I always wondered how it would be, but I never thought that I would feel so alive dying.

-Unknown poet, late 1990’s-

Sitting here I realize how many things of the present I never will remember. Things I experience that will be lost forever, to me and everyone else, maybe be processed in my dreams as twisted things I cannot recall ever having thought or felt, maybe feeling some kind of dejavu as I wake up and remember the remnants that for a few seconds linger in my subconscious, then fades away. Never to be thought of again. I wonder how many dreams I’ve lost. A thousand, more? I cannot tell. But then again, isn’t every second a loss?

Some might say he was a genius, some might say he was as crazy as anyone might be. Living in his world of sense was for him as real as it might be for any man.

1. WANDERING.

 

 

shmael turned the focus of his Canon camera to catch the dim light of the morning as it faded into the day and gently pressed the button. It would be a great picture, he felt it as much as he felt alive at the moment he took it.

Brushing his hair aside from his face he rolled the film back and took it out of the camera, putting it in the little black plastic container it came in and put it in his pocket. His work for the day was over as the day begun. He had been a night person most of his life after having moved away from his parents, sleeping through the days and getting up as the night crawled into his world. It wasn’t that he liked the night more than the day. But the night had become his friend somehow. All those nights in tears or joy had become like something he could rely on. Mostly because it hid him from being seen or heard. It let him be himself for a while alone. Although he dreamed of nothing else relationships had never work very well for his part. Of course he could be real sweet and a gentleman but he never felt good around someone. He became a burden as people got to know him. He could have die many times, but there always someone there to save him somehow. Maybe that was no coincidence. Just because he wanted to die and let go of every responsibility life produced, did not necessarily mean he did not love life above every other thing. For so he did. But at the same time he wanted others to care he hoped they would stay away and not get hurt by his egoism and self pity. Even though it made him the artistic person he was. His pictures didn’t sell, his work was never even taken in by the critics that judged artistic value in money and popularity, and not in the agony and pain it had been created. Ishmael reluctantly got into his rusty old Ford and turned the ignition while he with one hand put a cigarette from his Marlboro hard pack to his lips. It had started as a way of numbing the pain some, the kick that he got slowed his thinking somewhat, enough to make him feel good for a minute or two. Liquor was also one of those ways to numb everything. But it had become a little too much of that lately hadn’t it? Well, he thought as the car drove out of the parking lot, something we have to worry about later, isn’t it? The drive to his apartment wasn’t long. He stopped by a red light only once which he thought of as a good thing. He hated stopping up, just as if it made him miss some of his time ahead, time he could use for something else, he never realized that there were always things he missed.

Ten minutes later he pulled into the sub level garage and parked his car neatly in his lot. Not long after he had stepped out of the car another cigarette was lit in his mouth, the smoke stinging in his eyes as he walked into it.

He walked over to the elevator more by routine than by thought and pressed the small white button with the text "here" over it which normally would have illuminated it if the small lamp inside had broken. Waiting for the elevator to come all the way down from whatever floor it had stood at he yawned, he was tired. But somehow he would manage to lock himself in, in his dark room and process his pictures. Some thought of him as patient. Waiting for hours out in the cold of the night for the moon to cast the right shadows he wanted in his pictures. But when he was close to finishing it sleep could hardly stop him. He had become used to the lack of sleep he was reminded of every time he looked at himself in a mirror. Black coffee with lots of milk and sugar and a lot of nicotine would keep him awake. Maybe something unhealthy to eat if he got the time and if there was something in his refrigerator. There usually wasn’t. There was the sound of the elevator closing in and the light from the window as it stopped in at his floor. The door opened before he had reached the handle and a man passed by him murmuring a sleep drunken hi. Ishmael only nodded for a reply and put out the cigarette before going into the elevator.

Pushing the button for the fourth floor the elevator jerked and sped upwards. The elevator smelled of piss and beer, probably some drunkard again, he thought. Disgusting. Thirty long seconds later the elevator stopped and Ishmael got out slowly, his hand already searching his coat pockets for his keys that had a lot of more things on them to be comfortable in his jeans. Pulling them out he walked up to the second door on the right and pressed the key into the hole where it, of course, fitted perfectly. He stepped in and immediately took of his coat after putting his camera bag on the already with clothes covered stool. There was some mail by the door and after locking the door behind him he picked it up. While looking them through he started walking into the kitchen.

Bills, bills, bills, commercials, bills, what’s this? The boring yellow envelope was thick and bigger than all the others, his address was written on the front with scrawny ink letters, hardly readable. Carelessly he threw the bills on the bar disk in his rather small and somewhat empty looking kitchen and took out an old kitchen knife and opened it, curious of what could be inside. From the envelope he produced a small letter, folded from a single lined a4 sized page he judged with his eyes. He put it aside and stared with interest on the book in his hand. It felt light even though it had a hard leather inbound and silver frames on it. The front telling him nothing of it’s title or content. He turned it over in his one hand studying the book intently while his other reached for his pack of Marlboro’s not there in his pants. He lifted his eyes and came across another pack laying on the disk in front of him. He shock it and produced a smoke to his lips. At least the lighter was still in his pocket. It produced a nice clicking sound as he opened the lid and a zip as he set it aflame on the first try. Gently he put the book down and fished up the letter and unfolded it.

