The very next moment, Rick felt Darkness' presence vanish, and he could suddenly see up and down the sewer tunnel once again. Carrying Kitty a dozen feet down the tunnel, he placed his companion up on a stone ledge in the light, and he noted that she was, in fact, just sleeping. Stepping back into the darkness, he kicked around with his feet until he came across his dropped shotgun, and he retrieved it after several minutes of searching.
During this time, Rick could hear the busy sounds of city life through the iron grates high overhead, and he thought over all his conversation with Darkness, her proposal, and his hard bargain. The fact was, he needed real assurances that she wouldn't go back on her word, and he guessed not only by his scant knowledge of demon lore but also by her reaction, that giving away her true name would indeed give him the power over her that he needed. That would insure she would help him, and if he needed to, he could always release her later if he wanted. The last thing he was going to do though was just rely on her oath, which he had no idea how binding that really was. Perhaps it was binding, but that wasn't something he was willing to take a chance on.
After cleaning off his gun, Rick put his back up against the wall and ledge where Kitty slept and just waited patiently for her to awake. He initially thought to wake his feline companion, but he instead held off and just waited. Though he didn't know how long she'd honestly sleep, a few minutes after just sitting there and staring up into the lighted iron grate over his head, he felt a rubbing on his back followed by a loud purring sound.
Peeking over his shoulder with one eye, he saw Kitty on her hands and knees, brushing herself up against him and smiling seductively at him.
“Oh, you're awake now?” Rick greeted with a smile, and she smiled back and nodded. “Let me give you a hand.”
Reaching up with his free hand, Rick then helped Kitty off the stone ledge. Though she honestly didn't even need his help, she accepted his offer, and a moment later, she threw her slender arms around him and gave him a hug, purring all the while.
“It's good to see you too, Kitty,” Rick told her. “Now, we just need to find our way out of here. If my guess is right, Jizzy isn't too far away either.”
As he spoke to her, Kitty nuzzled his cheek with her face and continued to purr away. Once her hand groped his limp dick though, Rick held her hand steady.
“Let's wait on that. Let's get out of here first, Kitty,” Rick told her, and she bashfully smiled.
A moment later, the two of them started off down the tunnel once again. As soon as he stepped into the darkness with Kitty by his side, everything went completely black once more, Kitty threw her arms around him in fright, and Rick immediately sensed Darkness' presence all around him.
“I will give you my name only if you promise to release me after I show you to where Jizzy is being held,” Darkness growled in obvious irritation.
Rick knew he had her where he wanted her, and so he casually pushed for a favorable return.
“I will promise to release you...” Rick began carefully, holding Kitty close to him. “... only once I feel my friends and I are safe.”
After a long growl which seemed to circle all around him, he heard Darkness finally spit out, “Deal!”
“Fair enough,” Rick concluded with a confident smile. “Now, give me your name and your oath, and then you may lead us to this door.”
While Rick knew he was playing with fire, he felt like he had the assurances he now needed. When it all came down to it, all he needed was to retrieve Jizzy, and he knew once he had his genie, he could right whatever wrongs he had created in making this bargain with this diabolical force. While he told himself repeatedly he was doing the right thing, a little tiny voice, deep down inside himself, whispered that this little bargain of his could only end in disaster.
Perhaps an hour later and after patiently being directed by the seductive voice of Darkness through the maze-like sewer system and to some dilapidated ruins buried under the present-day white-walled city, Darkness gave the two of them very specific instructions which led them to an ancient temple. The massive edifice of the crumpled structure was elegantly decorated with worn carvings and runes of a kind that Rick had never seen before. While the symbols carved into the stone were alien to him, Rick guessed the holy house itself must have been quite breathtaking in its heyday. After traversing up a long, shattered set of steps, past some unrecognizable statues broken and worn by time, and into a massive chamber which had rows of seating and a fallen altar at its head, Rick paused with Kitty at his side and marveled at the ruined structure around him.
“Well, this has to be the place, Kitty,” Rick announced, looking to his feline companion, who shied away from the glare of the contraption he wore on his head and was beaming light directly into her face.
After Darkness had whispered her true name into his ear and then carefully swore her oath to him, Rick dug around in the utility belt he had found beside himself when he first woke in the alleyway with Kitty. Within it, folded up, he found that strange headband contraption he saw Asha using, which had the two LED-like lights on it. After fiddling with it for a few minutes and pressing random buttons, he was finally able to get the two piercing lights on it to work, and he was, again, shocked at how powerful the two tiny bulbs really were. Since that time, he used the lights on the headband to travel far below the alabaster city, and at times, he'd turn it off to accommodate Darkness, who couldn't be present when the light was on. Then, after he received his traveling instructions from the demonic presence, he'd turn the powerful light back on and travel to their next destination. Now that he had finally arrived at the holy site where he knew the door was located, he turned to Kitty.
