“Oh yeah? So what? I’m gonna hit myself
three
times now.” Sehn heard two slapping sounds far into the distance. “Ouch! Ouch!”
“How…how dare you?” Sehn roared. “Much like the real Nero, you are a cheater! That was only two times. Nevertheless, the Great Sehn shall now attack himself
ten-thousand
times.”
Not wanting to further injure his face, Sehn opened his hand and gave himself a slap on the cheek instead of a punch. He hoped the sound was loud enough to reach his subconscious mind, which for some reason was way out in the desert somewhere instead of in his head.
“That was only once! You’re lying, Sehn!”
“
Wh—
what? No I’m not! The Great Sehn’s hand can move so fast that ten-thousand punches can be thrown in the time it takes to—”
“Stop!” called Rina’s voice. “Rina thinks both of you boys are being stupid! Rina doesn’t think that anyone is anyone else’s subconscious.”
Sehn, only a moment from slapping his face again, froze in shock at the girl’s words. Like a flame that had long-ago vanished, a spark of hope lit in his chest. It was such a powerful emotion that it caused his knees to tremble.
“What do you mean?”
“Rina means that…that you’re the real Sehn, and Nero’s the real Nero. The bad people took us here, and Rina thinks the bad people also took Sehn here, too!”
Could it be? Through some twist of fate, could the voices of these two children be the real Nero and Rina? Sehn’s knees jittered yet again, and his eyes began to sweat from the exertion of winning
the whatever
the fuck he’d just been doing. He swallowed, his throat suddenly feeling clogged.
“N-n…” Sehn’s voice broke, and he bit down on his tongue, hard. He took a breath. “Nero?”
“Sehn?”
“Nero!”
“Sehn!”
Sehn took off with the speed of Helena’s legendary golden horse. He ran as he had never run before. Pumping his arms, he propelled himself forward and through the barren, unchanging land. This couldn’t be real. It couldn’t…
“Nero, wait up! Rina is not as fast as…
ew
! Boys are so stupid! It makes Rina angry!”
Sehn launched himself towards the sound of their voices. His legs and heels began to ache from the effort of running over the sand, but he ignored the pain. He pushed himself onward, willing himself to go faster and faster. Every second was agony. Every second brought with it the worry that this was all a trick, or an illusion caused by his mind.
When he finally caught sight of the boy, Sehn rejoiced in a sensation of relief—of happiness so powerful that he didn’t even bother trying to control the emergency water supply that leaked from his eyes, where he had ingeniously stored it in the event he was dehydrating and unable to find anything to drink. Nero ran towards him, with Rina trailing a bit behind.
Sehn reached out when he was close enough. He yanked the boy towards him with his arms, embracing his stupid, idiot-faced, unworthy, easily captured disciple, hopefully tight enough to strangle him. Was this him? Was this really him? It looked and felt like Nero, but how? How could Nero be in this place?
It doesn’t matter how
,
Sehn thought.
This is him
.
I’m sure of it
.
As punishment for allowing himself to be captured by the enemy, Sehn knew he needed to execute the boy, and although it looked like he was hugging his dumb, no-good, weakling disciple, he was actually trying to commit murder.
Sehn grabbed Nero by the chin and inspected Nero’s face, ensuring he wasn’t injured or bruised. He breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that the boy was unharmed. It wouldn’t do to have that good-for-nothing disciple of his bruised and battered before
he
himself got to smack him around for all the worry he’d caused Sehn to feel. Once he was sure that this was really Nero here with him, and that he was also unhurt, Sehn resumed his hugsecution.
When Rina reached his side, Sehn grabbed her as well, deciding she too deserved to be executed. “You idiots,” he growled. “You don’t know how long I’ve been searching for you two! You can’t imagine how badly I tried to find you…so that I can properly torture both of you to death.”
Sehn’s mind raced with all of the thoughts he’d been holding back. He imagined all the things that could have happened to them. Things could have turned out so differently. They could have been…the Archmage could have…
“Rina is sorry, Sehn. She did not mean to get captured.”
“I’m sorry too, Sehn,” Nero said.
Sehn nodded, begging his eyes to stop wasting his valuable water supply, but failing to command any sort of control over his body. They were here, and they were with him. Nothing mattered more than that right now.