Dear friend.

I present this book as a gift to you for your eagerness.

Ishmael put the letter back and lifted his eyebrows. He knew a great deal of people, but no writers. And the book seemed old and worn from use. He had no real friends, did he?

He stepped away from the desk and opened his fridge, fishing out a bottle of Jack Daniel’s bourbon. Pouring a small glass to full for the drinking to be for the taste. Taking the book with him he walked into the living room, thriftily furnished just like the rest of the apartment and sat down in the comfy couch. Somewhat solemnly he opened the first page of the book and searched for something that would still his curiosity. He turned another page and looked again, another page. In one pull he emptied the glass of bourbon and put the book down and went for the kitchen to refill it, this time taking the bottle with him and setting it on the table in front of him.

The picked up the book again and turned another page before finding anything at all. This time he only zipped the bourbon. He patted his breast pocket as he started reading, searching for a cigarette that wasn’t there.

"Shit", putting the book down again he ran to the kitchen where the last cigarette still lay burning in the ashtray.

He picked it up and made sure to put the pack in his breast pocket where they should have been all the time.

Sitting down again he tapped the smoke to the edge of the ashtray on the worn smoked glass table in front of him and reassumed his reading. At first he was somehow shocked at the intricate patterns of what could be letters in some old handwriting, they were so beautiful that his eyes were drawn to every line and every curve, at first they said nothing, their mere beauty held him enchanted. But as he listened the letters sang to him, stronger and stronger. The poetry in which the text was written was the most sad he had ever heard. For he did not read, he did not have to, it sang to him, to him. His hands were trembling, tears streaked from his eyes, blurring his vision, the pages seemed to turn by themselves. He did not even have to understand, just let the tones sing. Whatever the book said, the letters did not lie. Pure truth sang in his ears. He felt blood pound through his veins, his heart in it’s so obvious rhythm, his thoughts. It was all so, sad. It was the price of course.

The last page turned over and the song slowly faded in his ears. It could not be, NO!

He tried turning to the first page in desperation, but the song was gone, and the pages crumbled to dust in his hands. NO! The tears just would not stop. He dropped the book as he tried wiping the tears almost blinding him and the hard leather back withered away before his hands reach down, just in time to stir the ash around on the cheap carpet.

"NO, it can’t be" he screamed at the top of his lungs. "NO!". He was crawling on the floor now. Clawing with his fingers to collect all the dust that had seeped into the carpet, his tears dripped down to mix with what had once been the book. Finally he rolled over, almost surprised to find himself laying on the carpet, his legs drawn up and his arms trying to protect his body that felt so frail. "NO". The bottle of bourbon had somehow tipped over in the commotion and the tea colored liquid was now running over the table and down on the carpet beside him.

As if it was the only thing to do he lashed out an arm and took a firm hold of the neck of the bottle and with a trembling hand not caring that the strong liquid splashed in his face and seared in his eyes, put it into his mouth.

It had to help. The light of the room seemed to have faded into a gloom as he realized the bottle was empty. He dropped it carelessly on the carpet and tried to hold on to the only firm piece of reality there was right now.

Himself.

 

"No, NO!" He just could not stop himself from repeating the word. It could not be.

He tried to rise, but his legs failed him and in the fall he smashed his hand through the glass table, the fragile surface exploding into thousands of small spiky shards, all falling to the floor making the carpet look like it were encrusted with uncut diamonds. His fingers clawed at his breast pocket for a cigarette and it took three attempts before he managed to rip the pocket open and an even longer time before he managed to tear the package open and find one that had not been broken or crushed in his fingers. The lighter, the lighter.

The flame suddenly danced before his eyes, he pulled in hard, seeing the ember light of the cigarette to the dark background through the flame. He closed the lid and pulled hard, feeling the smoke burn his lungs and throat. The pain was so good. So real. Through the haze of the tears in his eyes he saw his hand stain the paper of the cigarette red with blood. He did not care at all. He felt the warm blood run over his hand and wrist and the throbbing pain so, great. His long hair hanging over his face was curled up and burnt away every time it came close to his cigarette. "But it’s so real". He said sadly to himself. "NO".

