The Ethereal Saga - Volume Two - The Abyss of Abaddon

Chapter Nineteen - A Desert of Ash

The walk to the henge had been silent and awkward. Tom had attempted to engage Alex in conversation but thought better than allowing the anger seething out of his friend to be directed at him. At least that way, he thought, there was no chance Alex would hit him with the heavy bag-pack he'd been carrying since it had become his turn to carry the dark orb which anchored their descent to the fire orb. So, when the time came to travel through the henge, Tom allowed Zach to be the one to take hold of Alex. He was not really sure if the physical contact was entirely necessary but supposed that the possibility another trick like that of their arrival in Midbar meant they should not travel separately. Even Alex in his silent seething anger –complete with hissing reptile- seemed to accept this.
And so they travelled once again, almost anticlimactically after their recent ordeal.
The ground beneath them felt significantly less solid than before as the colours began to settle. Alex felt his feet almost gently sinking into the ground.
"Sand," said Zach.
It was not sand, Alex thought. It was soft and fine. He reached down and found it gentle to the touch and perhaps most incriminatingly, it was a deep obsidian shade of black.
"It's not sand," he finally said.
"Then what is it?" asked Tom.
Alex looked up at the pitch-black sky, unsure of where the light source for this place even was. As he searched for signs of stars in the seemingly night sky and felt a gentle flake land on his nose.
"I think it's the sky," Alex said, "The sky is falling."
Zach sighed loudly, as if trying too hard to keep calm.
"This place," he said, "It's like nowhere else I've ever felt. Its..."
"Different," said Michael, "We are deeper than any Ethereal has ever been. Stories exist of this place. The dark desert."
"So it is sand?" asked Tom.
Zach shook his head, "Not all deserts have sand. The continent of Antarctica is the largest desert on earth in Medial's realm."
"Then what is it?" he pressed.
"It's darkness," Michael said, "The remains of millions of dark creatures are placed here. This is what's left of them."
Tom shivered slightly, "We're walking on dead remains?"
Michael shrugged, "I wouldn't pity them. They were monsters."
"At least they were honest about it," Alex said quietly.
Michael turned to his son apprehensively, "What did you just say?"
Alex hesitated, concerned of conflict.
Ophie hissed encouragement in his ear.
This needed saying, Alex decided.
"It means you killed her in cold blood," Alex accused, "She didn't need to die."
Michael reacted angrily and spoke feverishly , "Excuse me?! She was a shade, like the one who killed Linda, your mother! Or have you forgotten?"
Alex bit his lip, fighting back his anger and sought his words carefully, "I do remember. I'm surprised you do."
Michael stepped back, "And why exactly is that surprising?"
"Because all you care about is this," Alex said waving his hands about frantically.
"This, is rather important!" Michael protested, "This is what your mother died for!"
Alex pushed his father aggressively, "You think I don't know that? You think I don't know how this feels?"
"No you don't know how this feels!" His father shouted sternly, momentarily shaking Alex's constitution, "This is not an adventure, this is war! Every battle fought right there in front of my eyes. Because it is always the same, you show sympathy where your enemy shows none and you have no idea how many homes will be burnt because of your weakness. I fought Tetrax, I have scars given to me from her. No matter how right you feel, you have no idea who is going to die because of your mercy, because of your actions. How many many children will scream and die. I have seen countless lives shattered by her and her armies and blood spilled in gallons by her fangs. So how could you understand? How could you ever understand how this feels? I have done worse things than you could ever imagine and when I close my eyes, I see nothing but suffering. When I dream, I hear more screams than I could ever count! So, don't you dare tell me you know how this feels. You know but a fraction of this war."
Alex stood, eyes watering and fists clenched and shook his head, "You're right about one thing. I don't know enough about the war. Because you were never there to tell me. As far as I can see, you lost this war over a decade ago and couldn't live with yourself. You grew angry and single minded. You think you're justified, to kill a pacified enemy? You think every enemy deserves cruelty? Well, it doesn't. That was an execution. You're not superior to people who were cruel to you. You just want us to be different cruel people, and when we're done being cruel to our enemies, what then? How will there be peace? How will you ever know this war is over? When you have the homeland free, when you've killed all the bad guys and the villains, what then? Have you even thought about it? Because I'm all in to end the darkness once and for all. I'm right behind you on that, I know we're going to have to fight to get what we want, but I did not sign up to execute someone who wasn't a threat and I sure as hell did not sign up for genocide!"
Alex's chest heaved as he caught his breath.
"Alex?" said Michael.
Alex closed his eyes and sighed, "Yes Dad?"
"Where are Tom and Zach?" he asked.
They had vanished, Alex realised, during their argument. He stumbled in circles and confusion, assessing the danger.
"There's nothing here," said Michael.
"What do we do?" Alex asked.
