

His disappointment fled when he took a look at the Earth around him.

He stood in a clearing surrounded by fields of honeysuckle and lavender that went on for miles; the staircase he’d climbed to get here didn’t exist on this side of the Rip. Trees, perhaps Aspen or Spruce—they were too far away for him to be certain—stood in the distance where the earth rose into hills before ascending to mountains.

A multitude of dragonflies flitted about, lighting upon this flower, tasting the nectar of that. Some pursued damselflies that demurely resisted their advances. Sunlight caressed diaphanous wings and iridescent bodies, flashing green and blue. A living riot of color reminiscent of the Rips.

Fat, thumb-sized bumblebees with fuzzy black and yellow bodies abounded. They too tasted the lavender but seemed to find the red, yellow, and purple honeysuckle blooms more to their liking. They buzzed and hummed a pleasant song as they met and passed each other: Hi there. Hello. Just going about our business here. Some flew off—to where Richard did not know—their legs weighted with so much golden pollen it was amazing they could gain the air at all.

The sky overhead was the bluest he’d ever seen. Flawless; marred by neither cloud nor jet contrail. As if God were a master glassmith and had blown a perfect sphere to place the Earth in.

Richard gasped in surprise when a dragonfly lit briefly upon his nose, then alit once more and circled his head twice before rejoining its brothers and sisters. The air he took in was sweet, fresh, and tasted of honey.

A glance back revealed that the Rip had closed behind him. It also occurred to him that he’d left the RLP behind. The ghost child at the stairs—Elerah, of the All, she’d told him—had said no harm would come to Sophia. At the time he’d taken it to mean he would be returned to her. Now he wasn’t so sure.

A wave of apprehension washed over him. His felt his heart speed up as acrid saliva flooded his mouth. Sweat broke out on his arms as a chill raced down his spine.

He was alone here. With no weapons, no gear, and no support. Abandoned on an unfamiliar Earth with no apparent way back. The land around him was undeniably beautiful but he was conscious of the fact that beauty was often deceptive. As beauty could be found in the darkness of destruction, so too could darkness be found in the midst of beauty.

Anxiety, Richard knew, could be useful in times of danger. An autonomic response to a perceived threat floods the bloodstream with adrenaline, boosting breathing, heart rate, muscle strength and reaction time. A car jumps the curb and comes at you on the sidewalk and your brain dumps a load of adrenaline into your body giving you a sudden burst of speed and agility, allowing you to get the hell out of the way.

It can also be overwhelming, debilitating. Excess adrenaline in the body clouds thought processes and reduces one from thinking to merely reacting. When no immediate threat is present anxiety turns to fear. Unresolved fear leads to paranoia. Paranoia leads to madness.

The best response is action. In the past he would have built something; a cabinet or a set of shelves. Or perhaps taken a long ride with Charlie in his vintage Mustang. In prison he would have hit the weight pit, burning the unnecessary adrenaline off in sets of deadlifts, curls, squats, and backarms. Here there was little else to do but walk.

He took a deep breath, cleansing his lungs while reminding himself he had been sent here, not abandoned. Erelah had said only the Seraph could lead him to the Messenger. She—if it had truly been a she and not something else masquerading as that beautiful dead child—had given no indication as to who or what the Seraph was, or when and where he would find it.

Did she mean Seraphim? Richard wondered. Those who, in medieval Christian mythology, were of inextinguishable light? The caretakers of God’s throne and the highest of the angelic choir, whose mere presence was so pure as to perfectly enlighten others and make direct communication with God’s messengers possible?

He did not know. The Seraph may present itself in minutes, hours, or even days. Whatever the case, anxiety would only be a hindrance here.

His best course of action, he decided, was to head for the distant tree line. There he could find water, shelter, and, if he were lucky and skilled enough, food.

Once in motion, accompanied by curious dragonflies and milling bumblebees—a miniscule entourage—he began to feel better. Working muscles consume excess adrenaline. Steady, controlled breathing expels toxins and regulates the heart. He’d walked less than a quarter mile before he’d purged the anxiety from his system.

A barely perceptible ringing, like distant sleigh bells, caught his attention and he again focused on the fields around him. He saw no cause for the sound. Only flitting insects and lazily floating chaff kicked up by his passage. Dismissing the sound as auditory matrixing he moved on.

His thoughts turned to Eralah. And the All. Just what, exactly, was the All? If it was, as the name implied, the sum total of everything, then what was its purpose? Was it a sentient being, all knowing and all powerful? Or was it just a mechanism by which the Multi-verse existed? If it were all powerful, then why this cat a mouse quest for the Key? Surely it could put a stop to BanaTech on its own, without help from him or any other Prime. Or did it only act through agents. Such as Erelah? And himself?