The cigarette was suddenly burnt into the filter and the foul taste of bunt plastic lingered in his mouth as the cigarette went out. In desperation he searched through the broken bits by the broken hard pack of Marlboros and set the first one not dampened by the liquor to his lips. This time he brushed the hair out of his face before the lighter flashed once, twice before he could pull more smoke into himself. The alcohol was starting to take effect on his brain, steadying his movement and clouding his brain and thoughts. Pulling in more smoke Ishmael lay studying how the light reflected through the many bits of glass on the now dark blue, almost black carpet. The liquor burning in the cuts on his hand. He longed for that feeling. The feeling of just being alive. So he pressed his hand to the soaked carpet. Bits of glass pressed into his palm, causing him to give out a cry in, euphoria.

Again he tried to stand, and this time, with support of the couch he stood. His legs were still trembling. And panting he stood. He took another pull of his cigarette, realizing it too had burned out. He threw it away in anger.

On legs that nearly did not support him he walked over the living room, his eyes fixed through the haze on the bathroom door. His hands reached the door handle and threw the door open. Holding his hands out he crashed into the bathroom cabinet, the mirror disintegrating by sudden pressure. His bleeding hands searched the shelves for bottles of pills. Pills to numb his grief. He opened the first one and found at least twenty small capsules of some sort, he could not remember what they were, and throwing himself around he crashed into the door post and continued out into the living room, passed the couch and into the kitchen where he opened the first cupboard, his hand gripping the neck of a bottle of Smirnoff vodka. He placed it on the disk and poured the pills into his hand, almost throwing them into his mouth. He swallowed as many as he could and poured the rest down with a couple of pulls of vodka. It would be over soon he reassured himself. He tried to put the bottle down on the bench but missed it by more than half the bottle and it toppled over and smashed to the linoleum floor. Not caring he staggered over to the hall, throwing his coat over his shoulder while trying to open the door. It took four tries before he realized that it was locked. He staggered into the corridor outside, he wanted to grab somebody and tell them. Ask them if it could be true. "It could not be" he shouted into the corridor.

"You fools", he grinned and laughed at them. Fools.

As he started walking towards the elevator his step became more and more secure. He pressed the elevator button and saw with a smile on his face as it turned red by his blood. It could not be.

He carefully studied his hands. The many shards of glass now colored red as rubies. He laughed. He knew.

The elevator stopped. He giggled somewhat at himself for taking the elevator. It came from old habit. He did not have to anymore. He opened the door and stepped in, pressed the button and the door slowly shut behind him, he looked at it close through the mirror before him. How ridiculous it look as the door was slowed down the last few inches before it closed properly. How meaningless. Suddenly the feeling of being watched crawled upon him. The mirror fell apart with a crash to his fist. He saw his own face, his eyes watching him as he disappeared in shards. He smiled as the feeling left him. The elevator stopped. He turned around. The woman in front of him opening the door did not see him at first, but before her foot had even touched the floor of the elevator she stopped, staring with frightened eyes upon him.

"You fools, didn’t you hear it? So sweet." The woman withdrew her foot and let the door slide shut. As Ishmael realized she was running he launched himself at the door but it was too late. The door clicked shut and he bounced off it, the hinges still creaking out of the force even as he landed. Slowly he rose once more. He tried using his left hand to look for a cigarette in his coat pockets to calm himself with, but as it did not react properly he saw that it hung limp, twisted in an impossible angle. He threw his right hand inside it’s pocket and fished out the hard pack laying there. The elevator stopped once again. He stared out the little window on the door and could see out into the dark of night. It couldn’t still be night, he reasoned with himself. It had been dawning as he had come home. But them he laughed at his futile attempts to figure it out. Why couldn’t it?

He pushed the door open and stepped out into the main entry hall. It was empty but for the pathetic little urns of plastic flowers someone had tried to decorate it with. And the fake marble pillars holding the roof up. Pathetic.

He almost ran to reach the doors, and they smashed open as he crashed out into the night. There, someone walking on the other side of the street. He started running. His pulse was pounding in his ears, hard and long apart.

He stumbled several times on things he had no time to figure out what they were. He had so little time, and so much to tell, I have to run.

"Wait" He shouted at the lonely shape that walked slowly on the other side of the street not fifty meters away. His, no it was a her, her head turned, and as his feet for the first time hit the asphalt of the road he did not understand why her face was so frightened, her mouth opened as if to scream but the words never reached his ears. He could see the lights in the corner of his eye and turned his head just in time to see the tunnel open itself into another dimension. His body crashed into something hard coming from the side. He could feel bones snapping within him. Then he was whirling through the air, the light flashing in his eyes like a strobe. He landed on the hard ground and skidded over the ground for what must have been minutes before he smashed into something else and stopped. He tried moving but his bones were crushed inside him. Blood filled his vision, giving the lights, there was two lights, a morbid look. It can’t be. Time stood still. Or had it ever moved? The thoughts were slowing down. What is happening? The answers flooded his mind. NO. It all floated together even though he understood what they said. NOOOOOO! He could not moved his jaw. Someone knelt by his side. Touching him. He could see her high heeled shoes through the red haze. He could hear words but they blended in with everything else. He wanted to reach out and grab her, tell her. Ask. She was patting his cheek reassuringly. Did she understand? He saw her swift her feet from the black liquid running in to form a reflecting pool in front of him. He tried moving his arm to acknowledge her comfort, to grab her and telling her, sing to her. How sweet it had been. He saw flashing lights, another car. A car? Had he been hit by a car? NO! I must tell them! His body felt like it was running away from him, his commands. Then he realized that it was part of something else. Something less. Not him. It didn’t know. Someone else was touching his body now, he could not feel it but he was somehow aware. He was moved somehow. The world moved. Was he still alive? Then it blackened. He felt he was moved again. It was all a world of other sensations now. Nothing was like before, he could not feel it, not touch. But he could sense it. And he waited.

