Realm Wraith (29 page)

“This storm wasn’t nearly as bad when I left,” Rayne spoke in between spitting as he tried to clear the dust from his mouth. He realized he should have checked to make sure the others were still there, as he didn’t sense them anymore. Darrigan must have escorted them elsewhere to avoid the sandstorm. Coughing, he closed his eyes and tried again, this time being more aware of where the others were instead of blindly jumping. The sandstorm passed away, and they moved elsewhere within the Abyss, to muddy ground beneath black skies.

Rayne saw Gabriel first, who started as the former appeared before him.

“I didn’t think you’d get back so fast,” he said. “So, you found it?”

Rayne helped support Miranda, but his touch made her uncomfortable. Instead, he helped lower her to the ground where she huddled in a fetal position, burying her face between her knees.

“Why do you care?” Gabriel continued, staring at the wretched form. “It’s so pathetic. We should forget about that thing, work on saving the rest of us who still have a chance.”

He did not notice Darrigan coming up behind him until the demon spoke, his dry voice causing him to yelp and scramble away.

“Don’t you see? She’s the worst out of any of you. If she can find the redemption you all seek, then there’s hope for anybody.”

“Warn a person before you sneak up behind them,” Gabriel growled, trying to recover from the embarrassment of his foolish outcry.

“He’s right, though,” agreed Rayne.

“Of course you’d take
his
side. Why can’t you side with me, for once? At least I’m human, unlike
some
of us.”

“I don’t care what he is, he’s still right.”

Miranda seemed to sense Darrigan’s presence, and she scooted away at the sound of his voice.

“Don’t be afraid, mortal,” the demon said. “None of you are in any danger from me. I’m the one protecting you from everything else right now.”

Miranda reached out with an elongated arm, feeling the air, until she finally found herself pointing it at Rayne’s direction. She shivered, but turned her face to him, and then back in Darrigan’s direction, appearing quizzical.

“Rayne? What about him?”

She only made more gurgling sounds, not really being helpful.

“Is there any way we can help her speak again?” Rayne asked. “Maybe take those stitches out of her mouth?”

“They’d only come back, I’m afraid. It’s just how she’s deteriorated. Even if we did take them out, I don’t think her voice works anymore.”

Apolleta had been silent up until now, just watching them talk. She finally decided to speak. “Why does that happen? Why do we deteriorate?”

“It’s the madness of this place. Corruption from being exposed to all this demonic power. It strips the soul bare, and warps it into a more twisted version of itself.”

“So, it’s different for everyone.”

“Well, yes, you can already see it.” Darrigan’s bladed hands pointed at both Gabriel and Rayne. “Both of them are starting to experience the effects, but it’s not identical.”

The two men exchanged looks. Rayne could see Gabriel had lost more of his hair. His face looked haggard, with dark black circles under jaundiced eyes. The cut across his forehead was not only still there, it had widened, and he still bore the scratches on his arm where Rayne had grabbed him just a little too tightly. His skin too, seemed more ashen, with a sickly green tint to it.

Rayne looked down at his own hands. They were a pale shade of grey, but had a faint hint of blue to them. His skin felt smooth and cold to the touch, and he thought he felt very slight bumps and crevices here and there, but couldn’t be sure. He wondered how his face appeared to the others, as he couldn’t see it himself.

“You’re right,” Apolleta said. “Gabriel’s practically a rotting corpse, and Rayne’s like some kind of frozen specter. I don’t want that to happen to me. I have to get out of here! Please tell me how to get out of here!”

“I only bring souls into the Abyss,” Darrigan said. “It’s not my business to take them back out. You need to find your own way to make it let go of you.”

“How?!” she screamed, trying not to cry, shaking with anger.

“We’re all here because we did something wrong, how many times have I got to tell you all this?!” Rayne snapped at her.

“That may be true for you, but it’s meaningless for me! I’m a good person! And even if I did do something, it doesn’t mean shit, ‘cause I can’t leave this place!”

“Only at night—” Rayne started to speak, but Apolleta cut him off.

“No, I mean all the time. I haven’t woken up like you said I would, not since I was shot! I’ve been trapped here for God knows how long!”

