Short story - Falling

Burning. The worst possible fate for anyone to suffer, mortal or otherwise. I fell from that final battle on fire, my wings shredded, my horns shattered into fragments which tumbled ahead of me like sentinels announcing my disgrace. I clawed at the clouds in my futile despair. As the vaulting arches of the City vanished into a grey fog, I struggled to remember my name. The pain was stripping me of everything, of all I had been and would ever be. All that existed now was my disgrace, and the eternity of torment which awaited me in the depths.

I forget how long I fell. My immolation drove all sense of time and distance to the winds. I tried covering my eyes, but the fire was within my being. My sight became scarred and twisted by the flames of His displeasure. It was now my burden and my solace. I dimly noticed the sunlight above fading into nothing, as if I were sinking into a bottomless abyss. There was a brief flash of Typhoneous wrath with lightning cracking the charged air, a heavy oppression as yellow sulphurous clouds clung to my battered form, a fresh blazing cold that stung my burned and cracked skin

Then came the impact. A landing so heavy that the stone beneath me cracked. I felt every part of my being shudder and crack, then a rush of cold and raging heat stung my skin anew. I lay there for a while, incapable of movement. My eyes squeezed tight shut, my broken and bleeding nails digging into the fragmented ground, the stumps of my wings moving in pathetic circles. Finally the pain seemed to lessen, and I opened my eyes. I instantly regretted it.

Around me was a half-ruined temple, an Ionic ruin scarred by tempests of flame and ash belching from nearby cracks in the blackened stone. The paving I had landed on was all but reduced to dust, perhaps by repeated falls over the generations of my kind. It took a moment to regain my balance, and my first few steps were torture, my feet searing on the white-hot surface of the rock. I struggled to reach the edge of the temple and its steps down towards a natural terrace path. A single ribbon of smooth surface cut between the razor-sharp rocks around the cracks of fire and a sheer drop into a river of flame.

As I reached it, a terrible burning wind struck me in the face. I barely shielded my eyes in time, but my hand was further warped and twisted by the blast. I screamed, and my voice was cut off as my throat was burned and scarred. I struggled to maintain my balance against this new wave of pain, and took the path one step at a time. It felt like an eternity before I reached its end, a jump down onto a vast plane of basalt riddled with smoking cracks. I jumped down, and felt it groan under my weight. Walking forward carefully, I shied away from wherever I felt my meagre support begin to give. I did not know if I could survive being plunged into the flame of this realm. Beyond the basalt plane was a ridge of rock blunted by time. It stood proud of all other promontories, like a beacon for any lost soul.

I climbed up and rested on its spire, somewhat comforted by a less intense breeze. Nothing about me was visible due to the choking fog which clung to every surface. It was as I lay there that I looked myself over to see the damage of my fall. If my tears had not been sealed by flame’s brutal touch, I would have wept. My beautiful skin was turned to a rocky hide, my feet malformed into monstrous claw-like pads by the surrounding landscape, my arms warped and twisted from their former perfection, my wings destroyed save for two charred stumps, and I felt my face’s scarred appearance with burns and charring augmented by embedded fragments of rock.

In this moment, I heard a shriek from above. My blurring vision took in crystalline birds flying over my monstrous surroundings, their eyes streaming flame and their wings singing in the smoke-choked atmosphere. I slowly rose to my feet, and tried shouting. All that came from my mouth was a hoarse whisper. I wanted them to take me, to claw at me, to tear me to pieces and end my misery. They ignored my pathetic gasp and continued flying into the endless dark.

Just then, another blast of flame came from nowhere, striking my face. I felt my eyes burn away and screamed, swallowing fire. I collapsed again, but eventually revived. I expected to see only darkness, but instead everything seemed clearer than before. The fog had lifted to a degree, revealing the scale of my surroundings; a great field of volcanic rock and flame stretching on as far as my eyes could now see. The fog grew thinner, and my line of sight greater by the second. I tried not to think about why my sight had suddenly cleared, and my growing acclimatisation to this infernal place.

At first glance all ways were impassable through either razor rocks or rivers of fire. Then I saw a single way where no light shone or any spike rose to touch the cloaked sky. I also saw something glinting in the distance, like a polished mirror or crystal. Beginning to ignore the pain across and inside my body, I scrambled down from my haven and found myself on a slag-covered path running between the crags. I pressed forward towards the light, and stopped dead in astonishment.

Growing from a niche in the rock was a flower. A flower of clear crystal like none I had seen in the City or any of my travels into the World Beyond and Below. I reached out, felt its petals, then snapped my hand back as its razor-edged petal cut my raw skin. Continuing along the path, I saw other flowers of other crystal types, encompassing all the rainbow’s hues. It was like walking through the fields surrounding the City, although if I touched any of them I would feel their displeasure.

The crystal flowers guided me along the path until I reached a fork. Both ways looked promising, but I knew not whether one might take me to certain death. I crouched on the ground, finally beginning to ignore the protests of my burning limbs and tortured skin. It was as I crouched there that someone first saw me. Someone who would guide me to a shrouded destiny.

The voice came sharply from above, holding command and absolute authority. ‘Who dares walk this path?!’

I glanced up. What I saw might have been a kindred soul, though were more warped than I. The beautiful horns that had once graced their head were little more than splinters jutting up from a ridged and scarred forehead. Its eyes were two glowing pools of fire in a sunken face, and the mouth was unseen beneath a mop of shadows flowing about a scarred head. Its body was beyond description, supporting itself on legs that had been reduced to emaciated articulated pins. If any comparison were possible, it would be to an emaciated black cat starved of all nourishment and love. The figure jumped down, landing with such force that the stone beneath them cracked.