 

 

 

 

 

 

2. THE AWAKENING.

ime passed by as if in a twilight zone where it seemed to have no real boundaries, no ways of referring to what real time passed. What real time? Another mistake. The answers flushed away all other things in the instant the last words had formed in his mind. He wanted to move his hands to protect his ears, to shut the answers out of his mind. But they sang to him anyhow. Somehow wearing on his consciousness.

He heard sounds around him in the darkness, or rather sensed them. They felt like they were unreal or far off in the distant, but still readable. He was moved once more. Carried. His body. No. The body, in a twisted angle, he was aware of the broken bones in his body grinding against each other and on several places the skin was pierced by bloody and yellow-white bones. This cannot be! Where am I? He tried to cry at what came at him in his unknown state, they were true answers, still they flowed into him in quantities that were ungraspable. Every piece of truth ran away or transformed into something different for every thousand of a second that passed. No tears ran from his eyes though. Suddenly he was laying still. And he waited, waited for something to happen. It was cold, and he could somehow feel the clinical light outside the darkness somewhere. He just did not understand. But he kept himself from forming questions in his mind. It hurt too much. He waited for minutes, for hours, for days, what felt like weeks. All his senses were so clean and untroubled. As long as he asked no questions.

But as someone touched into the darkness around him he felt for the first time fear. Not for his life, he had no life anymore to care about. He knew. But for the unknown? No. For what he did not want to know. The answers. Light suddenly spread into the darkness and his awareness told him he was examined somehow. He could not see properly, his eyes were filled with coagulated blood and had lost their edge. He was staring into some strong light from above, he was laying on his back, his hip twisted in a very unnatural way. He was cold and stiff, the one that was in the room with him had to twist his every joint with force to make them move.

"Case No. 23455. White male, aged 28, his name was Ishmael Matthews. He measures 183 cm and weights approximately 160 pounds, hair color black, probably through some kind of chemical dying. Probable cause of death: massive internal bleeding and brain damage. Time of death was recorded to be 2312 on the 4^th of April."

I’m dead? NO, stop! And it stopped. He felt something pierce his skin somewhere and seconds later how something cut in his stomach. It’s so unreal. The person Ishmael could not really see worked with him for not more than a half and hour, all the time talking in medical terms about what must have been his body, before moving him somewhere. All was dark again. And even colder. Have to get out. Have to. Somehow he felt his body twitch in some sort of convulsions. It hurt him. No. Not him, the body. He felt bones move, felt arteries and veins tighten and the thin treads of nerves that had been severed linked back again, controlling the movement of his muscles, muscles that had snapped straight off grew faster and faster in strength until they all had corrected the displacement of every bone and organ in his body. His fingers moved, was it his fing… NO! No questions!

Blood drew back from the eyes and disappeared in his body. The joints creaked as he tried moving and slowly he was aware of his… the body. His hands touched the cold surface of the metallic roof inches above him. Where was he? No. Stop. He was in control. His hands pushed at the roof and as he did so the hard bed he was laying on slid down. He pushed the wall nearest his head and he slid out of the little and dark hole in which he had been lying as if in a big archive cupboard. His feet reached the cold concrete floor that was leaning somewhat towards the drainage in the middle to make the job of washing it a lot easier. Several shelves were filled with naked bodies wrapped in black body bags or transparent plastics. The room was cold and dark, the only light in the room a frosted low energy light bulb sitting in the opposite corner.

He took one step forward and to his surprise his legs and the bones of his body held him upright without any strain. There was only one door leading out of the room, a large double door with frosted windows covering the most part of the upper half of them both. He pushed them open with ease and they hit the walls of the corridor he had come into. Tubes of fluorescent lights flashed a couple of times before giving away that irritating yellow light only tubes could. One of them were still flickering down the corridor he noticed as he strode on with determined steps. The walls and floor had the look that could have been taken from any bad hospital series with it’s white walls and red brown plastic feeling floor. Small particles of dirt and dust collected beneath the soles of his feet as he walked. There were three doors in the corridor. The signs over the doors he ignored with disgust. He knew where he was going. He kicked the door straight ahead open and came into a hallway with the elevator he was looking for. He pressed the button and had only to wait for what felt like a second or two before the massive looking stainless steel doors slid aside and revealed the inside of the clean elevator. As he stepped inside he noticed the smell of some strong cleaning chemical that were used by the caretakers to keep the hospital sanitized. He read the list of the floors faster than his eyes could move over the board. He knew. He pressed the button and the elevator doors slid shut. And the second later he was moving up towards the ground level.

