BURN IN HADES (42 page)

He crept up to the bell-shaped building and stepped through the whole in the wall. Not a soul remained inside. The Raven’s burlap sack lay on a broken cot.

A single calabash was left in the sack. Words were carved into the side of it: Some people have a terrible attitude towards everything.

Chapter 21 - The Saviors of Jnana Yoga Ladder

The Raven tossed her sack over her shoulder and followed Cross
deep into the heart of Naraka. The sounds of war drew closer near the cliffs.

Cross halted. “There should be a bridge that crosses a river around here.” He pointed at a spot on his map and then surveyed the surrounding area. “The Atman River.”

A faint gurgle sound over the cliffs was drowned out by the booming racket of war, and that was interrupted by a drilling noise beneath her feet. Spikes rose out of the ground and encircled the two of them. Needle-mouth imps sprung from the earth and shoved their thorns in Cross and the Raven’s faces.

“Come along now,” said an imp, and the group of imps escorted the two prisoners at poisoned needle-point to a base camp hidden in the cliffs just a few minutes way from where they were captured.

The stench there hit the Raven’s nose like the smell at Camp Erutrot; foot odor, dried sweat, overflowing latrines, stagnant mud, tobacco smoke, and burnt barbot all mixed into an amalgam of foulness that scraped her throat every time she swallowed.

Filthy soldiers of many races drooped around the camp. They were mostly the souls of men, but there were also giants, squals, demons and more imps amongst them. All wore war torn expressions and wobbled as though drunk on devil’s water. Many lay down in the pits asleep or sat in the trenches with their heads resting on their knees. One man’s hands grew into his face, forever stuck in a position of grief.

A man dressed in the colors of an Anarchist captain staggered in drunkenly. His unbuttoned jacket fitted him sloppily. He plopped down at his desk and poured himself a drink, which seemed like one he didn’t need.

“What realm you from?” he slurred.

“Tuonela,” she lied. It was the most neutral underworld in regards to the wars.

“And you?” the captain asked Cross.

“Same as her,” said Cross.

The captain sipped his drink and sighed. “Only two kinds of souls come way down here to Naraka: Tribulation and Anarchists. What brings you two?”

Cross saluted. “We want to enlist.”

Of all things, why’d he say that? Joining the war, even for pretend, was a stupid idea. His acting was perfect, but he needed to rewrite his script. The Raven could have punched him for saying something so dumb. But that was just Cross, always saying the first thing that came to his mouth.

The captain threw his head back. “Enlist?” He stared at Cross skeptically and peered around at his camp of beaten down spirits as if to show Cross what it meant to join the war. He stood up and walked towards them until his face was less than a foot away from each of theirs. “You want to take the plunge, huh?” The burnt odor of devil’s water floated off his breath. The captain stepped away and grabbed another bottle of devil’s water from a crate. He pulled out the cork with his teeth and spit it onto the ground. “We’ll see.”

He held the bottle in the Raven’s face, offering her a drink. Reluctantly, she took the bottle. She blocked the mouth of the bottle with her tongue and pretended to sip and only swallowed the drop that landed on her tongue, just to lubricate her dry throat.

The captain stared her in the face, squinting as though unimpressed with her drinking skills. He grabbed the bottle away from her and passed the bottle to Cross, who turned the bottle upside down and drank as if he had just escaped Sheol after traveling through it for thousands of years. Devil’s water dripped down both sides of his face. He belched a flare of flames and wiped his mouth.

The captain chuckled and shook his head. “Volunteers.” He said the word as if no soul had ever volunteered before. “You really want to enlist?” He paused as though giving them an opportunity to change their minds, and was met with both their silence. “All right,” he said. “Follow me. Soon you can join the saviors of Jnana Yoga Ladder.”

She should have spoken up when the captain gave them the chance. She and Cross glanced at each other sharing a look of “what have we gotten ourselves into again?” They both followed the captain through the narrow trench.

Piles of rotting sand bags towered above their heads, and exhausted soldiers stood on guard, staring out into the battlefield intensely, sharpening their swords and scratching themselves incessantly.

The captain stopped at a fortified safe area carved into a jagged mountain made entirely of blades and other sharp things. From inside that safe area, they overlooked the entire battlefield, where soldiers prepared trebuchets and repaired barbed wire, and hodders gnawed on the corpses.

“See that ladder?” The captain pointed out into the center of the battlefield.

A massive ladder sprang from a black river. It covered the same amount of land that a basilica would and reached much higher than a tower. It corkscrewed from the ground all the way up into the blazing blue sky. Where the helix made contact with the lashing flames, rainbows swirled and flickered.

“The Tribs have declared that damn ladder sacred,” said the captain. “They say it belongs to the Great Goddess. Our President Layil has insisted that we take that ridiculous pig tail, even if all of us get burned. Both sides want the ladder intact.” He gulped devil’s water. “We’ll all burn to Nothing. But one thing’s for sure, Jnana Yoga Ladder will always stand.” The captain took another long sip from his bottle. “I tell myself all the time that one day this will all make sense. It pains me to think that the energy we spend defending this stupid useless ladder, we could spend stopping the Nothing.”

“Stopping it?” asking the Raven.

“The higher-ups don’t speak of it to souls like us. That information is only available to the elite. But we’ve seen what it can do right out here on the battlefield.”

“What have you seen, captain?”

