Hope's Light

Chapter 16

by Erisian

Book 6

 

If you have yet to read the saga - the tale starts here:

Into The Light

Hope you enjoy!

 

Chapter Sixteen - Grace

 

Over thirty demons and souls genuflected before me.

And I had no idea how to respond.

Lowering the marked hand, I glanced at Nick for guidance - but the magician wiping a sleeve at the mess sticking to his beard only shrugged.

Taking a step forward, I was about to say something (don’t ask me what!) when a voice coming from the back of the cavern called out over everyone’s lowered heads.

“I dinnae believe me eyes. Jordan…that you, lassie?!”

Finding the source, I smiled with relief. “Barry!”

Ignoring everyone, the burly and wide-bearded Scotsman bounded across the floor. With a happy shout mighty arms wrapped around my torso, pulling me off the ground - wings and all! - to spin us fully about while he laughed. “Is really you!”

Many gasped at his audacity, but since I hugged him fiercely in return they quieted. “Great to see you too, ya big lug!”

Gently he placed my feet back on the ground so he could again tower above, then took a step back. “Look’t all them feathers!”

I grinned up at the black-leathered warrior. “I can put them away if you want.”

“Ach, noo! They’re real pretty-like!”

From behind him a voice cracked. “Reaper Barry! We should…we should properly greet our honored guest.”

Barry chuckled. “Tha’s exactly what I were dooin’.”

As tall as the massive reaper was, the asparagus-textured praying mantis demon behind him was taller still. “Hello Tuthos,” I said. “Been awhile. You in charge of Epsilon now?”

“I am captain here, yes.”

“What’s with the welcome?” I glanced meaningfully at the crowd hanging on our every word.

Mantis forelegs rubbed rapidly against each other. “Many are they who have prayed in the belief that this would be where you would return.”

Stepping aside, Barry clapped my back between the wings with another laugh. “And they was right!”

“I see.” Noticing how the small mob wore a mix of medieval-style armor and thick winter wrappings, my outfit shifted back to the white cuirass and boots I’d worn to go yell at Nick. “In that case, Captain, may I suggest we hold a discussion somewhere more private?”

Solid grey eyes didn’t blink. Not sure if they could, actually. Do praying mantises have eyelids? “That…can be arranged. But what, what should we call you?”

“Bah,” scoffed Barry. “She’s still our Jordan. Cannae not tell?”

Tuthos looked like he was about to have a stress-induced panic attack. Wow, he really was nervous.

I gave what I hoped was a disarming smile. “Jordan, Amariel, ‘Hey You’, I’ve gotten used to a ridiculous number of names and titles.”

“Then please,” said the captain, “We invite you to our outpost, Lady Amariel. And your companion.”

“Thank you. You can call him Nick if you want.”

Barry started to snicker, but I thumped him with an elbow as I stepped past and crossed into the cavern.

As I did, a three-eyed and many-horned indigo-skinned demon near the front cried out, “Hail Amariel!”

The crowd immediately responded, their unified shout echoing across the chamber. “Hail our savior! Hail the Lady of Light!!”

They all then raised their heads awaiting my response, and the demons among them were just as transfixed as the souls.

Uh. Right.

“Thank you,” I said, raising a hand in acknowledgment. “Hail to you all. Please…rise and return to your duties. There is much I must discuss with your captain.”

That seemed to mollify them, though a few were obviously disappointed that I didn’t immediately give a speech. Or, to be more precise, a sermon.

Yikes.

Most got to their feet, clearing a path to the tunnel leading off to where my old captain, Erglyk, had held staff meetings, and we bustled our way to it. The last time I’d seen that room, the table had been tossed aside, with the maps on the walls slashed in case they covered hidden safes. The conference table, being made of dark felwood, had apparently survived - except for all the additional dents and scratches.

After we shuffled in, Tuthos waited for me to sit first so I tucked wings away and took a side chair. The outpost captain then performed a minor miracle and managed to also perch his insectoid body on a chair. Barry pulled out a seat next to mine and turned it around so he could sit backwards, resting thick forearms across its back. As for Nick, he yawned and took a seat at the end before propping feet up on the table’s surface.

A glare from me didn’t faze him about it either - he just grinned.

They all waited for me to speak first.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s start with…what’s the deal with the crowd out there?”

Tuthos’ mandibles quivered, but it was Barry who answered.