“You mean you’re still—”

“Sometimes people are in comas for a while,” Darrigan said. “But, if you were dead, we wouldn’t be talking to you.”

“I was out for at least four days,” added Rayne, approaching her. “For all that time, I think I was here, but most of it, It was as if I were falling. I don’t know if time passed or not, but it seemed like I was falling forever. Then I was here, and when I woke up that’s what they said. That I’d been sleeping for four days.” He sat down next to her. “When you wake up, you’ll wake up. And then maybe you can do something about your situation.”

She grunted, not sounding reassured. “Do you have to sit so close? I’m freezing my butt off just being next to you.” She saw look on his face as she said that. “Sorry. I know you can’t help it.”

The embarrassed look on her face changed, and her mouth dropped open, then closed again, like a confused fish. Her eyes went wide, trying to comprehend something. Rayne looked at her strangely, but then he saw the reflection in her eyes. Himself, pale, eyes hidden in shadow, and a darkened black mass, spreading behind him, like billowing smoke rimmed with a violet light.

“Uh, Mercer?” Gabriel’s voice quaked.

He whirled around, face to face with the darkness that had appeared out of nowhere. Beside him, he felt Apolleta putting distance between herself and whatever this thing was.

“Oh hell.” A dawning sense of understanding spread into Rayne’s mind, as he knew what this thing was. Seeking to confirm his suspicious, the center of the black shadows cleared, forming a rift surrounding a burning violet eye. Twin tentacles shot out around him and yanked him from of his seat into the blackness. He heard the shocked screams of his companions, but they were drowned out by the shifting world, buried beneath the louder voice of a more powerful being that simply whispered.

“Found you.”

Chapter 10

Rayne found himself above a raging sea, where turbulent waves splashed in all directions beneath the eye of the storm. The shadowy mass that brought him here served as merely a portal, dragging him away from the neutral lands to the realm of water. He knew its intent, and it was not a friendly one.

“Did you think that if you left this place, you’d escape?” a voice sneered over the shrieking of the wind. The great eye burst open inside the swirling maelstrom, staring down upon him. “I have walked the Abyss for over eight billion years; there is no place you can hide from me. I can find you anywhere and bring you back to my realm!”

Hopelessness filled Rayne. This monster knew him now, and it didn’t seem happy to simply let him go. Years, months, the rest of his life suddenly felt a lot shorter.

“Please,” he begged. “I wasn’t going to return here anymore. You would have never seen me again! Can’t you just let me go?”

“Why? So you can gloat about how you, an insignificant speck, escaped my wrath? Your escape was a fluke, and I intend to fix that!”

“Why?! The Abyss already has me! I’m already damned! What does it even matter if you destroy me or not? Did this insignificant speck wound your pride so badly?!”

The eye glared at him as well as a disembodied eye could. So far up above in the sky, the razor sharp winds and clouds scattered around the eye broke its fire apart, diminishing its power over Rayne. He was terrified, numb, but his mind found its clarity here, allowing him to taunt the beast rather than cower in fear.

“You’re pathetic!” he continued, glaring right back at the eye. “Getting so upset over one tiny mortal, obsessing over finding it. For a creature so enormous, you really are small minded!”

Black tentacles burst through the clouds straight towards him. Not ready to resign himself to death, Rayne pulled himself away from the ocean, clinging to a faint hope that maybe he could get away long enough to think of something.

The Abyss shifted around him, and he fell into a world of a deep blue and turquoise, on sandy soil surrounded by tall rocky spires reaching up into dark watery night. He felt weightless, plunged deep within an airless realm. As he gasped, a bubble escaped his mouth, floating upwards into the blackness.

“Am I underwater?” he asked, his voice clear. He didn’t feel like he was drowning, but then again, breathing was optional here.

He floated upwards, though he knew he wasn’t safe here. But he also feared that even if he ran elsewhere, Tomordred would find him anyways, and drag him back. He didn’t know how the beast had found him the first time, or if running away was even an option now.