He recalled a painting he’d once seen on an eighth grade field trip to the Wichita Art Museum. At first glance it was a simple painting of two men seated on opposite sides of a chess board. When he’d looked closer, he’d noted that one of the figures was bearded and adorned in white robes with gold trim; the other dressed in a black hood and cowl, his skin a deep purplish shade of red. The second figure was reaching over the chessboard as if to move one of the pieces but instead of a hand he’d raised a cloven hoof.

Further examination revealed that the chessboard was littered with men, women, and children. All were covered in blood, some slaughtered and rent into pieces. Every face bore an expression of anguish and torment.

The painting had been titled ‘The Divine Game.’

Nauseated, Richard had turned away.

Was that the meaning of all of this? Some twisted distraction for a pair of bored supreme entities? A cosmic game whose pieces were countless billions of living, breathing, flesh and blood beings?

If so he wanted nothing to do with it.

Or was it something entirely different? Was the All simply a Creator? An artist’s hand that had produced something magnificent, a Multi-verse of wonders, and then moved on to another work, allowing what it had created to thrive or perish of its own volition?

You must choose a path, Eralah had told him.

Do I throw in the towel here? He asked himself. Take all my toys, go home, and let the Multi-verse sort itself out?

Or do I continue? Take up the mantle despite this all seeming so overwhelming, the odds so impossible, and try to defend those countless billions of lives?

But how? He asked himself. And,again: Why me?

That peculiar ringing came to him again; twofold. It increased in volume and then shot past his head. Pollen followed the sound like a contrail and he inhaled some of it. It made his sinuses tingle and he sneezed three times in rapid succession.

What is it? What is it? What is it? he heard whispered as his sinuses cleared.

He whipped his head around searching for the tinny, child-like voice and saw only the bees and dragonflies dancing amongst the honeysuckle.

He sneezed again and heard childish laughter.

We make it sneeze, he heard, followed by a multitude of giggling voices mimicking ah-choo, ah-choo, ah-choo!

Have I gone ’round the bend here? Richard wondered. Has all of this been nothing more than me losing my mind?

The giggling continued, the sleigh bell sound intensifying in magnitude if not in volume. Not one but two more dragonflies buzzed Richard’s head, ringing his head in the pollen-like substance. He sneezed uncontrollably for more than a minute.

His ears ringing, eyes watering, nose running, Richard had had enough. These were no ordinary dragonflies and if this kept up he’d sneeze himself to death amidst a cacophony of mocking laughter.

A larger than average dragonfly rose up from a thatch of lavender in front of him, no doubt intent on buzzing his head and starting another sneezing fit. Richard batted it away before it could ring his head with pollen. It issued a tinny scream as it fell to the ground. The laughter around him stopped.

Richard looked to the ground where the dragonfly had fallen and for a moment his heart—his very mind—stopped.

That’s impossible, he thought when he was capable of it. He saw wings, so light and finely purple as to be indistinguishable from the lavender blooms surrounding him. These were attached to a tiny body of the palest green hue as to almost be white. Two arms and two legs, tangled in a pose reminiscent of that which he found the first Sophia in several months ago.

He bent and gingerly picked the creature up in the palm of his left hand, his motion accompanied the rapid intake of many breaths from the lavender thatch surrounding him. He held the creature closer to his face, inspecting it. The naked, hairless body was no more than four inches long from the top of its head to the tips of its toes, but was perfectly humanoid otherwise. A female.

Is she dead? Is she dead? Is she dead? he heard from the lavender. The voices were not angry, merely curious. He realized that despite their amusement at his sneezing, he had nothing to fear from these creatures.

“Don’t be dead,” he said, meaning it. Wishing it. His heart filled with remorse at the thought that he may have destroyed such a wonderful creature.

Be it his wish, his breath across the small form or some other cause, the faerie—for that’s what it is, Richard thought with wonder—stirred in his palm. Two tiny eyes, wide-set but as pale purple as its wings, opened and looked into his eyes. The creature sat up and shook its wings, emitting a fine cloud of pollen—no, not pollen, Richard thought with delight, faerie dust—and he moved his hand away from his face so as not to inhale it. He felt the indentations its tiny feet made against his palm as it stood, shaking itself from head to toe, emitting that sleigh-bell like sound and showering his hand in glittery dust. A relieved ahhhh arose from the lavender. It was a sentiment Richard shared.

The faerie linked her hands demurely behind her back and looked up at Richard.

