Infernum

As Hope opened her eyes, she found herself deep in the bowels of the Infernum. It was dark and hot enough to melt skin from bone, but she could see hints of light a long way off in the distance down the tunnel carved from the black charred lava rock she now found herself in. Her armor did a sufficient job of protecting her from the intense heat, but even with her armor, she felt like passing out. The smell of sulfur filled the air and even though her armor kept it from burning her eyes, it could not filter out the smell almost choking her with the scent of rotting eggs. As Hope got off the floor and began to look around her hellish surroundings, she got a detailed look at the small tunnel she was in for the first time. Her tunnel branched off into several different tunnels and it was clear that she had landed in a maze. As Hope began to venture down one of the multiple sets of tunnels toward the only light she could see, it was clear that the daemon had left; and for good reason, as Hope was furious that she was now stranded in this foul pit that reeked of brimstone and death.

I pray Alex got the message to stay away from Lamia, she thought as she started to walk down a side tunnel toward the faint glow of light. That would have been a disaster, she thought moreover.

Hope looked down the closest tunnel; its walls were charred black with the intense heat from the magma that once flowed through it; it was a reminder of just how hot this purgatory was. She was thankful that her armor was enough protection, but at the same time, the blessing of her armor came with a curse. Her armor could keep her alive from the heat but she couldn’t remove it, not even to take a drink of water. If she removed even a little while, the intense heat would vaporize her in a matter of a few seconds. Hope knew that the best course of action was to stay put and wait for rescue, but that was a Caelo way of thinking and she knew that no one from there was coming. After the gravity of her situation had sunk in, she was now driven by a sense of curiosity, not survival.

Is there a second Concordat? And if so, what could possibly be on it? she thought as she had to know, she had to find answers.

Hope commenced down the nearest tunnel with a fierce sense of determination; if she was going to die in this shit-hole prison or, worse, remain here for the rest of her life, it would only be after she saw the second Concordat with her own eyes.

She started down the nearest tunnel toward the faint glow of nearby magma. After several hours she had not come to the end of the tunnel, but at least she could now see it. The tunnel opened up to a large cavern that was flooded with light; the glow from the rivers of magma lit up the giant cavern brightly and cast an orange hue on everything one could see for miles and miles. Hope hesitantly approached the edge of the tunnel with caution. As she came to the end of the tunnel she could see down into the massive cavern below. It must have been a mile from the tunnel opening to the cavern floor and she could not see the end of the grotto as it seemed to go on forever. She stood at the edge of the passageway for several minutes staring out at the vast expanse. It was as large as the Grand Canyon on the surface above it; however, when Hope looked up, it was the same view. On the floor of the huge expanse sat a rather out of place scene, the entire cavern floor seemed to be filled with one large city as far as the eye could see. Made of charred black rock there were thousands of buildings carved into the stone below forming one massive city. Fed by the tunnels emerging from the cavern’s walls, rivers of molten lava fell like waterfalls then flowed throughout the massive black stone city in a complex system of carved out canals. The cavern’s ceiling looked like it was made of volcanic glass, but it was not black like obsidian, it was more orange like everything else in the cavern and reflected the light of the molten lava back onto the city, illuminating the entire cavern with the eerie orange luminescence.

Hope stood at the precipice and gazed at this marvel of art and engineering. As she looked at the city below she could see thousands of daemons walking the streets like hordes of ants in a large colony. She figured if there was a second Concordat here in the Infernum it would most likely be in the city center like it was on Caelo.

After staring at the city for a while, Hope saw her opportunity. Most of the daemons were walking around in large groups and only on certain roads. If she was going to get past them, she would need to follow the less traveled streets and use her armor as camouflage as best she could to avoid detection. She stared at the cavern wall and as she concentrated on the diverse texture, her armor began to transform its shape and color. First, it began to darken to match the color of the walls, and then the surface of her armor turned rough to match the lava rock like texture. Before she knew it, Hope blended in perfectly with the wall of the tunnel.

She began to look for a way down the cliff face when she saw a crack in the wall just beneath her that would lead her all the way down. She knew that she could not use her ánimam due to the intense heat, if her ribbons came out, they would melt almost as quickly as she would. Accepting her newfound vulnerability that she was now faced with, Hope began to make her climb down the cliff face the old fashioned way… by hand.