“I'm going to turn off the light, Kitty,” he warned her, and she immediately flashed him a worried expression and snugged her petite body right up against his.
Even though he had summoned Darkness before several times now, Kitty had not gotten accustomed to the diabolical spirit, and he noticed every time Darkness arrived, Kitty would hold him tightly and shiver uncontrollably.
“Don't worry, it will be all right,” Rick told her, and Kitty only meekly blinked at him in reply.
Reaching up then, Rick clicked the tiny, round button on the headset, and instantly, both he and Kitty were enveloped completely in darkness. Only a heartbeat later, Rick felt the presence of the airy demon near him, and he heard her excited voice a second later.
“Good! Good! You are so close now that my brethren and I can actually smell your mortality!”
“Oh, that's... that's nice. Is... Is it a pleasant aroma at least?” Rick ventured, trying to take the edge off his own fear by making light of things.
“You have no idea, but you have no need to fear, Rick,” she simply replied.
“Well, that's... that's refreshing. Tell me, where are we? What is this place?” Rick asked, wanting to ask her this ever since they had entered the buried section of the city.
“This used to be a djinn capitol of some renown, and it also happens to be the final city taken by the kull during their conquest of their former masters. In addition, it was here, at this very place, that Sultan Kull betrayed my kin and sealed us in our prison. This here used to be a temple in honor of the first djinn ruler. When Sultan Kull locked both us and the night away, it was such a catastrophic event for this world that the entire planet shook, and part of the city was swallowed up by the earth, this temple included. Sultan Kull then ordered the sunken part of the city to be buried in the hopes that we might never be freed and the door locking us in our prison forever sealed. He then ordered a new section of the present-day city built over the top of it. Does that answer your question?” Darkness explained.
“Yes, it does. Where is this door?” Rick asked.
“It is not in this area. You will need to go beyond the altar. There will be a room behind it with a stairwell leading down. Once you have descend further into the earth, you will find a mausoleum littered with bones. Follow it straight to the end, and there you will find the door. Open the door, and I will be waiting,” Darkness carefully detailed.
“What about my light? I will need it on to open the door,” Rick asked.
“It will not matter. The limitation my brethren and I share now will not be the same once the door is opened. Once we are set free, your little light being on or off will make little difference to us. Remember, you are not only setting us free but night as well,” Darkness eerily told him, and he felt a chill run down his spine at her words.
“And... And you
will
protect us, right?” Rick hesitatingly asked.
“I swore that I would, and I will,” Darkness simply answered, her voice continuing to circle around him in the air.
“All right, see you soon then,” Rick concluded.
As he fumbled with the button for the light on his headset, Rick heard Darkness eagerly giggle in the air around him. It was a greedy laugh, the kind of laugh of a madwoman about to be set free from the crazy house. After he clicked on his light though, the voice immediately ceased, but it eerily haunted his memory.
“Meow?” Kitty asked, her pretty face etched with concern.
“Ya, I know, Kitty, but... I got a plan. I think if I play my cards right, everything will be all right,” Rick assured her, petting her vibrant metallic hair on top of her head.
Proceeding through the rest of the crumbling temple, Rick and Kitty quickly found the back area behind the shattered altar which Darkness had detailed. After carefully stepping through a partly collapsed hallway and passing a couple rooms that were so caved-in and destroyed he couldn't even walk into them, Rick found a back room with a cracked and crumbling stairwell descending deeper into the bowels of the earth. As some of the stone steps had crumbled away and only darkness could be seen through the gaps in the stone, Rick was careful with where exactly he stepped. The two of them carefully navigated down the stairs, taking their time as they went, and they finally came to the mausoleum below.
Just as Darkness had told him, Rick was now standing in a great open space with long shelf-like columns full of countless piles of dusty old bones. Seeing all the empty eye sockets of the skulls staring back at him in the shadows made Rick more than a little nervous, and even Kitty seemed rattled and walked closer to him. The odor down in the mausoleum was unlike anything Rick had ever smelled before, being stale but with just the hint of some exotic spice he couldn't exactly name. One thing was pretty certain though, no one had been down in that cold mausoleum for a long, long time, maybe hundreds of years, and as the two carefully navigated around piles of giant bones, bones of the kull and djinn he guessed, their feet kicked up clouds of thick dust which had settled on the stone floor over the years.
