Volumes 9 and 10 - Dark Calling/Hell’s Heroes

My jaw drops, then firmly closes. I breathe in and out through my nostrils, waiting until I’m calm. When I’m in control, I say very clearly, “I want to go home.”

“It would be pointless,” Art says. “You could do nothing to stop it.”

“I have to try. Even if I fail, I want to be there at the end. If Earth’s going to fall, I’ll fall with it.”

“No,” Art says. “You have a greater destiny.”

“I don’t care about –” I begin to snarl.

“Life must continue,” Art interrupts. “We realised, billions of years ago, that this universe was doomed. The Demonata are stronger than those who populate our worlds. In time they’ll conquer all. We devoted ourselves to denying them that victory. We vowed to find a way to ensure life continued.”

“I thought you said all things perish.”

“Ultimately,” he replies. “This universe is a living thing, and it will die of old age eventually. But we can make sure that the end comes in its own time, not at the hands of the Demonata. If you help us.”

I’m silent a long time. I can’t understand everything Art is talking about, but if he’s right… if there’s some way to thwart the plans of the Demonata…

“How much further do we have to go?” I ask.

“Not far,” Art says. “Another day, perhaps, and we will reach the Crux.”

“And you’ll tell me everything?” I press. “No more riddles or half-answers?”

“Everything will be revealed,” Art promises. “After that you can stay or go as you please.”

“Then I’ll come,” I sigh, and although my intentions are good, it feels like I’ve just sold my soul to the devil—or worse.

THE CRUX (#ulink_0e8dad44-0f5b-58c3-af43-41f23955483f)

→More worlds and chambers. Pretty much all of the planets have fallen. They feel old and cold. Art says these were some of the earliest settled worlds, the first planets that the Old Creatures populated.

“You’re like gods,” I mutter. “You spread life across the universe.”

“We nurture life,” Art corrects me. “We don’t create it. We don’t know where the living things of this universe came from, how life was born out of fire and chaos. There are forces at work beyond even our knowledge.”

“Then gods – or God – might be real?” I press.

“Perhaps.”

“What about an afterlife?” I ask. “Do you know what happens to our souls when we die?”

“No,” Art says. “We will talk more about that later, but first…”

We’re approaching a small window. We’ve been moving at a constant speed, but now Art slows.

“ We are almost at the Crux,” he says and there’s a nervous edge to his voice. I feel the ball of light tighten around me.

“What are you doing?” I ask suspiciously.

“The Crux is a place of great danger,” he replies. “We cannot stay long, and I must cling tightly to you while we’re there, or you will be disintegrated.”

“Hold on!” I yelp. “You never said anything about disintegration!”

“I didn’t want to frighten you,” Art chuckles.

I stare anxiously at the window, wondering if there’s anything I can do to stop this.

“Don’t be afraid,” Art says. “I know what I’m doing.”

“Wait!” I cry as we draw close. “Have you ever taken anyone like me into the Crux before?”

Art hesitates, then says sheepishly, “No.”

“Then how do you know –”

Before I can finish, we smash through the window and I scream at the top of my voice, as if riding the wildest rollercoaster in the universe.

→As soon as we slip through the window, the temperature skyrockets. We’re gliding towards a massive orb of seething fire. This must be what the sun is like close up. The space around us throbs with magical energy. I sense Art tapping into that magic, using it to shield us from the unbelievable heat, glare and radiation. I can’t imagine anything non-magical surviving here.

We zip closer to the ball of fire. It shimmers savagely as I stare at it, awestruck and horrified. It doesn’t have a constant shape. The edges buckle and warp, bulge out, then twist back in on themselves. Pillars of flame shoot from the surface, spiral around the face of the orb and are absorbed by it again. Sometimes it turns a blinding white shade. Other times it goes black and becomes almost invisible against the expanse of space around it. Most of the time it flickers between the two colours, waves of fire lashing across the surface and bubbling over without pause.

The sun-like ball terrifies me. It’s not just the heat. Being here is wrong. I feel like I’m breaking a sacred law by looking at this wild globe of wondrous fire.

“We’ve broken more laws than you could imagine by bringing you here,” Art says. “But we cannot always be prisoners of the laws we live by. Sometimes we have to transcend them.”

We press closer to the orb. We’re almost upon it. My mouth is dry. My skin feels like it’s burning. My eyes seem to be roasting in their sockets. I want to turn and get as far away from here as possible. But before I can beg Art to stop, we hit the outer rim and are swallowed by a billion licks of ravenous flame.

→It takes several minutes to cut through the outer ring. I’ve fought demons made of fire, so a realm of flames is nothing new. But this fire is hotter than any I’ve experienced. It roars about us like a living, furious sea. But Art holds firm and guides me through the billowing walls of the furnace.

Finally we break through the flames and enter a realm of bewitching marvels. It’s a vast, oval, grey space, illuminated by constant bolts of lightning. There’s debris everywhere, asteroids, pebbles and dust swirling around. The lightning regularly splits rocks and splinters them, but the pieces join with other shards to form new, larger rocks, which in turn are split again.

The space is dominated by a series of enormous square panels. Half are black, half white. The panels revolve slowly around the sphere, never meeting. Anything that hits the panels – lightning forks, rocks, flickers of flame – is absorbed, then spat out moments later.

Balls of multicoloured light – Old Creatures – float around the black panels. Hundreds of demons cluster around the white squares. My insides tense when I spot the Demonata but Art speaks quickly to calm me.

“They Will Not Harm Us,” he says. “This Place Is Sacred To Both Sides. We Do Not Kill Here.”

“You could have warned me earlier,” I growl, then frown. “What happened to your voice? It’s deeper than before, and echoey.”

“We Are All Speaking To You Now,” Art says stiffly. “We Do Not Experience Individuality When We Are Together.”

I glance around at the various balls of light. They were pulsing in unison as Art spoke. It’s too confusing to think of them all speaking at the same time, so I focus on Art and pretend I’m talking to a single entity.

“What’s the story?” I ask, shivering as a bolt of lightning strikes the film of light around me and is deflected. “Why are we here? What are the big secrets?”

“The Panels Are The Key,” Art says. “You Remember The Chess Board We Saw On The Earlier World?”

“Yes, but what does…” I stop and cast an eye over the panels again, doing a quick count. There are thirty-two black squares and an equal number of white.