“You saved us,” the broad-muscled reaper said, merriment sliding into seriousness. “Everyone on this here lump o’ rock, every last soul ‘n demon ‘n devil, when tha darkness threatened to tear the realm apart.”

“So send me a medal or something.”

Barry shook his head. “Ye touched us, dearie. When everything we were was bein’ pulled to pieces, ye held us together in yer Light. None of us - none - can ever ferget that.”

“Beliel’s mace held it-”

“No, lass,” he interrupted. “’Twas you, with yer shining heart, what preserved us.”

Tuthos spoke up. “Our spirits, all of us, still exist because of…of you.” The mantis kept those solid eyes focused on the table. “For us demons, we…we’d never felt anything like that before.”

Barry snorted. “True for most souls too, Captain. We be a sorry lot down here.” The Scotsman looked back to me. “I had the chance to talk to the loungin’ eejit there once,” he said, pointing at Nick, “And he tried to explain somethin’ bout layers of spirit. Yer mah Jordan, mah friend, and forever a fellow reaper. But yer also a lot more. And yer love saved us when nothin’ else would…or even could.”

“Oh.” I bit a lip, heat flushing both cheeks.

Nick pulled his feet off the table. “Through you they touched the divine. And some will desperately seek another taste for the rest of their days. You know, I warned Director Goodman about that once.”

“You did?”

“Yeah. Told him you’d probably trigger your own religion. Never imagined it’d start in Hell.” To the other two, Nick then asked, “How widespread is her cult?”

Barry pondered. “Even after the Apostle’s doomed revolt, it’s still all over-like. Twitch and Madalena, that priestess of hers, tried to moderate its growth - but just as on Earth, folks splintered into camps of differin’ belief.”

I boggled at him. “You’re kidding.”

Tuthos’s mandibles shook again. “The Ducal council outlawed prayer to you. This drove everything underground, and the Apostle and his faction disappeared.”

I groaned. “They fled to Dis. What were they preaching anyway? That’d I’d come back and…and what?!”

Barry reached out to rest a calloused hand on my shoulder. “That ye’d purify demons and souls alike of our ‘orrible sins. And free us, each and every one, from Hell.”

All the warmth from earlier fled my face.

Nick looked first at the table and then around to catch the others’ attentions, his words uncharacteristically gentle. “We’ve traveled a long way. Maybe we should get some rest before talking more.”

Tuthos nodded. “That…may be a good idea.”

After a quick squeeze of the shoulder, Barry stood. “Dinner’ll be served in a wee bit.” He smiled warmly at me. “No Cookie, Ahm afraid. But it’ll still be filling-like. Come, lassie. Yer room is exactly as ye left it.”

I blinked. “It is?”

The Scotsman’s smile broadened. “Aye, none be crazy daft to touch them wards of yers!” He moved behind me to help scoot back the chair, and then politely opened the conference room door.

With thoughts still swirling wild, and a stomach pondering over how not happy it was with the mind’s churnings, I let him lead me down the blue crystal-lit corridors until we stood outside the thick double doors I’d left what seemed like a lifetime ago.

For me the doors easily opened, and my gaze immediately locked onto the hot tub excavated straight into the stone floor.

Barry, noticing what had immediately received my attention, chuckled.

“Goon, then. Get yer coorie in. I’ll fetch’n some towels.”

And he did too.

 

~o~O~o~

 

As soaks went, it wasn’t as good as I remembered.

Maybe that was due to not having any of the fancier salts I used to purchase from the Lilim at the cost of small fortunes for the smallest of bags. Maybe it was from no longer being acclimated to the strong scent of sulfur along with the other odd elements suffused into the water pulled up from below the mountain.

Or maybe the pool just wasn’t deep enough to shoulder the thoughts burdening my conscience.

Before I knew it, Barry politely-yet-firmly banged on the doors and called through them.

“Oi, lass! Dinner’ll be ready soon-like.”

“Give me a minute!”

“Just head oon to the dining hall, yeah? I gotta scrub up ‘n all.”

