Infernum

It had only been a day since Alex had decided to ask the people of Lamia for help but it could have been a year. He was nervous, to say the least, but in all actuality, the thought of going to another world to ask a bunch of Caelo-hating aliens for help terrified him. He had considered taking Beau with him for backup or maybe just some company, but after some thought he decided it best not to risk more than he had to. Alex had the coordinates to the planet; all he had to do now was gather the courage to open the porthole. There was no point in saying goodbye; he couldn’t explain where he was going anyway. All he could do was to leave a note on his kitchen counter just in case he never came back. He looked at the note he had written on a small scrap of paper and read it to himself one last time before setting it down carefully on the counter.

He had packed some supplies into a small backpack, nothing substantial just a few bottles of water, a granola bar and a flashlight ... just in case the trip took longer than a few hours. Alex took a final look around his house one last time, he didn’t know if he was being nostalgic or if he was just stalling, but after that one final look around he opened a porthole to the mysterious planet, Lamia.

***

Alex stepped through the porthole and into a strange new world landing feet first in a puddle of dark knee-high water; the first thing he noticed, other than his wet feet, was the smell. It was musky, like an old stale creek or a basket of old wet laundry that had been left out for a few weeks. Alex was very put off by the funky odor, to say the least, but what made it a hundred times worse was the heat; Lamia was hot, like a summer in Texas where stepping outside, even for a moment, feels like stepping into a steaming hot shower. As Alex looked around Lamia his eyes began to adjust to the dim light of what was a dark planet, although it was midday the light of the bluish sun could barely be seen through the dense vegetation that stretched in all directions and as high as Alex could see. He could not decide if he was in a swamp or a jungle, as Lamia looked like both. The forest floor was almost completely covered with thick, brown muddy water, it looked shallow in parts but most of it was too deep to walk through as Alex found out as he took his first step nearly falling into a deep hole. There were large trees every few yards with roots exposed at the bottom and trunks that rose high into the sky and out of sight. Most of the trees were covered in moss or something like it, and the ones that weren’t were covered in thick climbing vines. Sprouting from the thick, muddy water were all kinds of plants, trees, shrubs, and vines. Some of the plants looked familiar and others were like nothing on Earth. Alex used his ribbons to stay out of the water, who knew what lurked in the muddy waters of this dark, damp miserable planet. Everything in this dense jungle/swamp seemed to feed off of something else. The moss and vines seemed to feed off the trees; small insects and animals seemed to feed off of the moss and vines, and then, like a Venus fly trap, the trees seemed to feed off of the small animals in yellowish pods that grew out of the tree trunks.

Alex paused for a moment to look at a small flower that was growing out of the water in a place where the sun had managed to break through the canopy. The flower looked like purple-and-blue stargazer lilies growing out of other lilies, flower growing out of flower from large at the bottom to small at the top forming a single stalk almost three feet high that stretched toward the sun on this planet of darkness. Alex thought it was beautiful, a welcome sight on this drab planet. As he was staring at this flower in the sun, movement in the trees above caught his eye. He looked up to find a small monkey; well, it kind of looked like a monkey, it had the face and coat of a small capuchin about 18 inches tall, but it had six thin arms/legs and two long tails that helped it climb. This small grey-and-black monkey thing began climbing down a thin brown vine that hung from the trees above, toward the flower, and Alex just knew the monkey was going to eat it. He was almost disgusted that the only beautiful thing on this planet was about to get eaten by a six-armed two-tailed pest. He thought he would wait until the monkey grabbed the flower then give it a good scare and shoo it off, saving this beautiful flower from an ill fate. The monkey reached down and grabbed the flower while still hanging from a thick vine; Alex was about to shoo it off when he noticed something odd. The monkey was pulling away from the flower, but it couldn’t seem to let go. Alex watched as the small monkey thing thrashed back and forth trying to let go of the flower. Just then, the monkey was pulled from the vine into the water as the flower retracted and the monkey began to thrash more violently in an attempt to get away.