“We’re sorry if we hurt you,” she said in a voice so soft and pure Richard had to struggle to hear it over the buzzing of true insects. “We’ve never seen anything like you before. Why do you not have wings?”

“I…uh…” Richard said, unsure of what to say and struggling to believe what he was seeing, hearing and sensing around him, “I’m a man. We don’t come with wings. And you didn’t hurt me. I was afraid I had hurt you.”

Several more faeries, both male and female rose from the lavender and hovered about Richard. They were careful to keep their distance. Not out of fear, Richard thought—he didn’t think these innocent creatures even knew what fear was—but so as not to effect him with the faerie dust that showered about them as they flitted about.

“Why do you cover yourself?” one, a male, asked.

“Why do you have fur?” asked another.

“How did you get so big? Where are you going? Why do we make you sneeze? Are there more of you? Can you fly without wings? Why are you here?”

The questions, all of them at once and from dozens of sources, melted together into an indistinguishable cacophony of curiosity.

Richard held up his right hand in a stopping gesture.

“I can try to answer all your questions,” Richard said, “but only one at a time.”

The faerie in Richard’s palm stomped her feet—it felt like being tapped lightly with a pencil—for attention.

“Why do you venture to the foothills?” she asked.

“I’m looking for shelter.” Richard said. “I don’t know how long I’ll be here, but while I am I’ll need water. Maybe food. A place to sleep. And a fire.”

“Fire? Fire? Fire!” The faeries sang out in unified alarm. As quickly as they had appeared they sped off, trailing faerie dust and the receding sound of sleigh bells in their wake.

So they do know fear, Richard thought watching glittering faerie dust slowly fall onto the lavender. Closed buds opened as the dust descended onto them.

His palm was stomped again. The faerie he’d swatted from the air—though no worse the wear for it—wanted his attention. She’d not fled with the others, but now looked agitated. She pointed back over her shoulder, in the direction of the foothills.

“You must not venture that way,” she said.

“Why?” Richard asked.

“You are too big,” she said, lifting off from his palm and heading away. She looked back past fluttering wings and sing-songed a warning: “You will be eaten.”

Eaten? Richard thought, alone again save the bees and dragonflies—the real dragonflies—that had accompanied him since he’d set foot on this world. Eaten by what?

It was of no consequence. He’d found nothing in these fields so far save insects and faeries. The Seraph, who or whatever it was, had not yet shown itself. Aside from choosing a path, he did not yet understand why Eralah had sent him to this strange and wonderful Earth. Was it a trial? A test? With no clear answers it was logical to conclude that he must search elsewhere That meant the forest past the foothills. Vowing to find a way around the foothills if possible, Richard struck out again in the direction of the forest.

He’d made little more than half a mile when a new sound invaded his senses. It was a far off foraging sound. Perhaps a large animal moving amongst the honeysuckle. Whatever it was, it wasn’t the faeries returning to the area. It was far too big for that.

And it was moving in his direction.

He scanned the fields behind him, trying to home in on the noise. A quarter mile or so away he could make out a large brown smudge moving about in the foliage. It wasn’t trying to be stealthy, that was certain. As far away as it was, it sounded like a moose in a cornfield.

It wasn’t big enough to be a moose, however. He could make out a large round head as it moved closer to him, with big floppy ears. Kiting along behind the animal, like a mast above the honeysuckle, was a jaunty, hairy tail.

“I’ll be damned,” Richard said aloud.

The animal making a beeline to his position was a dog.

As if to confirm his suspicions, the animal let out a series of barks and began running directly towards him.

The animal was rapidly closing the distance between them and Richard began to make out more details. It was, indeed, a dog. And a damn big one.

You will be eaten, the faerie had said.

Richard scanned the field for signs of more dogs. It was not uncommon for pack animals to distract their prey by letting one of their own be seen while the real threat snuck up from the side or behind. He saw no signs of any other dogs, however. And where dragonflies fled in droves before the lumbering beast making its way to him, none seemed to be bothered elsewhere in the field.

It’s barking—it paused every hundred yards or so to bark, presumably at him—didn’t sound threatening in any event. It seemed almost…joyous.

And strangely familiar.

The dog was close enough for Richard to make out the breed. A St. Bernard. Richard was thinking that that was an odd coincidence when coincidence became impossibility. Richard recognized that gait. That jaunty tail. That funny brown smudge between the eyes and down the tip of the nose that he’d spent countless hours rubbing, much to the dog’s delight.

Richard gasped aloud, his throat seizing and unbidden tears springing to his eyes as the big dog careened clumsily toward him at break neck speed.

It was Charlie.