I shouted that I’d be there, climbing out of the tub into not-quite-freezing air which nevertheless sent quick shivers across bare skin. When I used to lurk behind these doors, I’d have needed to quickly get dry, and would hurriedly rewrap myself within the layers of cloth I’d scraped together with Twitch’s kind help and his expert sewing skills. And while Vance continuously had cajoled to get me to buy a mirror, the room didn’t have one - the last thing I had wanted was to stare at the reflection of a beautiful woman lost to heavy grief and buried confusion. Now, though, I didn’t need a mirror for a different reason - because I knew exactly how I looked, and no longer did the striking feminine form cause any mental twinges.

No, today’s internal discomforts were firmly due to the forms and patterns beyond the physical body and all they truly implied.

But being in denial wasn’t going to help anyone. With a glance at the unneeded towels, a pulse removed the excess cooling moisture from hair and skin, and a recreation of the old reaper’s whitish-beige outfit simply appeared in place - thick winter boots and all. Waves of sunrise-kissed hair much longer than I’d maintained before draped across my back, pulled from the face by tight braids starting at the temples and tied together behind the head as the rest cascaded through them.

One other difference, however, were the black and gold of Camael’s bracers set above the cloth and hidden no longer.

Armored thusly I exited and made my way to the dimly lit dining hall.

Correction: to the practically overflowing dimly lit dining hall.

Within the cavern was placed three rows of long tables and benches, where nearly double the number of spirits and souls had gathered than had met us at the entrance. Considering the most we’d ever had on hand before in the previous cycles was maybe twenty or so, this was a much higher headcount than I’d have ever expected.

The low murmur of conversation dropped instantly into absolute silence as I appeared at the doorway. Faces, all of them different, stared at me.

And all, upon coming into focus, I knew. We had never met, yet we had.

There sat Frank Jeremiah Robinson, engineer at a popular beverage bottling plant, dead at sixty from a hot dog and beer consumption ratio which had caused his cardiologist to have palpitations of her own. Now here in Hell serving as technician for the outpost’s water purification systems, as his soul lay heavy within his chest from never mustering the courage to open his heart to another person - dying alone in a barely-furnished apartment from grief after his only trusted companion, his cat Whiskers, had met her own sad end in the road out front.

At his side was Kalgisha, a blue-skinned demoness with a jaw too broad for the rest of her feather-covered head, who had upon maturity been forced into the pleasure services of her local liege. Both souls within her, the two of them sisters, glimmered softly with the sorrows of women rolled over by the march of war - used and discarded by soldiers whom they didn’t have the strength to resist even while witnessing the rape and murder of their mother. Both forever wondering if their mom could have escaped had she not been burdened by the need to continue feeding her daughters.

And across from her sat Treyvor Galpin, a man destitute from a lifetime of schemes and lies, using each and every lover for whatever they could offer, until his eventual death in a rain-soaked alley from addiction to drugs he could no longer afford. Who upon arrival to the Rock had become a serf farmer, laboring to clear poisonous fields to grow the crops needed to salve the hunger of hordes of abusive demons both here and upon other realms.

Until, that is, the day that everything changed.

The day the sky collapsed, and the ground fractured - when everything he knew of himself began to shred, piece by piece, into the forever Dark.

And just as he had sighed a final resignation, then and only then, had the Light come.

Streaking across the heavens as brightly as she had across his heart, urging him to continue, urging him to exist. For she loved even those such as him.

Especially those like him.

And she grieved terribly over their losses and sorrows, each and every one.

I stood as a statue in the doorway, fighting the urge to gather them all into my arms, to hold them close, to whisper to them that it was all going to be okay.

Except I didn’t know if it was.

I just didn’t know.

It was Nick who took my hand and led me to the table at the front, the one resting under the portrait of a ridiculously corpulent demon resting a wide and blubbery silk-covered behind more on a small couch than a throne. Guided to sit, I did so, abstractly watching as cups then were filled with water freshly decanted from the distillery. Bowls had already been laden with graxh and not-potato stew, the steamy aroma rising towards the rocky ceiling.

My cup, unlike theirs, held a deep burgundy wine.

Nothing had broken that total silence, and everyone took hold of their cups. And they all looked to me.

My god, they expected me to say something.

Barry leaned in to whisper, “They be hopin’ you’ll say grace.”

“I don’t know it.” Eyes pleaded to him to do something.

“Then pick someone, lass. Grant them the honor.”

Nodding, I gazed back out at the room, and after clearing a throat in sudden need of that wine, I called out across the hall. “Frank Robinson! By thy labor are our cups filled this day. Please speak from thine heart.”