Alex watched in horror as massive teeth at least three feet high rose from the murky depths all around the thrashing monkey as it splashed around. Then, in one quick chomp, the teeth closed around the small monkey and a large earthworm-like creature rose from the water, still chewing and choking down its prey. Alex watched, unable to turn away as the worm finished its meal then opened its mouth showing its flower tongue as it leaned its head back and sank back into the murky depths; all but its tongue was now hidden once more in the thick, muddy brown water.

About that time Alex decided to move a little higher into the trees as he searched for signs of intelligent life, making sure to avoid anything that looked pretty. He climbed to the tops of the trees and looked around; he thought that he might see a clearing or some buildings of some kind if there were any people nearby, but there was nothing but jungle as far as he could see. There were no mountains, lakes, rivers or oceans on this planet, only dense vegetation that seemed to go on forever until it disappeared with the curvature of this inhospitable world. Alex rested on the top branch of a tree for a moment then formed his golden ribbons into metallic wings. He thought an aerial approach might work better after seeing the worm in the water. Alex flapped his wings once as he leaped from the tree branch, taking flight high above the trees. He searched the horizon for any signs of life; he looked for smoke or the glimmer of buildings on the ground or even the sky, just in case these people lived in floating cities, but as far as he could see, there was nothing.

Alex had searched for hours without any sign of people when a cloud bank rolled in and began to drop rain. It was raining lightly at first but in no time at all the rain had turned into a torrential downpour. Alex fought the weather as long as he could but was eventually forced into the trees to look for shelter where he made a discovery about Planet Lamia. As he flew down into the tree line, he discovered a river flowing through a ravine on the forest floor. The trees were just too thick to see it from above; the trees seemed to fill in the open sky above the river and ravine from all directions attempting to gather as much light as they could, it was clear that open sky was nonexistent on this planet as it was precious real estate. Alex thought there were probably lots of things he couldn’t see from above the trees if that was the case, so he abandoned his wings in favor of ribbons to get him through the trees as fast as he could. He followed the ravine for a few miles until he spotted a small cave in the ravine wall. Soaking wet from the rain, he squeezed into the cave entrance for shelter. As Alex went deeper into the cave it began to open up a bit and after about a hundred feet was large enough for him to now stand up and walk deeper still.

The cave was dark so Alex opened his backpack and grabbed his flashlight and started shining it around the cave hoping he was the only thing in there. As he looked around the room it became very clear to him that the batteries in his light would not last long, he hoped it would be just long enough to find signs of life before he lost the light. As Alex shined his light to the back of the cave he could see a passageway that dropped down quickly. He walked over to the narrow passageway and was shocked to find that there were stairs carved into the stone floor leading down deeper into the cave. Alex knew this was his best chance to find people so he started down the stairs. This makes sense, he thought to himself, after all, people have lived in caves for thousands of years. He had his ribbons at the ready in case something jumped out at him; he did not particularly like caves to begin with, let alone caves on alien planets.

As Alex ventured deeper into the cave he noticed the air became dryer; where there were once wet walls and stairs there was now only dry stone beneath his feet. As he walked further down the narrow stairway his flashlight began to give out, dimmer and dimmer until, with one last flicker, the light was gone. He knew what to do; he would use his ribbons to see like he did on the mountain top, but he was not very fond of the idea. For some reason Alex was just a little freaked out at the idea of seeing everything at once, it just didn’t seem natural to him.