‘I ask again, who dares walk this path?!’

I tried to answer, but my voice failed me. I fought against the urge to run, standing my ground as the abomination approached. It looked at a few patches of my skin that were still only lightly scarred.

‘A new arrival. So you think to traverse this path without experiencing the full weight of your sin. Bold. And stranger still is that you found this way so soon. Your face bears the marks of the Flaming Brand. That should have blinded you completely for a time, leaving you a crawling worm amid these flames and burning stones.’ the figure raised its hand to indicate the spires around us. ‘But here you are, walking a path few have trod so quickly since their fall.’

‘I know not why I came here!’ I’d finally found my voice. ‘I do not want to be here. I want to get away from this place!’

The figure laughed, a cold snapping sound. ‘This place knows no end. Only those pardoned by Him have a chance to leaving and seeing the City once again. If you would seek some shelter, come to the Citadel. You found this path, so you might as well walk it. But know this. You do so alone, as all we outcasts did.’

The black smoke pulled away like wings extending, and the figure rose in a blur of darkness, fading from sight. I slumped, my strength taxed beyond its measure. After a time resting there, I moved on, taking the left fork in the half-hearted hope that it would lead me to some place of sanctuary. It felt like an eternity before I came to the end of the path. My luck – if luck it was – had guided me down the right path. I came out beyond the field of sharp spires into something....even worse.

I stepped into the field of blood-red grass and felt my feet being shredded. I jumped back with a cry of pain, and saw the grass waving and fluctuating as if beckoning my return. I looked at my foot, and again tried in vain to weep. I wondered if going back and taking the other path might help. But with my foot in this condition, how could I make that long journey back and perhaps a longer journey down another route? Might it not lead to a dead end? Or something far worse than even this? There was only one way forward.

I braved the grass again, my bloodied feet protesting. Not only the razor edges of the grass, but the intense heat rising from their roots caused me pain. The first few steps I took were agony, almost causing me to fall into that deadly lawn. But after a time I was hardened to the pain, and my wish to escape to the mentioned “Citadel” overrode any misgivings I felt about walking through this horrific field. Nothing compared to the verdant grasslands surrounding the City. And certainly not as painful.

It felt like hours walking through that terrible place, my feet screaming with each step. Their screams were slowly fading in my mind, as my eyes grew ever better adjusted to the hellish landscape. In the distance, I fancied I saw six towers forming a great circle around a spire with flame at its tip. The vision passed quickly behind a veil of volcanic cloud, belched up from one of the nearer mountains. There were points were the mountains, or rather their horn-like foothills, butted up against the red meadow. I saw the glint of crystal flowers shining on their slopes, but I strayed not from my path. The less pain I could endure, the better for my sanity and eventual succour.

At least, I thought so then. It was as I thought this that I was struck in the back by something, a great shape that knocked me flat into the grass. The pain was horrific, as I threw up my arms to protect my face and felt the grass stab me in hundreds of places across my body. I tried to raised myself, but a weight pressed into my back, and something like a foot played with one of the stumps of my obliterated wings. I looked up, and saw the thing which I chastised my finding the path, the clinging smoke fluctuating between their dual role of fluid locks and unnatural wings.

‘None walk this path without feeling its full pain. Bow your head. Come! Bow! Bow and scrape! Surrender your heavenly pride and receive succour from your last remaining home.’

One of its spiked feet struck my head and began forcing me down towards the ground with terrible strength. I resisted with all my might, and fixed it with a gaze filled with something I had never felt before. Something that I could feel granting me an alien strength. Hatred.

‘Never.’

My words seemed to shock the figure. They pulled their foot away from my head and stepped off my back. I got up, wincing at the pain from my wounds.

‘What is your name?’ asked the figure.

I told them. As I watched, I saw the figure collapsed to their knees at the sound of my name, then kowtow into the grass, which in turn became flat and harmless. I pushed myself to my feet, and the figure spoke.

‘You have come. After spirals uncounted, you have come. You must still traverse our land, a pilgrimage of agony. But at its end, I shall await for you.’

The figure’s shadowy locks became wings once more, sailing into the air as if lifted by strings and drifting beyond my sight. I slowly looked ahead of me, where nothing but pain and labour seemed to wait. But if I did nothing, I would be condemned to wander this land in aimless despair for an eternity.

I remember little of what came next. It all passed in a blur, like some dream I could only remember in fragments. When I at last came upon my destination, the end of my pilgrimage, I was nothing like my old self. All that I was had been stripped away, and all I could be lay before me in its demonic majesty. The Citadel, tall and terrible, beckoned. I walked with stiff feet along the bridge of obsidian linking it to the rest of these Hadean lands, and saw ranks of twisted monsters lining my path, half-hidden by the haze and bowing their heads in acknowledgement of their deference.

When I finally reached the Citadel’s doors, the strange figure appeared once more, its body taking on a stronger feline appearance. It bowed so low that the tips of its long braids of smoke scraped the polished floor.

‘Your throne awaits.’

‘My throne?’

‘You are the True Ruler who has been prophesied. Let thy will be done.’

I stepped past my feline guide into a great hall. A stone-carved throne shining with gemstones greeted my fire-worn eyes. In the polished surfaces around me I saw my changed appearance. I might have cried out in terror, but I did not. I was elated at my change. I was no longer His servant. I was something more, something perhaps far greater than any of His creations. I sat upon the throne, and all of the realm kowtowed. The feline figure appeared at my left hand and spoke.

‘To complete your ascension, speak thy name.’

That was the first time I had ever felt so alive, so completely in control of all I was and all I could be. I spoke the words that only He had heard before now.

‘My name is Lu–’