 

 

 

As the elevator slowly slid upwards Ishmael noticed himself in the mirror covering the one wall to his right.

His black hair was worn and unwashed, so was the skin of his upper body. And for the first time he realized he was naked. Ishmael turned his head away. That body. His b… No! The body was worn and tired. But he felt like being more fresh than ever. The body was nothing of his concern. The chemical processes in the brain had ceased, just like it’s heart had stopped beating. But it was just his avatar anyway, his medium to alter the real, how pathetic name for it, world. The elevator stopped and the lights crashed in from the crack that first opened to the side where the doors slid open. There was a gasp and a crash as a shocked middle aged nurse in her white dress dropped a tray of small plastic cups, probably medicine, onto the floor and clutched her small hands to her pale face. Ishmael gave the nurse no more attention than he would have given a stone. He walked to the right and passed no more than inches from her and all she could do was take deep breaths and try to calm herself. He was aware of her shock, he could feel it radiate from her body. The pictures in her head of her husband and her.. NO.

He shut the thoughts out. Just like he had with the answers. He heard her running away in the other direction shouting. A patient, a man not older than himself came out of another elevator and stopped dead in his tracks as Ishmael passed by him not a meter away. Ishmael had to concentrate to set the measuring and judging of details aside from his thoughts. Everything was so clear. Everything he saw was so clear and, he just found it all so easy to understand. The smells, the sounds, so clear. It was all so clear that he did not even notice how he passed corridor after corridor, how people stared at him in fear, shock and whatever feeling welled up inside them. He remembered how his arm, the body’s arm had flung out and stopped some kind of security guard trying to stop him. It was all so clear. He could do nothing but listen to the song in his head slowly fading into a full symphony. Pictures came to his mind, pictures of what could be nothing but unreal dreams, his long black hair was clean and lay smoothly over his shoulders that were covered with the clothes black as the raven night. As he walked down the corridor his high boots kicked the inside of his long coat and the hand fished up a cigarette from the inner pocket while the other produced a lighter gleaming of cold steel. As his steps took him into the main entrance of the hospital he smiled at himself. I’m alive. The outside was cold and humid, he could feel the air filling his lungs even though they were of little use to him now, and stars glittered far away in the sky, he could feel their warmth inside him. Cars were gliding back and forth on the still crowded streets outside. He could feel every movement, every thought, every change. He stopped there for a while, looking at their pathetic search or whatever they called it. The meaning. HA! He knew. He headed away and shut the feelings out. He could not stand the thoughts of fools. He felt like screaming at them, to tell them. But they would have questions he realized. Questions for which the answer would mean nothing to them. Questions he once had wanted to ask. He walked the streets slowly, his eyes looking at people wandering the earth seemingly without aim. A boy and a girl walking hand in hand from a movie theatre, if the boy only knew… So cold. Finally he could not stand it any more. He turned and found himself walking down the alley of a multi story building where the smell of cat piss and decay was somewhat overwhelming. Ruble lay scattered all over the place and something, a dog, moved among some over turned trashcans looking for food. He could feel the disgust as it bit through the skin of a rat that someone had thrown in there as it had died. Small bones snapped and cracked as the dog chewed merrily.

Ishmael was just about to pass the dog, his eyes on a broken street light on the other side of the alley when a feeling of presence came over him. Time seemed to twist and whirl around him, and the light coming from the street lamp faded into a dull gloom. He was aware of the dog putting his tail between his legs and scurrying out of the alley, it’s simple mind screaming of terror. Ishmael spun around several times, his eyes scanning the ground and rooftops all the same. He’d thought he would know, but, he didn’t. Then suddenly there he stood in the gloom of the streetlight. He was a tall man, all dressed in dark clothes and with a pale skin that looked taken from a two day old corps. Nothing about him moved as he at first stood at the end of the alley. The presence radiated from him like he was in a small sphere with dulled edges, but the core, his body almost glowed from it.

"I see you wanderer" he said, his voice echoing between the walls of the alleyway. Ishmael thought for a while he saw the man’s eyes glitter through the shadows.

"I see you" he replied in what came out as a uncertain voice although he made his best to sound confident.