He did not have to close his eyes for the ánimam to start showing him the room; it was so dark there was no need. Alex began to walk down the stairs once more and after a few hundred feet of stairs that seemed to curve around as it went down, he came across a door. As he looked at the door through his ánimam he could see that it was made of metal and had no hinges or handles on it whatsoever, but more than that he could see that it was made of billions of nanites similarly to houses on Hope’s home world of Mundum. Alex tried everything he could think of to open the door, but it seemed that his ánimam was not compatible with these nanites. After a few minutes, he abandoned the idea of opening the door and elected instead to just open a porthole to the other side. He formed a circle with his ribbons and energy began to surge through like lightning to a rod, but as the energy began to flow the nanites in the door began to react to the energy. They frenzied as Alex tried to open a porthole, and somehow they prevented the energy from forming a porthole. Just then, as he realized he couldn’t get through, another door formed behind him, trapping him in the narrow passageway. He could see the nanites communicating with each other between the two doors as if they were connected by an invisible beam of electricity that was ordinarily unseen by human eyes. Alex freaked out and lashed out at the door behind him, one strike after another he hit the door with everything he and his ánimam had. After several strikes he turned his attention to the door in front of him, hoping it would give way, but to no avail. Neither door would so much as shake, let alone budge. Alex was now trapped inside the tiny hallway; he could not go forward or back, all he could do was just sit there in the dark and pray this tiny hallway did not turn into a coffin.

Alex was trapped for several hours before the nanites in the first door started to move. A small hole opened in the center of the door for just a moment, allowing light in the room for the first time, then disappeared. A few seconds later, the doorway opened up all the way revealing a dark figure on the other side. Blinded by the light behind the figure, Alex looked upon the man in the doorway with his ánimam and by all accounts it was human, all accounts but one. As Alex’s ánimam scanned the figure, it was made known to him that this figure was infested with nanites. Trillions of nanites made their home inside of this man, but unlike Alex’s ribbons they were not contained inside an ánimam, they were freely moving around inside his body. If Alex had not been looking upon this person through his ánimam he would never have been able to tell this man apart from any other with the exception of a slight shimmer in the man’s eyes.

The man standing on the other side of the doorway was very nonchalant with a black robe covering most of his body. He was of average height and build and did not stand out in any way, no distinguishing marks of any kind. There were no scars or tattoos on this man that Alex could see, and after closer examination, he discovered that the man had no fingerprints either. Alex thought to himself it was as if the man was specifically designed not to attract any attention to himself.

“Look what a spider has caught in its web,” the unassuming man said to Alex. Alex tensed up a bit, ever keeping his ribbons at the ready. “What brings a Caeloian to the door?” the man asked.

“I am not from Caelo, I am from Earth,” Alex replied. He could see the same energy that once came from the door now coming from the man and disappearing out of sight behind him. The energy appeared for just a moment then was gone as fast as it came.

“Then what brings an Earthman to the door? And why does an Earthman have an ánimam?” the man asked inquisitively.

“I have come to ask for help,” Alex said with a slight lump in his throat. Once again he saw energy emitting from the man, it appeared and disappeared in the same manner as before.

“You will follow me,” the man said in a monotone voice then turned around and started down the passageway.

Alex said to himself over and over again, Do it for Hope, she needs you, as he began to follow the man further into the passageway. He saw the energy come from the man once again then disappear.

“Who is Hope?” the man asked. Alex was puzzled at how the man knew about her but answered him anyway.

“Hope is the reason I need your help, she is trapped and I need to get her.” Alex detected the energy again and figured it must be some type of communication between the nanites in this man’s body and something else; however, the looming question was who or what was on the other end? “How did you know about Hope?” he asked the man as they walked.

“You were repeating the words, ‘Do it for Hope,’ I figured Hope was a woman, or why else would you be here?” the man said. Alex was starting to get wigged out by this guy; he was certain the man could read his mind. “No we can’t read your mind, you just mumble to yourself when you think, as most men do,” the man said to Alex.

“You can hear that?” Alex asked in amazement.

“Yes, of course I can,” the man said.

The man had led Alex to the end of the corridor and into a large, square cavern. The room was exactly twenty feet across and twenty feet high forming a perfect square, Alex’s ánimam confirmed the measurements. All of the walls, the floor, and the ceiling looked the same as the corridor that led into this room, the same pale stone as before. As Alex looked around the room, he saw several passageways exiting the room in all four directions, there were four doorways on each wall including the wall Alex came from; he looked back and noted that he came from the second door. He came from a sloped passageway that led up to the surface, but he could tell that the ground was now level; as Alex thought about it, his ánimam began to map out the immediate area, everywhere Alex had been he could now see as a map in his mind.