“The Nothing is spreading, and if no one does anything about it, it’s going to overtake the entire underworld.”

“But isn’t that what the Anarchist want?”

“All I know is that everyone has their own idea of what’s going on, and no one can agree on anything. So we’re all just running around and not getting anything of worth accomplished. See, neither side—Anarchist or Tribulation—is without its faults. Our side has too much pride to admit to any short comings we may have, because our sciences and discoveries have changed everything we once knew about our miserable existence. But the faith of the Tribs holds up where our science fails. They’re done converting us over to their side and we’re done speaking our truth only to have it fall on deaf ears. They just have the nerve to call us a gang.”

“And you’re not?”

“They’re the gang, the oldest gang in history. If anything, we learned everything we know from them. We just improved the methods. No, we’re not a gang. What we are is just a group of souls who believe in a cause.”

“What cause would that be?”

“Depends on who you ask. Different leaders have brought in their own agendas. I’ve heard rumors. Something about a bounty on a Verboten Cherub. But, I’m not so sure of anything anymore.” The captain paced through soldiers in the trench.

Cross and the Raven followed. The Raven got the sense that the captain was giving them a grand tour of the abhorrent environment in an effort to shock her and Cross into changing their minds about volunteering. Perhaps they should have.

The captain stopped abruptly, leaned in to them and lowered his voice. “I dream of taking an axe to that ladder,” said the captain. “Its fall could save many thousands of souls. It’ll wake the angels.”

“Why not really chop it down then, Captain?” asked the Raven.

“It’s a vanquishable offense. A serious crime against the Divine Laws. And I lack the guts.”

An explosion boomed a few feet from where they were standing. Soldiers yelled and jumped into the trench. The knives that made up the mountain jingled as they slid down and buried those men under shrapnel. Other soldiers raced to dig the men out, lacerating themselves.

Both the Raven and Cross flinched at the destruction, but the captain held fast, as if nothing had happened.

“The burning has begun,” said the captain with a hint of glee in his being. “Right on time.”

A large burst of light exploded close to them, spewing debris in their faces. Cross and the Raven scrambled away and ducked behind a wall of wood and sand bags. Shards of metal whizzed their way.

The captain, once again, remained standing as if the blast were nothing more than a light breeze tickling his cheek. If he lacked anything it wasn’t guts. His eyes glazed over and he stared off into space exactly how she remembered Cross had done before dragging her through Yomi. It was the face of a man who had accepted his own fate.

The captain’s eyes rose back to life. “This is it.” Without any hesitation, he dashed down the cliff and charged into battle like a soul who had given up on everything. There was no caution to his run. He never once ducked or dodged and he disappeared in the thick of the battlefield.

“Looks like whatever guts the captain had left over,” said Cross, “he’s about to lose.”

Cross and the Raven remained inside the safe zone—which wasn’t really all that safe with all the sharp objects surrounding them—and they watched over the pointless battle from their perch high in the cliffs.

The Anarchists filled their trebuchets with molten lava and lobbed it at the Tribulation, who returned fire with their own lava. Barbots took to the air with souls ridding their backs, wearing colossus-haired coats. They shot arrows downward into the field and at other flying soldiers on the opposing side. The two warring factions converged at the ladder, clashing in a serenade of slaughter. White flashes bloomed and dark explosions erupted. The unnerving sounds of excruciating screams mashed together in a terrible ensemble of second death.

The Raven didn’t follow the word of the Magna Mater like Cross, especially now that she had reunited with her father, but she knew this war was not the will of the Great Goddess or God. These were souls taking it upon themselves to reshape their own unmovable fate; fighting over a ladder that neither side owned, when they could all escape the confines of the underworld if they worked together. They were too caught up in their own script to acknowledge another’s. The underworld was bad for sure, but some souls always found ways to make their respective Hells worse. No matter what side the soldiers fought on, all Nothings wore the same color, and that color was cold, and undignified.

“Even in death, men waste their lives,” said the Raven. “This is why I was conning spirits out of their objects. I took the most lethal objects I could find to the Inferno to destroy them. I told myself I was saving the underworld. Saving these souls from themselves.”

“Well, you don’t have to do that anymore,” said Cross. “The Toran is on the other side of the river.”

“Where?”

Cross grinned. “I said the other side and that’s all you need to know. But while the Tribulation is over there we can’t get across.”

“I wonder what would happen if somebody were to cut down that ladder.”

“Then these idiots would go somewhere else to fight.”

An explosion boomed near them. Both of them ducked behind the craggy wall, and at the same time they both spotted a set of explosives. With a nod to each other, they agreed on what they had to do without speaking a single word. It was about time he was on the same page as her.

“Is one of these enough to bring down a ladder that size?” asked Cross.

They both paused and said together, “The hammer.” They shared a smile amongst themselves and connected as peers with equal cleverness.

The Raven removed the hammer from her waist just as two soldiers carried a wounded man into the area.

“Summon the monk, quick! The captain’s wounded. Hurry!”

They placed the captain on the stretcher. He yelled in agony. The Nothing had taken over the lower half of his chest. His legs were completely crusted over and crumbling.

The Raven passed the captain his bottle of devil’s water and placed her hand on his shoulder.

“This one’s for the angels.” She winked.

The captain’s lips quivered in an effort to smile.

Chapter 22 - Burning Bush