Darksiders: The Seed of Knowledge

Chapter Twenty-Four

Death arrived in the Charred Council's domain, his mission a success.

Entering the NetherRealm of Purgatory had been no easy task.  Traversing it had proved even more difficult and leaving had been harder than that.  Like Eden, Purgatory didn't exist within the normal bounds of Creation.  Those two realms could not be reached through the Trees of Life and Death.  Rather, they were bound to other realms, each still counted among the cosmos by a single Gate.  Before its disappearance, Eden had been bound to the world now known as Earth.  Purgatory's Gate, however, was inside the Abyss.

In the heart of the Graveyard of Worlds was a realm that defied all logic, a world that thrived on the deaths of other worlds.  With each realm the Abyss consumed, the realm at its heart grew stronger, more plentiful with the nightmarish peculiarities that made up its vegetation and wildlife.  In this world existed things that should not exist, creatures more warped and powerful than the strongest Demon Lords.  No one knew how they thrived, though it was assumed that they were the carrion eaters of Graveyard of Worlds, the vermin that fed off the dead and festering realms.  During his travels, Death realized that the realm at the heart of the Abyss was where those creatures were born, as though manifested from the decay of worlds and the mysterious power of the Abyss itself.

The Horseman had been forced to fight many of these monsters just to reach the Gate.  But once he had, the monsters had immediately seemed insignificant, for the NetherRealm was even more peculiar than the world to which it was bound—and a vastly unexpected contrast to its counterpart.  Whereas Eden was a lush and wondrous paradise, Purgatory was the exact opposite, the entire realm a warped, unnatural wasteland without direction or time—a semi-reality that defied not only logic, but possibility.

The light from the sky was a sickly purple, as if the air were bruised, casting the realm into constant twilight.  There was neither sun nor moon to cast that light, for the sky itself was luminous, rendering impossible the measure of passing time.  The ground constantly shifted underfoot as if determined to swallow up everything.  Flatlands folded and rose across the landscape, creating wells and caverns in the likeness of throats and mouths.  Hillocks twisted, stretched and bent until their peaks pointed downward, yet gravity pulled nothing down.  In fact, gravity was meaningless here.  Death found he could walk the distortion as though nothing had changed; though trying to discern which direction was down and which was up—or even right versus left—was very disconcerting.

Across the misshapen plains, thorny vines reached out and twisted of their own accord, the eyes at the tips of their tendrils blinking out blood and pus.  Rocks and boulders sprouted legs and crawled the dirt like insects, their surfaces sporting gaping hollows lined with swollen gums and elongated teeth.  The air was foul, latent with odors that shook the soul and branded themselves in one's memory.  Barren trees twisted and extended their trunks and branches—sometimes even their roots; stretching and writhing like serpents, they moved and bent in ways that no plant ever could in any other realm.  In many instances, the ground and the plants formed faces that whispered to Death in a language so ancient and unintelligible, he couldn't understand it at all.

Death cut through the plants that tried to eat him, hacking their fanged parts with his scythes.  He somehow evaded the earth each time it attempted to swallow him, his agility and reflexes saving him.  He called upon Despair to move faster through the plains, though it was nearly impossible to gauge their speed and the distance they did cover.  He kept Dust nearby throughout, unwilling to send him ahead to scout in such foreboding, unyielding territory.  He didn't know how long he'd been fighting the realm, nor how long it would take to find his target, nor how long it would take him to leave.  In fact, he doubted the NetherRealm would even allow him to leave.