"You wander in your body sleepless one, don’t you know of the hazards that come with body? No of course you don’t." The man shifted, his body flowing to it’s new position as if in liquid or gas form. Ishmael looked uncertainly at the man. And only shock his head in reply. Ishmael thought the man would take a step forward when he changed from straightforward to a more defensive curled up stance. And was gone from vision. It took no more than a couple of seconds before Ishmael reacted to what the man also must have felt. He could not make out at first if he felt or smelled the staleness in the air. But it was not physical, rather some sort of unreal sensation of coldness and… hate. At first he thought another dog entered the alley from where the other man had entered, but the second later he realized it’s size could easily equal that of a grizzly bear in the zoo. But it’s limbs and joints where bulky and sharp as it strayed, almost glided forward like a predator ready to kill. And the pits where the eyes would have been almost shone with hate together with the massive set of needle sharp teeth. It’s yellow claws scraped at the ground as it slowly moved forward at him, letting out a growl of disdain and contempt aimed at him. Ishmael felt joints and muscles tense and if he’d had a beating heart it would have been beating at it’s maximum. There was short moment of stillness before the great creature flung itself at him, it’s claws and teeth bared, ready to rip through whatever came within it’s reached. Ishmael flung himself to the right where the wall was close and to his surprise at the opening in the wall through which he fell. There was a crashing sound from outside as the beast landed among the trashcans there turning them over, rolling them around. The wall slid shut behind him and he was soon at his feet, running away from the wall. He had not taken more than a few steps before the wall seemed to cave in and bricks and plaster rained over him, whipping his head around he saw the beast getting to it’s feet shaking it’s body to get rid of the dust that covered his furs before continuing the pursue. The warehouse he had fled into was empty but for some debris gathered in a pile in the center of the floor. The roof was supported by numerous pillars of gray and withering concrete with yellow painted numbers on them. Here and there rusted wire fences stood dividing the high roofed floor into sections. He could hear the paws of the beast tap the ground as it came spurting behind him, getting closer. Ishmael hardly noticed the mat black automatic coming into his hand. But as he found himself cornered by three walls of wire fence he spun around, the gun sights aligning fast and landing on the attacking beast’s head. Ishmael pulled the trigger, the gun kicking back in his hand several times and the bullets stopped the beast in his tracks, it hesitated only for a second, taking several lead bullets in it’s head and body. But as the gun suddenly went silent at the pull of the trigger it regained it’s strength and was just about to leap forward when the flash of metal stopped it. The sword that cut into the beast made it whine, trying to run away but the blade cut again. Ripping the left of the beast’s hind legs off. The man handling the sword were the one from the alley, and still he seemed to float around as he moved, only the massive sword in his hands seeming to reflect any of the dull light that hung over the hall even though there was no visible source. The sword struck again and this time it hit the beast over the neck and it slumped down slowly, dark red blood, darker than any Ishmael had seen before slowly poured out of the deep cuts it had obtained. The second later it was all over.

 

 

 

3. A DIFFERENT MEETING.

ven though the low light of the hall the face and features of the strange man faded into visibility as if from a dark fog. He was not old, maybe a couple of years older than Ishmael himself with dark brown hair and high cheek bones. His green eyes glittered remarkably as he stepped to stand in front of him, the sword suddenly gone from his pale hands.

"You have much to learn yet wanderer, I am Matteus Havelock. What is yours?" You could see the man’s face twist somewhat as he asked but he soon regained control and frowned. "A little drawback of our power eh!"

"Ishmael Matthews"

"It is nice to meet you Ishmael, but we better get out of here before the Hounds return, there are mostly more than one around. They are filthy dogs, hunting in packs." Fading back to the liquidated form in which they had first met Matteus turned around and started walking.

"Follow me, I know where we’ll be safe" he muttered, "safe for now anyway." Ishmael stared at the back of his new found friend and noticed how the gun was out of his hand, he gave the dog a disgusted stare as he walked by, somehow he new that he would always find his gun in his left armpit.

Ishmael wondered for a few seconds what had really happened as they had come out of the building, the world had spun, forming into a tunnel ahead of them, it had been as firm as any real thing he had ever touched and he wondered how far it had carried them. Where the tunnel ended seemingly abruptly it was still night, but the scenery had changed somewhat. The building they stood by was also some sort of warehouse, only it was smaller and only two stories high. There was no obvious entrance or gate except the many small windows covered with crossed bars and what could have been mosquito net. It didn’t matter. Because as Matteus glided forward over the stony ground, a large section of the wall seemed to open up in front of them and they went in. Ishmael watched with wonder and thought if that had been what be had done back in the alley. The answers stabbed him like a needle in his head. He made it stop in the dead of a heartbeat. If he could only have that familiar sound back. The one of his heart beating.

 

 

Ishmael watched Matteus stop and wait while the opening shut behind them. And somehow he remembered how he had done, or rather how to do it if he had too. Just like the gun.

"Welcome to my home Ishmael." Matteus turned and regained his mortal, if it could be called mortal, body. Those green eyes spoke of age and wisdom, and they pierced deep as if all the way into his thoughts.