The man continued to lead him through a maze of tunnels, each as uninteresting as the next, and each made of the same stone. After an hour of spelunking the caverns and tunnels of this underground labyrinth, they arrived at their destination. The tunnel had opened up to a grand cavern, ornate with spectacular details on the walls; the cavern must have gone on for miles. In the center of the cavern, beginning a few hundred feet in front of Alex, there lay a massive stone city that looked like a medieval castle surrounded by an entire city of stone buildings, each more ornate than the next. There were life-size statues of people Alex did not recognize on large pedestals throughout the city, each portrayed a person performing a violent act of some type on another man or group of people but in a way that praised the man. The scenes depicted each person as a soldier after winning a great battle standing over their victims. Alex gazed at the city through his ánimam and could see the same energy as before, all around him, like invisible cell phone signals transferring data from place to place. The energy was everywhere, where the man stood, the buildings and everywhere in between.

Alex looked around the city as the man led him toward the castle in the center, there were no windows in any of the buildings and they were made of a hybrid of crumbling stone and metal nanites. The buildings looked like they had been there for thousands of years, crumbling from age then rebuilt with nanites for reinforcement. There was an odd smell in the air that Alex picked up on right away; it was metallic like copper but very pungent and it filled the air like rotting food.

Once inside the enormous castle, the odor got worse and the décor got more elaborate. There were murals on every wall depicting hordes of people being slaughtered at the hands of a single man. Alex began to get a very unnerving feeling about these people when he saw it; at the end of the hallway they were walking down, there was a mural of a man standing on a pile of corpses holding another man in his arms, blood flowing from the held man to the bodies below. Just then the man turned to his left and a door opened up where there was previously no door before, revealing a large chamber that reminded Alex of an amphitheater, with curved rows of seats facing a lower level of chairs facing yet another lower level and on and on until you arrived at the lowest level in the center of this semicircular room. Upon entering the room Alex was led down the steps toward the center stage that held a single podium facing the rows of chairs. A man dressed in a black robe sat quietly in each chair. There must have been hundreds of chairs in all and each man was now staring at Alex as he was led to the podium.

The man stopped just short of the podium and turned toward Alex.

“This is the Black Council; you may direct any of your requests to them,” he said to Alex as he pointed toward the podium. Alex arrived at the podium and no sooner had he looked up at the council than he was asked a question. In one unison voice, the entire council asked Alex the exact same question at the exact same time.

“How did an Earthman obtain an ánimam?” the council asked. Alex was startled by the booming voice of all the men together and was amazed at the amount of energy that flowed in between them as if they were all connected to each other through a wireless network of invisible energy. It took Alex a few seconds to clear his throat and answer them.

“It was given to me by a man from Caelo as he was dying,” Alex answered. “I need your help,” he proclaimed to the Black Council.

“Yes, to get your Hope, we know,” the voices of all the men said, interrupting him.

“Please, she fell into the Infernum and I desperately need your help to get her back,” Alex pleaded with the council once again.

The Black Council remained motionless as their thoughts were transmitted to one another; after a moment they all asked another question.

“Why do you need our help? Why not ask the parasites for help?” Alex, who was still standing in the dark, tried his best to direct his answers to the whole group as best he could.

“Parasites?” he asked. The council seemed to get a little upset at his inquiry as they shouted their reply.

“Those parasitic leeches you call the lords, why not go and ask them for help?” the council shouted at Alex. Alex suddenly got the feeling that he was about to be thrown out of the building. In one last-ditch effort, he pleaded with the council to hear him out. The council agreed and Alex told them his story, about Gabriel’s death, Hope’s shame and especially about the daemons, the Infernum, and the second Concordat. After he had mentioned a second Concordat, the council suddenly perked up and became very interested, or at least that’s what Alex thought seeing an increase of energy in the room. After he was finished with his story there was a staggering moment of silence before the council replied, “Go now, Alex, we will deliberate; you will have your answer soon, but now we must replenish ourselves.”