All attention swiveled upon poor Frank. But with a nod the rather rotund man in simple grey tunic and pantaloons stood, his chair scraping loudly across the polished stone floor. Raising a cup high with nervous fingers, his balding head bowed towards me.

And he gave the benediction everyone waited for.

“It is said, that upon gathering before the feast, the warriors of the Star did squabble, and turn greed and anger one upon the other. Seeing this, She of the Light grew wroth and rebuked them with words and pain that they should forget them not. For unto their ears and their spirits did She speak, that all would hear and listen.”

He paused, as one would between verses, then continued.

“To them were these words given: ‘To eat besides one’s comrades is sacred, for these are your brothers and sisters who stand beside you upon the fields of glory and battle. Guard them always, as they guard you. Respect not such a holy bond and be found unworthy in my sight. Remember these words, my warriors, whenever you shall eat as you await my return.’”

In unison did the hall then fill with their unified shouted response:

“We fight as one! We guard each other, as She guards us - for She shall find the way! Amen!”

The cup was in my hand, and with a raised salute to Frank, I too spoke:

“Amen.”

We all drank.

And as whispers grew again to excited volumes, we lifted spoons and ate.

It may not have been one of Cookie’s wondrous stews like Barry had warned, but it held an amazingly unique and special flavor all its own.

 

~o~O~o~

 

“So lass, ye really did escape back to Earth?”

Dinner had concluded, with Tuthos ordering everyone back to work. For most of the meal those of us at the head table had remained quiet, with Barry filling awkward silences with fresh humorous tales of the random souls the reapers continued to gather - and in greater numbers than before.

Once the dining hall had cleared out, leaving the four of us alone again, the conversation had again turned serious - with Barry daring to ask just where the heck I’d been.

I nodded. “Yeah, I did. For all of what, six weeks?” My wine cup was almost empty, but I waved off Nick’s offer to refill it from the bottle on the table.

He, of course, poured more into his own cup.

“Aye,” nodded Barry. “We been trackin’ the time progression from the newcomers. And these latest batches speak of big things gooin on up top, some crazy stories.” A grin split his beard. “What’cha get up to then, eh?”

“Nothing much. I just refactored the fourth Seal is all.” I drank a last sip. Hmm. Maybe I should have let Nick refill the cup, Tuthos really had brought out a good vintage.

The thirsty magician paused his own deeper draught. “Refactored? What exactly did you do?”

“Freed the fae and other supernaturals from its binding - except for angelics and their children.”

He blanched. “Jesus. That’ll cause a right mess.”

I picked up the bottle. It was now empty. “Maybe.”

“Sure.” Nick snorted. “And ‘maybe’ their sun will rise in the East. Though with the godly lot on the loose, the betting line on the dawn will shift.”

Ignoring him, I turned to Barry. “How do I find the Lilim? Or Twitch?”

Barry and Tuthos exchanged a look of surprise. The green captain leaned forward. “You do not know?”

“Know what?”

The bearded Scotsman tilted his head in confusion - and obviously hesitant worry. “We figured ‘twas why you was here, lass. Why you came back.”

Fears mounted and then immediately rode rampant as a disquieting feeling rose with it, and with the flat of a palm I smacked the table. Hard. Enough to cause the wood to fissure. “Just tell me, dammit!!”

Tuthos recoiled in obvious terror. Barry though raised large placating hands. “Whoa, lass!”

“I’ve had a crazy-ass day,” I snapped. “So spill it!”

The mantis demon swallowed. “Perhaps it should wait until after a sleep-”

“No!” The split widened as I pressed harder.

Barry’s eyes grew with the crack. “The twins and their father - they’ve been taken to trial by the entire Ducal Court. Word arrived two sleeps ago.”

“Trial? Whatever the heck for??”

Carefully pushing his chair away from the possibly unstable table, Tuthos’ mandibles vibrated. “Violating the sacred edicts of the Sarim.”

I shot Barry a harsh glare demanding clarification.

“Aye,” he said, finally letting deep inner concern show full behind his eyes. “They been arrested for smugglin’ all them Tears of Beliel. ‘Tis a capital offense, as decreed and mandated by the lofty ‘n feathered rulers over all of Hell.”

And with that fearful worry also shone his unbridled hope:

That I’d fix this too and save our friends.

Shit.

 

 

Thanks for reading and especially for commenting!

- Erisian