Forms drifted past him here in the deep. Waterlogged, decaying corpses floated among the tall formations of stone. There were larger bodies with more awareness, great underwater monstrosities whose burning eyes filled the water with shimmering lights, plunging all into darkness when they passed behind the spires. These sea monsters were hundreds of times Rayne’s size. Unlike Tomordred, they behaved more like animals without capability of higher thought, only interested in feeding on the floating corpses—or even each other, he noticed as he watched two savage eel-like monsters clash and bite at each other. He’d have to be careful not to catch their eyes.

As he drifted through the silent, underwater world, he found all manner of broken ships scattered in pieces on the sea floor, filled with giant holes that ruined them of ever being seaworthy again. They were ancient vessels, wooden galleons, antique battleships. More modern crafts of iron and metal, submarines, even aircraft carriers, lay here too. Rayne didn’t recognize some of them, for they were alien sea craft like nothing he had ever seen on Earth. They laid here in their final resting place, and the damned souls of their passengers rested among them, drifting around Rayne as he swam.

Out of the darkness he saw a twisting tentacle reaching at him. Staying calm, he grabbed one of the floating corpses and pushed it at the lithe black tendril. It seized the offered cadaver and dragged it, screaming, into the black void of the watery domain’s upper echelons. Rayne exhaled a tense breath, and started to swim. He didn’t have a lot of time. He had to focus himself out of here before Tomordred saw through his ruse.

The black tentacle lashed out from right in front of him, grabbing at him from the darkness. More followed, and a wavy violet light glimmered through the ocean darkness, watching. Tomordred had seen right through his ruse. Rayne’s mind went into panic mode, his thoughts drowning as more tentacles surrounded him. He didn’t have time to think, rationalize a logical escape. If he didn’t escape this place
now,
he was going to be eaten. The waters around him swirled, as Rayne’s frantic mind pictured the last place he’d ever want to go, the last place Tomordred would ever look for him.

The calming coolness in the underwater depths vanished, replaced by the most painful burning Rayne had ever known. He fell through red vapor, intangible, yet it stung his flesh terribly. The ground spread below him, dazzling his eyes with blinding light. It seemed like miles below, but he could feel the unbearable heat it generated. Was it the surface of some world? A lake of lava? Something far hotter than lava? He didn’t have to ponder where he was right now. It was the last place he should ever be. Well, second last. But he didn’t see Tomordred. If the beast had followed him here, he had hidden himself awfully well.

Black shapes floated in the red mist, standing stark against the blinding surface beneath. As Rayne fell further, they sparkled in the bright light, dark floating stones with smooth, faceted surfaces, like black crystal, roughly the size of a sedan. Rayne smashed into the nearest one, and rolled to a stop on hard ground, his bones aching, mind scattered as he still hadn’t grasped the reality of his situation just yet.

“Fucking hell,” he gasped when the world stopped spinning. The smooth ground burned his exposed flesh, but compared to the alternative, he couldn’t really complain. It was hard for him to keep his footing here, no place where he could find relief—cooler ground, perhaps shadow to hide in. The crystal drifted down slowly, the temperature steadily rising with every step closer to the ground. Rayne couldn’t see anything beneath him now, but every so often, crimson, fiery tendrils shot into the air, curling around itself like smoke, and dissipating into the burning haze. A hot wind picked up, and the haze began to flow, faster and faster, until it became a flaming tornado, roaring like a maddened beast. The sound was so loud Rayne’s hands flew to his ears, and he screamed to drown it out. Even if Tomordred hadn’t followed him here, he couldn’t stay. He would go insane if he didn’t leave this place.

The roaring intensified, covering Rayne’s screams, and he stopped as his voice gave out. Mixed inside the burning hellstorm, he thought he heard laughter. Like a low chuckle at first, it mocked him, louder and louder, until the roaring was nothing but the maddening cackles of an unseen beast. Smoke bubbled from the ground, spreading in pools around Rayne, rising into the vortex. At first, Rayne thought it was a reaper. But the overwhelming
presence
this smoke carried squashed that idea. This was something far more terrible than Darrigan’s kind. It stood before him without substance, but there was consciousness, without a doubt. The laughter echoing from this world centered on the smoke, which curled up, shaping into a skeletal creature, just a shadow of something far more sinister.