X; Hell Cometh

  I opened my eyes to a world of fire and flesh, death and woe. Jagged spires of pulsing meat spiralled to the large clouds of condensed blood that dotted the sky, whilst before us was a large expanse of black dirt, black grass, black trees and rotten air.

  Arcanist Eldric, his grey wand in hand, scanned the surroundings. “It’s somewhat like his … only, this is more brutal. More bloody.”

  So it’s true. This Gram has awoken the same magic as that monster, Cel. A demon himself. The monster that brought the heavens to heel. The man so infamous, so reviled, that it has brought utter shame to my own name that shares its root. “Where, pray tell, did you find the daemon last time?”

  “We did not find it, Celeste,” Jelen lamented, trailing his hand along the dead earth. “It found us.”

  “I may be the youngest of us—”

  “—you are the youngest,” Aslyn corrected me, taking care to study the earth.

  “Be that as it may,” I continued, my wand ready at any moment. “Surely we can kill it? Five of the strongest magi in the world, and we’re to bend our knees to a demon?”

  Chuckling, Eldric turned to me. “It shall bend its knees to us—regardless of the fact that it is all we can do. Pay heed now, Celeste: we, strong in number as we were even back then, could not kill the daemon—I do not expect us to now.”

  “And the daemon freed itself last time, did it not? That is why Cel was what he was. Why are we doing this again?”

  “B—” Eldric began, but held his tongue. Slowly, he laughed at the red sky. “I’ve not said his name in years… nevertheless… Cel broke the demon free of his own volition. It is Sig’s hope, foolish as it is, that he can stop Gram from the same fate.”

  Behind me, Ashlyn grunted. I turned back to see she had bitten her finger and held it over the black earth, droplets of crimson blood falling from it. From her blood, a scarlet rose sprouted from the earth.

  “It’s alive,” she stated, rising from the earth. “It’s dead, yet it’s alive.”

  “He’s of the Fire, is he not?” Arcanist Telos, silent until now, asked.

  Nodding, Eldric stripped himself of his robes, revealing the magenta tunic underneath—and dozens of steel bracelets, rings and necklaces, all brimming with grey runes. “Let us go forth.”

  “Agreed,” Jelen said, stripping himself of his own robes. Underneath, he wore tinted-red armour, pulsing with words of fire, whilst hanging by his side was a bastard sword.

  Telos, Aslyn and I kept our robes on, as we were far fonder of air casting—the act of writing your rune upon the air—and dispelling it when its use is at an end. Whilst carving your runes upon actual objects is more powerful and more stable, writing it upon the air is more versatile—and for the three of us, whose Magia is better served in defence and support, versatility beats power any day.

  That isn’t to say we didn’t use stable runes, however. Myself, I had a few rings for quick attacks and defences, but I didn’t exhaust my magic on them—nor would I wish to.

  We moved throughout the black land as overhead the sky crackled with crimson lightning. “Cel was of the Water, was he not?”

  “He was,” Eldric answered, his grey hair waving in the chill wind. “As you’re all aware, Fire and Water are opposite Magias. Perhaps there’s something there—and no doubt, there’s a connection between Cel and Gram we know not of yet, so be on the lookout for fragments.”

  “Fragments?” I asked.

  Scoffing, Ashlyn snapped a piece of black bark off a tree, sniffed it and threw it to the ground. “You’ve never done an awakening, have you?”

  “You already know the answer,” I sneered at her.

  “She wasn’t meant to be here because of it,” Eldric told her. “But Wexham was caught up in Montgar—and, unlike Cel’s, Gram’s demon is moving at a far faster fate. Thus, we had to use her.”

  Shaking his head in annoyance—no doubt because he, like Eldric and I, heavily opposed this plan rather than killing the boy—Jelen turned his head back to me. “When you enter someone’s mind, you see fragments of their memory, of their soul and of their being. As such, remember anything you see that’s not,” he waved his hand over the black earth and trees, “well, this.”

  “And there’s another thing to take into account with this,” Eldric interjected. “There’s no fire. Even Cel had water—bloody water, mind you, but it was water.”

  “Aye,” Jelen said, scrunching his eyes.

  Cel… it’s quite odd: in my seven years of being at the Academy, I’ve never heard his name mentioned more than I have today. It’s an … an odd opportunity to learn what I can.

  “I can’t believe—with what is said about him—that Cel would have willingly consented to five Magi entering his mind.”

  “It was fifty-two.” Jelen corrected me. “All thirty-three Arcanists, Headmistress Bren—Gods rest her soul—and eighteen Prime and Grand Magi. None of the Prime or Grand Magi, bar Eldric, Riscard, Aslyn, Ostelia and I, survived the first few seconds of being here.”

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  Clicking his tongue, Eldric sighed. “Cel was different back then—like Gram is now, so Riscard tells me. He was… happy, playful, full of mischief and wonder. Or he seemed it, at least. He wanted nothing more than to free himself of what he saw as pure evil.”

  “It was all a facade, I’m sure,” Aslyn stated, a hand on her hip as she spun around, taking in everything. “Frankly, we should’ve come with more—but alas, there’s far fewer Arcanists nowadays.”