“Don’t not worry, Nero, Rina! Everything’s going to be not okay now. I’m here! A pillar of flame shall engulf your wailing bodies, you two little brats! But now that I’m here, you’re not safe. Everything’s not okay for either of you now!”
Rina giggled, and Sehn, letting go of Nero, lifted her up and spun her around, but only because he was preparing to throw her deep into the barren desert. Unfortunately, he still needed to interrogate her for information, so he set her back down.
Then he returned his attention to Nero. He knelt before his disciple. “Nero,” he whispered, placing his arms on the boy’s shoulders and meeting his eyes. “For you to be here…then that can only mean one thing.”
Sehn swelled with joy. “Because of the influence I’ve had on you, instead of a paradise in heaven, the Gods have sent you to rot away in hell. Nero, I…I have never been so proud!”
“Thanks, Sehn,” Nero said, wiping his eyes. “But I don’t think—”
“No, no, you need to hear this. It is rare that I offer my divine praise to a mortal, but Nero my boy, you’ve done it! You’ve made it into hell! Congratulations!”
“Sehn, I don’t think this is hell. That’s not what all the old guys said.”
Sehn frowned. “Hmm? What old guys?”
“I think it’s better if we just show you.”
Sehn let go of Nero and returned to his feet. Something strange was happening here.
Sehn yawned as he trailed behind Nero and Rina, who practically skipped as they led him farther into the unrelenting nothingness. In this boring red world, it was neither hot nor cold, but somewhere in the middle, and it was neither light nor dark, but
dim
like a small corridor under the glow of a small torch. Sehn extended his arms and stretched, yawning loudly a second time. Who knew hell could be this boring?
“Nero, Rina, slow down,” he said. “What’s the rush? We have all of eternity to conquer this place.” Sehn looked at his surroundings, and muttered, “Not that there’s much here to conquer.”
“We need to show you the old people,” Nero said. “They’re really nice.”
Sehn had nothing to say in response. Boy, this sure was some afterlife. Was this what hell was going to be like for him? Wandering aimlessly across an empty red desert in search of old people? Sehn had always thought it would be a place that punished the wicked based on their misdoings, and while he admitted he had a great deal to be guilty for, he failed to see how this sort of punishment was related to any of it.
Is this supposed to be the Gods’ way of teaching me a lesson
? Sehn wondered.
Making me look for old people
?
Sehn supposed things could be worse—there was that much at least. Sure, this wasn’t how he’d expected to end up, but it was still better than what
could
have happened. If the Gods had truly desired to punish him, they could have sent him to some cloud-like world with ponies and unicorns, or rainbows and flying kittens. Now
that
would teach him the true horror of his sins. Sehn shuddered just at the thought of such misery. At least here, he was trapped for all eternity in a never-ending desert, which was something he could actually deal with. But a place like that?
I would lose my mind within minutes
.
With his imagination conjuring up such horrible thoughts, he was unable to concentrate on Rina, who was excitedly chattering away to him about all the things Cah’lia had taught her. He nodded whenever she said something, pretending to be interested.
“And then Rina learned how to make eggs. And Rina learned how to…then she learned how to…and Cah’lia said…and Rina learned…”
“Yes, yes, Rina,” Sehn drawled. “That’s so amazing.”
Sehn continued to let his mind drift—or at least he tried to. It was difficult to think with Rina going on and on, and it became impossible once Nero’s voice entered the fray. For some reason, the boy was trying to speak on Rina’s behalf; he was saying what Rina felt and thought as if he knew better than she did about her own emotions.
“No you didn’t,” Nero said in reply to something Sehn didn’t quite catch.
“Yes Rina did! She remembers.”
“You liked the orange one, not the blue one.”
“No, Rina liked the blue one.”
“Nah-uh, I remember you saying you wanted the orange one.”
“It was the blue one. Nero is being silly.”
“No, it was definitely the—”
“Enough!” Sehn snapped. “I can’t think with all this bickering. How much farther until we reach wherever we’re going? I can’t tell the difference between where we were an hour ago and where we are now.”
“It’s not much farther,” Nero said. With a determined grumble, he added, “And it
was
the orange one.”
“Was not.”
“Was too.”
“Was not!”
“Was too!”