Ophie abruptly slithered down Alex's arm and ran herself over the sandy ash. She stretched herself out and formed a perfect circle following her own tail around and around.
"What's your friend doing?" Michael asked.
"I think she's showing us," Alex remarked.
Alex stepped forward as Ophie returned herself up his body. He knelt down and brushed as much of the ash away as possible. Ophie gripped his neck tightly as realisation dawned on him too late. Alex stumbled backward as the ground shook beneath him and Ophie hummed in satisfaction as a small pothole emerged. Alex shuffled backwards as it grew wider, the ash pouring in. Once the pothole had grown to roughly the width of a well, it stopped as it had started with a small but still off-balancing rumble. Michael picked up his son and helped him back on his feet, carefully avoiding the small but hostile python hissing at him for coming close. He peered into the hole, unsure of its depth, struggling to make out any meaningful features.
He reached out his right arm and summoned a gentle white aura from his hand, illuminating the well, revealing a widening of the passage six feet down.
"Christ, Michael. We gotta talk about all these attempts to blind me!" Shouted Tom from about twelve feet down.
He looked a little shaken up and several small grazes and cuts were strewn across his arms which appeared to have taken the brunt of the fall, luckily free from any serious injuries.
"The bloody ground at us!", Tom exclaimed, "I've been trying to get my bearings but it's pitch black down here and I'm afraid to summon a flame large enough in case I set this place on fire."
"How did we miss that?" Michael wondered aloud.
"We were too busy going off at each other to notice," said Alex.
Alex sat his legs dangling into the hole, "It's a reasonable drop, if we slide down the sides here, that should limit it to about six feet."
"You guys better get down here quick," said Tom moving out of sight, "It's Zach."
Michael, without hesitation, stepped down the sides, sliding and dropping the six feet in an unceremonious heap.
Alex, not to be outdone, did the same attempting what he had hoped would be much more aesthetic landing, resulting in him falling flat on his backside, his bag-pack pushing up in to Ophie. Ophie tightened her grip around his windpipe, momentarily restricting Alex's breathing.
Jarred, but otherwise fine, he rolled on to his side and pulled himself up to his feet and gently stroked the python's head.
"Next time, I'll hold you so you don't need to be afraid," he said reassuringly.
"Hissssssss," said Ophie.
The cavern was not a natural structure, Alex realised. He watched as the hole above him closed up again and the pouring of ash halted. The walls were further apart than Alex had anticipated and dragged on in both directions as far as he could see with his fathers, admittedly impressively improvised hand-torch. The walls were the same deep obsidian black as the ground and the sky, except that they were now smoothed and glossy, as if the ashes above formed their own crypts. He shook off the last of the soreness of the fall and went over to join the others.
"Zach," Michael said, "Zach mate, can you hear me?"
Zach, who seemed barely semi-conscious failed miserably to follow Michael's finger. Tom knelt behind him holding up his head.
"I don't know what happened," he said, "It was dark and we both fell at the same time. I think he landed first and hit his head."
"We've got to get out of here," petitioned Alex, "We've got to go back and get him somewhere safe."
"No," Michael said sternly, "We can't go back."
Alex scoffed, "He's hurt!"
"And?" Michael protested, "You think the vikenes are going to let us past again? We'll just tell them we're coming through; we didn't do what you wanted but it's fine because we have to get him a band aid!"
"It's a little more than a band aid," Tom interrupted as Zach made an incoherent groggy sound.
Alex took of his bag and pulled out the dark orb and pushed it in to is fathers grasp, "Break it then. We'll be forced back out of the dark realms without an anchor."
Michael considered the proposition for barely a second before replying, "No. The greater Orbs are special. Every time they're broken and put back together, they're stronger. There's no guarantee we'd ever be able to break it again, and it wouldn't come with us. It would be left behind in the hands of our enemy. We can't risk losing it until I've taken it to the altar and gained the use of the power."
Alex struggled to disagree with the compelling argument. If they used their emergency getaway now, the quest would be over before it began. Still, he thought, there was no getting around Zach needed help.
"What other choice do we have?" Alex asked.
Michael stared at Alex silently, as if his response didn't need saying. The silence reigned over them as they breathed the stale air. Alex struggled to reply, finding words difficult to compete with his father's wicked single-minded focus. He would let Zach die to achieve his goal. He would let them all die, Alex realised.
"We go on," said Zach who tried unsuccessfully to stand up. He fell back on to Tom who caught him and held him up carefully.
"He needs rest," said Tom, "Hell, we all do. I haven't eaten or drank anything in hours."
Alex and Michael continued to hold each other's gaze.
"There's rations in the bag," Michal eventually said, compromising to the pressure, "We can rest here a while. I need to figure out how to find the henge from here anyway."
He pointed to Tom, "Gather up whatever you can and start a small fire, I can't work if I'm busy being a lightbulb."