The man who had led Alex into the council chambers was now back and ready to lead him out. As the man led him out of the room they passed a large group of people who were being led in. There was a line of men and women numbering between 40 and 50 being escorted into the chamber by six men wearing the same black robes. The large group of people seemed relatively primitive, even to Alex. Their clothes were made of animal hides and they wore wooden sandals on their filthy feet. All the people in line smelled like they had not bathed in months, and just as Alex turned his head to the group, one of the women in the line fell to her knees and began to beg and plead to one of the robed men. Alex could not understand what the woman was saying as it was in another language that his ánimam did not recognize, but Alex could hear the despair in her voice. He turned around and saw the woman on her knees holding up a small wooden pendant in her hands as she pleaded with the robed man. The man in black grabbed the woman, and with no effort at all lifted her up and placed her back in line. Alex stood there for a moment and watched as the group of people was led into the chamber and the door closed behind them.

Alex turned to his escort and asked him what those people were doing, but the man just shook his head and told him it was better if he did not ask. Alex was led into an adjacent room, just down the hall from the council’s chambers and was told to wait there. He did what he was told and sat in the room waiting for his answer. Alex had been in the cold stone room for several hours before the man in black returned with any news.

“The council is ready for you now,” the man told Alex in a very dignified voice. Alex stood up and stretched his back before following the man back into the council room.

Alex stood before the council poised and ready to hear their decision. The council member in the front row closest to Alex began to speak by himself.

“We have heard your plea, Alex … and have decided to help you.” The council member held out his arm and gestured to a man who was approaching Alex carrying a large, flat box.

“Take this armor, Alex, it will submit to your will and offer its protection,” the council member continued.

Alex turned to the approaching man and held out his arms, accepting the gift. “Thank you, thank all of you,” he said to the council. He placed the box under his left arm and started to follow the man out, as he was gestured to do.

About halfway to the door, something caught Alex’s eye. He stopped and reached down, picking up the small item on the floor nonchalantly, and then continued to follow the man outside the chamber. Once outside the chamber Alex looked at the small item in his hand, it was the wooden pendant the woman was holding up earlier, only it had been broken and upon closer inspection, it had a small spot of blood splattered down one side. Alex stared at the small pendant for a moment then was overwhelmed by a sense of horror and dread. He stopped in his tracks as the image of the tapestry from earlier suddenly made perfect sense to him and he realized that all the people in that line were probably dead at the hands of the Black Council members. The man leading Alex turned toward him as he noticed that Alex had stopped.

“Is everything alright, sir?” the man asked in a sinister voice. Alex was now fully aware that he was in the presence of pure evil.

“Oh yes, I’m fine. I just can’t believe they decided to help me,” he said quickly with a big fake smile on his face in an attempt to hide his fear.

The man led Alex into a small room at the end of a long corridor with many doors the man had to open.

“Your ánimam can transport you home from here,” was all he said as he turned and left the room with the door closing behind him.

Alex sighed a big sigh of relief and opened a porthole home as fast as he could, but just before his ánimam opened the porthole, something told Alex that he better take an alternate route home, just in case he was being followed by anything evil and ominous. He thought of the moon Hope had taken him to in order to learn about his ánimam, and then, with the speed of thought, a porthole opened and Alex stepped through, putting light years of distance between him and that evil place.

***

Once on the moon, Alex was in the middle of the red desert clinching his eyes that burned in the intense light. It took him a few minutes to adjust his eyes that had been in the dark for so long, but once adjusted Alex looked to the box. He opened it and looked inside, and to his surprise, he found a black robe just like the Black Council members wore. He closed the box and, once he was confident that it was not sending any kind of tracking signal, he opened a porthole home and stepped through, box in hand.