"It is not often you find a wanderer that does not attack you at sight, well then again, it is not often you find a wanderer at all."

"A wanderer. Is that what I… We are?" he shut the answers out, he did not really have to ask at all.

"Yes. That is what we are called anyway. We are not part of any world you see. The living is not of our concern but for those fools that let themselves be thought of as mortals. They know and want to let others do too, they just cannot learn there are those that cannot understand, they don’t see that their mortal bodies are not good enough to be used for teaching. There are those who have tried, with more or less success. But there are also those who have tried to make their lasting more worthwhile, I thought you were one of those before I saw you run from the hounds and try to kill one of them. I thought you had led me into a trap. I should have known. But I am slowly growing weary. So we all do. We are nothing but a loss. We are not allowed to live with our knowledge, and we are not allowed to die with it either. Instead we are trapped here in the night. Wandering as if lost until we perish. It is the price. I realize now that I never wanted to know. Not wanted all the answers. I lived only for a short while knowing. It cannot be meant for the living." His eyes looked sad now instead of hard and piercing. If he had been able he probably would have cried.

"But you know this already. I just don’t want you to find it all out the hard way like I did. Anyway, you have to see this." His steps were of a person very familiar to the place he was walking. There were debris and bits of the concrete roof that had fallen down, but his feet avoided them all with ritual precision. He headed with determination towards a staircase built out of perforated metal plates that Ishmael thought for a second as Matteus first step hit it would creak and crumble, but somehow it held, and neither did it fall apart at his weight. The top floor was at first sight almost as dirty and untended as the first. But as Ishmael’s eyes examined what had been and what still seemed to be a machine hall everything changed in his eyes. The machines were linked with all sorts of tubes and pipes, and they glistened with the oil they were almost drowned in. There was no sense to how everything was built and put together. But somehow it was all so obvious. So beautiful.

"This, my friend. Is life." Matteus turned with something of a smile to his lips. "It does not know, it does not really feel. It is pure life as it should be, no strife, no pain. Only parts working in harmony and pulse. It has taken me so many years just to build it." He caressed the oily surface of one of the linked machines with what could be thought of as true love. "But before that, it took centuries of thinking to realize it should be so simple, beautiful."

Ishmael thought for a second to ask what it was, what it did, but somewhere deep inside he knew. And he appreciated it’s beauty just as he had appreciated a good picture. So simple. But intricate at the same time.

"But I’m afraid it does not work, not yet. It craves something, something that I will never be able to give." This time he looked and radiated of true sadness.

"What is it?" Ishmael could not wait for the answer flood him, but as he awaited a massive overflow of information, he felt nothing. He turned to the machine, then he looked at Matteus, stunned over what had not happened.

"I don’t know, I thought that if I built it I would know, but it just isn’t there. It has all it needs, but something is still lacking." Matteus shock his head as if to get rid of his worries.

"Anyway this is my home, I spend my days here trying to get her to work when I’m not out searching. I know it is foolish. But we all seem to have something more to look for All those I’ve talked to, both living and wanderers all have had something unfinished. Something that haunt them until the day they leave. You see, one does not die from here, no, it is more of a leaving. No one knows where they go, weather they are killed by the hounds or just fades away. I’ve seen it all happen more than I feel good about, but I still do not know."

"What are the hounds really?" NO! Ishmael shook the feeling of disgust and filth he had felt when he had encountered the hound in that alley.

"Oh, the hounds. Well, some say they are descendants of those creatures that fell with the dark angel himself once, around the time when I was born. It has all become a twisted story in the hands of men. It was during those ages when we, the wanderers, entered the real world and spoke to those who could understand, or tried to anyway. They failed in a way. The words they spoke was twisted and interpreted and after years they had become something else. The dark one hunted knowledge, he wanted more, more than he ever could be allowed to have. But he tried in his own hideous ways. It ended with all the wanderers gathering against him, well, not all. Some joined him and helped him create the hounds before they were slain. Many perished in the battles. Only a few of us survived and now days the hounds hunt and kill those who come here into the afterlife. The hounds do not need flesh as yours to hunt you, it only makes it easier for them. But some still keep on to their selves as if it was something precious." Matteus shrugged as he looked upon Ishmael’s true body. "You can leave it any time you know. You don’t have to wear it here."

 

"And there are more things you have to learn to stay alive. There are not many here to teach you that anymore. You were lucky to run into me and no one else. Be wary of wanderers Ishmael. They can cut your throat when you least think it. You see, when you kill someone, you gain their knowledge, and the only way of not fading in this world is too keep the knowledge, some believe that if you become the one, you will be able to live as you want, control all things. That is what the dark one thought. That he would become god of all things. One might think that knowledge would bring forth a better man, something more and higher. But it is all about power and control. Just like in the mortal world. Knowledge is all for nothing." Matteus spoke as he wandered further into the hall, out among the machines and pipes. "You can stay here as long as you want. I will teach you anything I possibly can, as long as you are willing to learn, even though you have knowledge, you don’t know it all, no. The answers you have as we all do is much too intricate and hard to grasp due to the loss we suffer at our deaths, or the passing as we have come to call it, into this world of our own. There is always a loss. No matter how it is done. But we all forget different things, and by learning from each other we prevail longer."

