Page 16 of Into the Abyss
The only problem was I’d prefer not to enterwhat lay before us, and from the look on her face, so would Amalia,but I had no choice. I couldn’t return to Earth without at leastattempting to rescue as many of my friends as possible.
If I didn’t do something to try to savethem, so many could be lost, and I didn’t have many friends. Corsonwould also join the status of lost or dead if I failed to saveWren. Shax was my friend for centuries before I retreated from thewar we’d engaged in with Lucifer to work on honing my ability tocreate illusions.
I knew Lix before I retreated, but Iwouldn’t have called him a friend; I would now. Erin, Vargas, andHawk had become my friends in the time since I first met them. Balewas not my favorite demon, and though I wouldn’t call us friends,I’d never leave her to the fate of what lay below us, and shewouldn’t leave me to it either.
Born and raised in Hell, I’d witnessed andcreated some pretty horrific things over the centuries. I’d seenthe collapse of the seals and the slaughter Lucifer unleashed whenhe reached Earth, but none of it could have prepared me for thejinn’s Abyss.
This place was a nightmare come to life.
The pathway unfurling before us meanderedlike a serpent through the rock walls lining it. From our position,I could see at least ten more pathways cutting across the barrenvalley in a sidewinding pattern that caused many of the paths tovanish in and out of view. I suspected it was all the same pathstretching throughout, but it was impossible to tell.
On top of the jagged rocks the paths cutthrough stood thousands of scraggly trees over what must be milesof Abyss. Once we entered the pathway, the height of the wallswould block most of the trees from us. The trees were bent over asif the air itself pushed down on their blackened branches, andirregular formations stuck up between their wilting trunks.Something about those formations tugged at my mind as I tried toplace them.
They’re rib bones. And that is a skull, butI don’t think I’ve ever seen a creature shaped like thatbefore.
“They’re bones.” Amalia placed her hand overher mouth as she came to the same conclusion I had.
“Are there any unusual beasts in thisland?”
“Not that I know of. I was only ever told itwas a land for the jinn.”
So the jinn probably brought creatures intohunt and slaughter.Is that why she brought me here? Am I theirnext hunt?
That could be an excellent possibility, butdwelling on it would only make me paranoid, and I had far moresignificant problems to contend with. Besides, none of theskeletons looked demon or human, and most of them were small.
I turned my attention away from the treesand skeletons and back to where all the paths converged in thecenter of the Abyss. There, rising from a large crater was amulti-sided, metallic black, monolith.
The monolith rose at least a thousand feetinto the air before ending in a pointed top. From here, I could seefaint lines on it that I assumed were etchings marking the surfaceof it, but I was too far away to know for sure. Hovering in the airbeside the primary structure, three more elongated, diamond-shapedmonoliths orbited the massive one in the center like they were itsmoons.
All the same color as the main one, each ofthem was sharp enough to split a demon or Hell creature in two. AsI watched, a fourth one rotated into view, and one of the othersdisappeared behind the central monolith.
Though I saw no sun, the Abyss was ascorched, barren wasteland. However, it wasn’t shrouded indarkness. I didn’t cast a shadow, but enough light emitted fromsomewhere that we could navigate the pathways.
When I glanced behind me, the purple grasscontinued to sway and dip. The red sky over the field and lakemirrored the one over the pathways and monolith, but the sky overthe grass seemed less foreboding. Over the monolith, the sky hadthe appearance of a festering sore and looked prepared to strikedown any who ventured into the inhospitable environment.
For a second, I pondered if the Abyss wasreal or if all this was something created to fuck with my mind.Am I just like everyone else in the camp and playing out my rolein the jinn’s game?
The possibility caused my mind to spin.Then, I recalled the way Amalia opened the portal and felt thegrass brushing against my fingers and waist. No, the Abyss wasreal, and it was another plane, just as Earth, Hell, and Heavenwere different planes residing alongside each other until thehumans opened the gateway. Except, unlike those planes, the Abysscould be manipulated, and the jinn were adept at doing that. I hada feeling the Abyss evolved with the jinn or the jinn with theAbyss.
A part of me knew the Abyss could still besome elaborate deception, and I could be trapped like the others,but if I stayed focused on it, it would drive me mad. If this werea game, then I would have to play until I could break free, and ifit wasn’t, then it wasn’t; but either way, I had to continue.
“Why the grass and lake and then thisshithole? Why are there two such entirely different places in theAbyss?” I asked.
Amalia lowered her hand from her mouth andinhaled a shuddery breath. “I… I don’t know.”
Is she telling the truth?I didn’tthink she was capable of being this good of an actress, buttrusting a jinni was what landed their victims in this place.
But I couldn’t figure the Abyss out. It madeno sense the jinn were trying to lure their victims into a falsesense of security by bringing them into the field of grass beforerevealingthisto them. They already had their victim here,there was no need for that, but perhaps it was their way of playingwith them like a cat with a mouse.
Still…
I turned my attention back to the monolithas a bolt of silver lightning ripped from the sky. It piercedstraight into the top of the main monolith. From there thelightning sizzled all the way down the structure, before racingback up to the top where it burst out in four different bolts thatstruck the heads of the orbiting moons.
Those smaller structures froze in place andstarted glowing before suddenly erupting and sending a flash oflight across the land. Illuminated by the wave of light the boltcreated, the red sky pinkened before becoming an angry red again.The original bolt sizzled when it hit the structure, but everythingfollowing it remained disconcertingly hushed.
Amalia gasped and rubbed at the goose bumpscovering her flesh as she huddled into herself. She somehow lookedsmaller and was more than a little repulsed.
“What was that?” I asked.