“Was n—”
“Silence, fools!” Sehn bellowed. “If either of you two dares to put the Great Sehn through one more moment of this, I shall personally bury you beneath this red sand and summon vultures to pick apart your scalps! Besides,” Sehn added, “it was obviously the blue one.”
“W-wh—what?” Nero shouted. “How come you’re taking Rina’s side? And you weren’t even there.”
“Because she’s smarter than you are, and your memory is awful.” Sehn winced. “I still remember trying to follow you through the forests outside of Elvar in search of that rare Rezza Spider’s nest. You swore to me you knew where it was hidden.”
Nero’s lips pulled back as if in shame. “It…it wasn’t that bad, was it? I don’t remember ‘
cause
it was a long time go.”
“Wasn’t that bad?” Sehn asked. “Nero, you walked us off a damn cliff! You’re lucky you had gold in your pockets, else I’d have let you fall instead of grabbing onto that vine with one hand and your leg with the other, intentionally pulling a muscle in my divine back.”
“Oh yeah,” Nero said. “Well, at least we found the spider, didn’t we?”
“Yes, we did, but it was an ordinary spider’s nest. We wasted an entire day on nothing.”
As the three of them continued into the unchanging depths, something nagged at the back of Sehn’s mind. “Nero, Rina,” he said. “How do you two know where you’re leading me? Everything looks the same here.”
“Because we can hear them,” Rina said. “Rina and Nero can hear the old people.”
“Hear them?”
She nodded. “Rina thinks that if you know someone is here and you want to find them, you can hear where they are.”
“I don’t hear anything.”
“Rina thinks that’s because you haven’t met them yet.”
“Met
who
?”
“The old people.”
Sehn knew he wasn’t going to get anything more out of the girl, so he decided to drop his questioning for the moment. Instead, he put his mind towards keeping the two children safe. He didn’t know who these “old people” were, so he certainly didn’t trust them. He placed his hand at his side, wishing his sword still rested at his hip.
“It just occurred to me,” Sehn began. “I haven’t eaten or drank anything since I got here. I guess we don’t need food in the afterlife.”
Nero shrugged and said nothing, while Rina fell back a few steps and tried to hold Sehn’s hand. He didn’t allow it. Such an unmanly thing was unbecoming of him. They were in hell now. No one held hands in hell.
Although the children claimed they were close, by Sehn’s estimates, it was at least twenty more minutes before the two of them pointed ahead of them, announced they had arrived, and began walking faster. Sehn quickened his step to match their pace, unwilling to let them get out of his sight. Just what were they pointing to, anyway?
At first, he didn’t see it. The children seemed to grow more excitable, waving and pointing at nothingness. Were they mad? Perhaps the two had spent too much time in this red empty wasteland and were imagining things.
Then he saw it. As if materializing out of nothing, various transparent forms appeared in the horizon. They appeared ghostlike, as if they were stuck between worlds, but as Sehn approached, they solidified with each step he took closer to them. By the time he was almost upon them, he could make out their clothing and individual features. These men, whoever they were, wore fancy robes, now ruined, filthy, and torn in places. They were indeed old; not a man among them had any hair not greyed by age.
There were sixteen of them in total; twelve sat on the red sand in a circular formation, while the other four sat in a horizontal line several feet away to their left. When Sehn approached, all eyes turned to him. Good. If he was going to conquer this place, gaining their attention would be a great way to begin.
“It’s really him,” one of them whispered. It was a man with a silver beard long enough to reach the top of his chest.
“Hush, Archmage Uramore,” another said. This one from the man to his right. “We must allow him the first word.”
Sehn approached the group of old men. Nero and Rina, both at his side, continued to point and smile as though that was supposed to mean something to him. Sehn raised his finger and opened his mouth, prepared to announce his reign over this hell-world. Yet his words faltered. He licked his lips as he stared at the sixteen old men, all with their eyes wide and eying him up and down as if he were some kind of prize horse.
This staring continued for several minutes, and Sehn struggled to think of a way to break the silence. He noted that the twelve men who sat apart from the other four wore robes of inferior quality, though still far more expensive than anything a commoner would be spotted wearing; the four wore teal-colored mantles, and from the neck of each hung a gold pendant, whereas the other twelve wore a slightly lighter shade of blue and lacked any such pendant. Of the four distinct and better-dressed men, one stood out slightly more than the others did; a ruby larger than any Sehn had ever seen decorated the middle finger on his right hand, and an emblem of crossed swords was emblazoned on the collar of his robe.