Carefully weaving their way between two bone-littered shelves and around random piles of bone, Rick finally spied their destination up ahead after walking for several minutes. Against a rather plain stone wall, plain particularly in comparison to all the intricate carvings he saw in about every other place of the temple, Rick saw a broad iron door deeply etched with rust up ahead.
At first, as the two stepped closer to the heavy iron door, Rick could only hear he and Kitty's breath and the odd scrape of their feet over the stone floor, but as they neared the towering door, he began to hear other, much more frightening, sinister, and otherworldly sounds. The noises that he heard were like hundreds, perhaps thousands of tortured souls, all wailing out and swept away in some torrential maelstrom full of blasting gales that never ceased. Some of the mournful cries pierced high over others, but over these laments occasionally, and completely out of place, were the sounds of greedy laughter and screeching shouts of elation. The laughs, like the shouts, were not joyful, but instead, were filled with a touch of insanity, as if whoever was locked behind that door, had been bound there for hundreds of years and had just gone mad as a result of their confinement. When he and Kitty heard these terrifying sounds for the first time, they both paused and just stared at the door ahead of them with wide eyes, completely spellbound by the hideous and unnatural sounds.
This was the first time Rick honestly wondered if perhaps, just maybe, he wasn't doing the right thing, and he unconsciously licked his lips and thought out everything he had agreed to once again. Feeling Kitty take his empty hand a minute later, Rick broke from his contemplation, steeled himself, and proceeded towards the great door, ready to do what he had promised. No matter how frightened he was, he knew if he could just rescue Jizzy, he could undo whatever insanity he might unleash with just a simple wish or two.
Taking the final few steps and standing right outside the ominous door now, Rick paused and looked up at the thing, examining it under the full scrutiny of the bright lights of his headband. The door was sturdily constructed out of all heavy iron and was perhaps twelve-feet tall. While on the left side of the door, it was held in place by three great hinges embedded deep into the ebony rock, on the right side, there were three metal plates which overlapped the stone and the door, holding it securely into place. The metal plates were long, narrow slats of iron, and they were embedded to the wall on the right side with hinges just like the door. The plates, though, folded over the door and were held in place by three massive iron padlocks. The door, its hinges, plates, and locks were all corrupted into a reddish color and tarnished by rust, and in places, the iron itself was pitted and flaky.
Even as both Rick and Kitty were staring at the door, they continued to hear the tempest-like blasting winds, terrible laments, and insane shouts and laughter on the other side of it. Just listening to the bone-chilling sounds, Rick imagined opening the door and seeing a hellish tornado with thousands of lost souls being tormented by hundreds of wicked demons on the other side, all of them spinning forever and ever in a never-ending spiral of torment and perverted ecstasy.
Just standing there completely transfixed, staring at the door, and listening to the mayhem on the other side of it, Rick had no idea how much time passed before he and Kitty both jumped back as something heavy, on the other side of the door, violently struck it.
As both he and Kitty retreated a few steps in fear, Rick saw the heavy padlocks leap out and then smack back against the iron door with a heavy clang. In addition, rotten iron flakes and a sheet of fine reddish dust broke free from the heavy door and fell to the stone floor below.
Immediately, Kitty reached out and seized his arm, shaking her head, and with a frightened expression painted on her face. Along with her fears, Rick had his own running rampant through his head and making his blood run cold in his veins. If this were Earth, there wasn't any way he would do this, but there was something about Darkness' cold logic that Rick bought into. Here, he was being hunted by these kull, who would probably happily torture and kill him for the cap he had in his pocket. Not one of them cared an once for him, and an instant death at their hands was probably a lot more merciful than he would ever truly get, if he were honest with himself. In addition, his mission was to retrieve Jizzy, and he figured, whatever chaos that would be loosened by him literally letting hell loose on this plane, would help him rescue Jizzy and escape, especially since he had the protection of one of these demons at his beck and call. No matter how terrible he felt right now or what the ramifications of his actions would be, Rick told himself at that moment, even though he too was trembling with fear just like Kitty was, that the results of these actions were only temporary, and he could undo all this once he had his genie back in his possession.
“Well, let's get this over with,” Rick growled, firming his resolve for the grueling task at hand.
Kitty, though, wrapped her arms around him and held him close, and Rick pet her hair and spoke to her in comforting tones.
“Don't worry, Kitty. Darkness will protect us. If she doesn't by her own will, I will make her,” Rick told his feline companion to ease the fear he saw in her eyes.
Stepping away from his frightened companion then, Rick pumped his shotgun and pointed it at the bottom-most rusty padlock.
“Stand back,” Rick warned her, and Kitty not only stepped back but moved right behind him as well.