  “Yes,” said Telos, full of sadness. “Headmistress Bren would cry if she saw the state of us now.”

  Wait. “If Riscard went into Cel’s mind, why didn’t he do it today?”

  “We suspect it was due to our relation with Cel that we lived,” Eldric told me. “As Gram barely knows Riscard, we couldn’t risk it.”

  “And what about Headmaster Sig? He’s a chosen of the Golden Tree, why isn’t he with us?”

  “He can’t,” Telos answered me. But he didn’t say anymore.

  Deciding to not leave me in the dark, Jelen looked back as we walked. “Headmaster Sig’s mind was forever scarred by Cel. It’s not worth the risk bringing him here.”

  I see. Cel really did his damage, didn’t he?

  We pressed on throughout the black expanses, finally breaking over a small mound. Down below, a dark cave was dotted along the side of a red-stone plateau.

  And by the cave, there was a boy. “Come,” Eldric said, jogging down the mound towards the boy. We followed suit, Jelen’s hand resting on the pommel of his blade.

  As we neared the cave and the boy, his visage came into detail: young, with tanned skin, curly brown hair down to his temple and amber eyes, the boy smiled a white semi-circle as we approached.

  “It’s a fragment,” Aslyn whispered to me. “Gram when he was younger. It must be.”

  “Boy,” Eldric called out, standing before the young Gram sitting upon a red boulder. “Why are you sitting here?”

  “I was told to,” he giggled.

  “By who?” Jelen asked.

  Tilting his head to the left, Gram smirked, then shook his head as he tilted it to the right and frowned. “I can’t tell you.”

  “What’s your name, Boy?” Jelen questioned him.

  The boy moved his lips, but no name came out. “My mum named me that!”

  Red.

  …

  What the fuck was that? “Did any of you—”

  “—just see red?” Telos asked, his lips quivering.

  The boy screamed, hitting his temples as he rolled off of the ground and scurried into the cave, disappearing in the dark. “You can’t say that!” his scream reverberated out.

  As Jelen moved to chase the boy down, Eldric blocked him. “Telos, cast dispello. Now!”

  Like clockwork, Telos carved Dispello into the air and the cave shifted, turning into a bloody mess of sewn flesh walls and floors, the entrance of a maze. Broken chasms of teeth and tongues dotted about the floor chewed and chomped as they squealed.

  “Gods!” I exclaimed, aiming my wand as I took a step back.

  “Make it stable,” Eldric commanded, approaching the beginning of the maze. “You and Aslyn, now. Mikael mentioned illusions at the awakening—it seems this daemon is a master of it.”

  Following his command, both Telos and Aslyn carved Dispello onto a bracelet each and held their arms up, projecting the spell.

  At the beginning of the maze, Eldric crouched down and eyed the mouths and tongues. Whilst they were in various places as far as I could see along the walls, only the floor itself had them for a couple metres or so a little bit into the maze, no doubt to kill any wanderers that tried to get inside.

  Placing his hand on a patch of sewn flesh, Eldric closed his eyes. From his hand, liquid metal began to stretch out over the floor of the maze, covering the mouths and tongues and providing safe passage.

  “Hurry up,” he told us, walking across the metal bridge he’d created. “I don’t wish to expend my magic more than necessary.”

  The four of us followed Eldric, making our way deeper into the maze. It never really changed. Just flesh and mouths and sometimes hands and feet. A bone here and there. Ribs. Eyes. Cocks and vaginas, legs, thighs. This was a depraved demon, that was certain.

  Red.

  “It happened again,” I said.

  “Aye …” replied Jelen, shuddering. “I don’t recall visions with Cel—do you, Eldric?”

  Shaking his head, Eldric raised his hand to a wall, whereupon an eye stuck out, gazing at him with bloodshot whites. “No.” He poked the eye and every mouth nearby screamed.

  “It’s all connected,” Aslyn stated, her hand still raised and green aura projecting from her wrist. “Gods, it’s a living labyrinth.”

  “Hard to call this living,” Telos lamented, closing the eyelid of the gouged eye as Eldric walked away. “Eldric, how many turns have we made?”

  “Left, right, right, right, left, right, left.” Eldric listed out.

  “Which means,” Telos moved his hand towards the wall to our collective left, opposite of the eye Eldric had gouged. “That’s towards the centre—and since it’s flesh—”

  “—we can cut through it,” Jelen finished, drawing his red bastard blade.

  Without further ado, Jelen hacked at the flesh, cutting through the screams of the labyrinth and revealing another hall. We did this five times, the third of which we had to move a little to the left as we’d hit a straight wall, until finally a small clearing appeared.

  Surrounded by ponds of crimson liquid, there was a hut of thatch and daub in the centre of the clearing. A bit outside its door, a pot was about to boil over as it bubbled against the backdrop of weeping flesh.

  “You found me!” a sweet voice called out from behind us. Turning around, we saw Gram, standing in one of the holes we made, pouting. “Mum will be pleased.”

  “Your mother’s here?” Aslyn asked the boy—as if he really was a boy and not the broken fragment of some possessed man’s mind.

  At the question, Gram weaved through us and began to frolic towards the house. “Follow me!”