As she made her descent down into the stone city, some thousand feet below, her head filled with thoughts of Alex. Would he be okay? Would the royal guard ever find out about him? Would she ever see him again? The more questions that ran through her head the more it was obvious to her that he meant more to her than she would ever care to admit. She was confused by these feelings. She had never felt them before, not even with Gabriel or any other member of her house. Although the concept of love was known on Caelo, Hope had never experienced it before, nor had she heard of anyone who had, so she had nothing to compare her newfound feelings to. Hope’s thoughts were beginning to distract her to the point of error, she had lost her foothold several times as she thought of Alex and now it nearly cost her everything as her hand was misplaced and she lost her grip, falling a few feet before she caught herself just in the nick of time.

Hope reached the bottom without being spotted. So far so good, she thought as she began to make her way down the less traveled side streets and alleyways of this giant city.

As she walked down the streets she felt dwarfed by the giant buildings that surrounded her as they were clearly made for much larger creatures than she was. The black buildings were very large. Most of them were several stories tall, but even the single-storied buildings were still over 100 feet high. Each building was constructed of hundreds of charred black rocks carved or cut into perfectly shaped blocks and columns then stacked in a very regal fashion to form some of the most beautiful buildings Hope had ever seen. At one point during her walk through the city, she actually stopped to admire the sheer beauty of the Roman architecture. The square, blocky buildings adorned with numerous arches and columns seemed to be masterfully crafted. A glimpse inside these buildings would reveal high ceilings with both the walls and floors made of volcanic glass cut into slabs then laid out like marble tile. And although these buildings were beautiful to behold, most of them were empty and void of life like the rest of this wasteland.

***

Hope had been walking for several hours with the odd sense that she was all alone. The outlands of the Infernum were a barren wasteland compared to her home on Mundum. There were no plants, no trees or vegetation of any kind. Nothing could grow here, all Hope could see were charred black stones and the heat waves emitting from the roads that looked like old lava flows. She paused at an alleyway for a moment and then looked down the alley to an open courtyard. She could see the bustling city life the daemons led, they walked about as anyone would in a big city; some were buying and selling at the market on the far side, others seemed more focused on their destinations as they walked quicker than the rest. One daemon seemed to be very pleased with a recent purchase it had made. Hope had no idea what the small clump of reddish brown stuff was, but she could tell that the daemon holding it was very happy to have it.

After a few more miles of sneaking through the city, and several close calls, Hope came across an arched bridge crossing a very large canal of molten lava. The bridge was massive, obviously built to carry a lot of weight. It was a simple arched bridge made of the same stone as everything else down there. The bridge had short stone railings on either side with arched openings every ten feet or so. This was not the first bridge Hope had seen in the Infernum, but it was by far the largest. The only difference between this bridge and the many others she saw, other than its size, was the lack of traffic; the more Hope watched this bridge the more she noticed that it was entirely unused by the daemons. She looked at this bridge as an opportunity, for some reason it seemed to be the only bridge that crossed this large canal that spanned the entire distance of the cavern from one side to the other. As Hope crossed the bridge she began to stare at the beautiful architecture on the other side, which was slowly transitioning from an old Roman style to a fancier gothic type, the buildings on the far side of the bridge were obviously of a higher class as each one of them was a work of art all on its own.

Hope’s gaze was broken abruptly as a group of very large adult daemons began to cross the bridge. To her surprise, they seemed to be escorted by a smaller slender figure that seemed to be in charge of the group based on how they reacted to it. Hope tried to get a better look at the smaller creature but the daemons were walking straight toward her and there was nothing she could do about it. She was too far across to go back without being seen by the daemons on the back side and there was molten lava all around; even though Hope knew her armor could stand the heat, there was no way to swim in the molten lava as it was too thick and flowing way too fast. She stood frozen on the bridge as the daemons drew closer, each step shaking the very bridge she stood on; each step bringing them one step closer to discovering her. Her heart sank a little as she desperately sought refuge on the bridge that offered none, knowing full well that without the use of her ribbons she was utterly defenseless.

There! Hope’s instincts shouted to her as she spotted a missing block from the railing on the edge of the bridge. She crouched down and darted for the missing block, praying it was big enough to hide her. She barely squeezed into the hole on the side of the bridge and her armor began to fill the gaps around her on the bridge side, completing the illusion. She knew that daemons relied on all their senses when they hunted their prey, but she was gambling on them not noticing her.