After another minute of silence had passed, Sehn grew annoyed. “Okay,” he said. “Someone here needs to say it, and it might as well be me: this is fucking awkward.”
At this, the man, who Sehn recalled had been called Archmage Uramore, looked around at the other three similarly dressed men then back at Sehn. He opened his mouth, but the centermost man with the ruby ring shook his head and held out his palm.
“No, Archmage Uramore. Do not scold him. It is just a word.”
“But, Holy Magus, in your very presence this elf has just used such a vile—”
“I said
it’s
fine. It’s just a word. We’ve all heard it before.”
Sehn, confused, elbowed Nero on the shoulder. “Nero,” he said. “What in the fuck are these bitch-fools talking about?”
This resulted in a loud chirp from the one called Archmage Uramore. “Issius!” he hissed. “This elf just—”
“I have ears, Uramore. I know what he said. But keep in mind who he is.”
“I realize that, but—”
“Archmage Uramore! Control yourself!”
“Y-yes, Holy Magus.”
Sehn frowned. He didn’t like the way all these people were staring at him and not saying anything. What was their deal, anyway? And how come Nero had called them “nice people?” These men were downright creepy.
“Nero,” he whispered. “I think we should go look for a different set of old people. I don’t like these ones.”
“I don’t think there are any more old people,” Nero whispered right back to him.
Rina, clearing her throat, stepped in front of both him and Nero and bowed. “Rina would like to apologize on behalf of her friends’ rudeness. Rina knows that they don’t mean to be stupid.”
“That’s quite all right, little girl,” the one called Issius said. “We’re just observing your friend here—Sehn is his name, right?”
“Yes,” Rina said, bowing her head. “Rina knows who you all are, and she is sorry for any disrespect that—”
“Rina!” Sehn snapped. He didn’t know who these people were or what they wanted, but no matter who they were, he would not allow Rina to act this way. Not after he’d tried to teach her the
right
way of behaving around people. “Rina!” he scolded, saying her name a second time, but this time adding even
more
disappointment to his voice. “What have I told you about behaving politely around strangers?”
She sighed, and with a hideously disrespectful and defiant roll of her eyes, she answered, “Sehn said that Rina should always demean and insult people she doesn’t know and, if possible, she should throw her feces at them. But that’s not what Mistress Cah’lia says to do.”
“Gah! I don’t care what Cah’lia said. This is hell, Rina. It’s everyone for themselves here. You must learn to be strong! Now that we’re dead, we—”
“Ah, you think you’re dead?” one of the four asked. Sehn glared at him. Who was this fool who dared to interrupt him? The speaker was the oldest of all sixteen men, with but a few patches of grey hair on an otherwise bald head and more wrinkles on his face than Sehn had ever seen on a human—or an elf for that matter. It was almost difficult to see his eyes beneath his wrinkled skin. Yet despite this, his appearance was oddly comforting. Even without any overt expression on his lips, Sehn had the strange notion that he was smiling on the inside.
“Forgive me. My name is Archmage Bennet, and I am the oldest living mage in all of Magia—or at least I was until a mad Archmage by the name of Duncan sent me here. I have walked the earth for nearly three-hundred years, and I have seen much, but you are one of the most interesting—and spectacular—spectacles that I have ever beheld, my dear elven boy.”
Sehn’s ears twitched. “Go on.”
The Archmage got off his feet and dusted himself off; the others remained seated. He gestured to the world around him.
“It’s understandable that you thought yourself dead, but I can assure you that you are very much alive, although…this can hardly be called living, now can it? If you are indeed Sehn of Elvar, brother to Shina of Magia, then your appearance here is…troubling.”
“You know my sister?” Sehn asked. “And just where exactly
is
this place? Answer me at once!”
“I’ll answer the second question first,” Archmage Bennet said. “This place is what some of us call the area between realities. It is a realm created by powerful magic. Those trapped inside it do not age or need to eat and drink. Sleep is the only bodily function required for those unfortunate souls stuck within this world. In a sense, you could call it hell, as we all now face an eternity in this plain of nothingness.”