As Hope’s armor flowed to one side to fill the gaps around her it began to get dangerously thin on the other, she could feel the intense heat of the Infernum and each second felt like her skin was being melted off to the bone just to have her ánimam repair her body from the inside to be burnt all over again. She remained motionless and prayed that she would not be detected by the daemons’ keen sense of smell or hearing all the while the pain grew more and more intense. The daemons were now even with Hope on the bridge. She could not see the group of daemons but she could tell that one of them had paused for a moment as if it knew Hope was on the bridge with him. To her relief the daemon quickly lost interest and moved back the way it came, leaving the others in the group to cross the bridge on their own; Hope thought it was the little one as it made almost no sound when it walked back across the bridge.

As soon as she thought the coast was clear Hope quickly readjusted her armor to stop the intense pain on her exposed side, it was like taking the first breath of air after being held underwater to the point of near drowning. A quick look around, confirming that the coast was clear, and Hope moved off the bridge as fast as she could and then, as if nothing had happened, she continued her search for the second Concordat with a renewed sense of purpose.

***

After several more hours of walking—or was it days?—Hope began to notice signs of dehydration and heat exhaustion as time seemed to slip away from her. She was so hot and so thirsty that she almost took her protective armor off a few times as her eyes played tricks on her, showing mirages of entire lakes of water in the distance. While her armor kept the insane amount of heat away from her, it could not cool her down on the inside. Her armor had all the vents closed to protect her from the insane heat of the Infernum, so at least, at the moment, it felt like wearing a hundred different layers of clothing. Her feet got heavier and heavier the further she traveled. It was obvious now that she was not going to make it much further. Her throat was on fire, burning with thirst as she took her final step forward. Her body collapsed under her, leaving her lying helpless on the ground.

As Hope began to drift in and out of consciousness her mind began to wander, she was imagining a life with Alex. A life free from the lords’ influence, where she could rule her own destiny and choose her own amalgamate, her own love. But that was just a pipe dream now; now she would lie on the ground staring at the charred earth, too exhausted to get up, until she was dead from either dehydration or discovery.

As Hope lay there on the ground she caught a glimpse of a very peculiar item nestled in a small crack on the floor. She saw a piece of moss growing at the base of a nearby building. It was shriveled a little bit, but it was green and growing none the less.

That’s odd, she thought as she lay on the ground about to pass out. It must be another mirage. She dismissed it quickly.

A few hundred feet away from Hope a daemon had caught a glimpse of her lying in the road. It began to walk toward her and soon there were many daemons walking toward Hope. Like vultures in a desert, a few of them quickly turned into many as they discovered Hope’s near lifeless body. Just then, she felt claws around her body and then her body being lifted off the ground. A daemon had grabbed her she thought, and she felt a sense of relief knowing the torture of this hell was finally over. She could see the ground moving away from her as she was lifted into the air and then she saw the hordes of daemons that discovered her standing beneath her.

It took a few minutes for Hope to realize that she was not being picked up by a daemon but rather flown by something else entirely. For those few minutes, she was sure her time had come at the hands of those daemons. Now Hope was being carried by something, she could not see it but now the horror of this place sank in once again as she now had no idea of what her pending fate would be at the hand of this new creature, whatever it was.

On the bright side, Hope was now able to get a better look at the Infernum and, to her surprise, at all of its beauty. The buildings below her seemed to fly by as she was carried through the air toward parts unknown. As she looked to the city below, she could see the architecture change drastically again, from the old gothic style into something far more extravagant. The buildings beneath her were now very ostentatious with elaborate statues and cathedral-like architecture. The glow from the lava began to dim as she was carried farther and farther into this cavern that seemed to have no end in sight, as if it was not a cavern at all but rather the old surface of the planet that was simply covered up by a ceiling of stone. As the glow from the distant lava faded, Hope was now in the dark as she closed her eyes for a long blink that turned into a deep sleep as she lost consciousness.

***

When Hope awakened and opened her eyes again, she was amazed by the strange light that filled the entire cavern, only this time it wasn’t the lava lighting it, it was something different altogether. She looked around and quickly found the source of the light, it was moss or at least something that looked like moss. Some type of luminescent moss was growing everywhere, and everywhere the moss grew there was light. The light from the moss seemed to give life to other vegetation; Hope could now see tall tree-like plants and grandiose gardens in the city below her. She was mesmerized by the glow. Like a moth to the flame Hope stared at the moss’s light until she could no longer remain awake. She lost consciousness and lay lifeless and limp in the claws of this strange creature once again; unconscious from dehydration and near death, Hope was being carried off by this strange creature to who knew where and, for better or worse, she was entirely at its mercy.