Matteus wandered away among the machines in silence.

Ishmael never realized how much time passed in the hall as Matteus called it. The night, he learned, was endless in his new world and covered the even the real world outside whenever they came close to it. And now and then Ishmael learned how to use the advantages of being a wanderer. He learned how to bend and manipulate time as it was, and Ishmael laughed along with Matteus as he found it so easy, time was no intricate patterns or complex weaves of events. It was there and could be used. The trick was putting yourself outside the reference in which you existed. He learned to manipulate mass to objects of use, they regained their origin as soon as you stopped concentrating but could be transformed again after will, weight and size was no limit either. He learned to create, to produce forward objects that had never been. It was easy as long as you knew what it was and how it was supposed to work. Like with the gun that came to him when he wanted it to be there. Need and desperation seemed to help in that process. But the most terrifying thing for Ishmael to learn was leaving his body. Some wanderers living in their bodies forever, others discarded them and let them decay like they should have. Of course there were advantages and disadvantages with flesh. You could more easily wander into the real world, but it made it harder to manipulate and control. And you were stuck with some material limits. The laws, the ones nature had put up as rules from creation was harder to set aside when materialized.

Ishmael thought he would never leave his body for long, he felt naked and vulnerable without it. It was something real to cling to.

Ishmael spent what could have been days and years alike in the halls with Matteus. Ishmael helped Matteus with tending his machines while he was gone and in exchange Matteus taught him whatever Ishmael wondered about.

And time passed.

One night when Ishmael was left alone in the hall, sitting by one of the main engines smoking a cigarette and wondering what could be improved for more efficiency Matteus came back as usual through the eastern wall.

He carried a large bundle in his arms, that was how he usually came back, and one of the few reasons he left.

"I found an axle for the transformer. It’s in bad shape but I bet we could fix it up." Matteus sounded exited as usual when returning from his scavenging expeditions. Ishmael stumped out his cigarette and walked over to Matteus standing with the bundle in his arms like a baby.

"SO YOU HAVE FOUND ANOTHER ONE TO BETRAY AND KILL, JUDAS", the voice seemed to come from nowhere and almost screamed in their ears. Matteus whirled around dropping the bundle on the floor, the metal parts crashing to the ground, and immediately the sword was in his strong hands, ready to face any challenge.

It was then Ishmael saw him. On a small platform near the roof where the controls for the machine were sat a short man, his face as white as marble and his body draped in crimson silk. A crown was on his head, made out of some sort of thorn since blood trickled slowly down his face from where they rubbed at his skin.

Ishmael was vaguely aware of the gun in his hand and his finger letting go of the safety.

Matteus relaxed somewhat as he saw the man sitting on the edge of the platform not twenty yards away and four or so up. Ishmael felt his presence radiating hate and disgust for either one or both of the others.

"Am I the one you have come to pass on this time, Lucifer. Or whatever name you go under now days."

The man just leaned back his head and laughed.

"YOU KNOW MY NAME JUDAS. IT WILL ALWAYS BE THE SAME TO YOU." The man’s eyes shifted from Matteus to Ishmael, they radiated evil like nothing he had ever seen before.

"AND WHO MIGHT YOUR VICTIM BE? IS HE THE ONE REINCARNATED?" The voice did everything it could to sound mocking.

 

 

 

Ishmael stared back as hard as he could at the man and opened his mouth to reply but Matteus broke him off before he had had time to utter even the first word.

"He is a friend, and he stands under my protection, and you know I never meant to betray the one, you tricked me Lucifer. I won’t let your tongue of thorns fool him like it did me."

Lucifer only smiled and slid off the edge of the platform where he had been sitting and thumped down to the ground like he had been sitting with his legs no more than a couple of feet from the ground.

"I HAVE COME TO CLAIM WHAT IS RIGHTFULLY MINE JUDAS. I GAVE YOU A THOUSAND YEARS TO LIVE, YOU HAVE FOOLED AND KILLED MY HOUNDS, AVOIDED MY MEN COMING IN PEACE TO YOU WITH…"

"In peace? Like Beelzan with his daggers in the night, or Orcan. Do you call that in peace? You lord of lies!"

Lucifer’s eyes flashed with contempt and hate for a short second but regained their composure just as quick.

His robes of glittering silk hardly stirred as he moved forward.

"I AM STRONGER THAN YOU, STRONGER THAN ANYONE REMAINING, YOU KILLED THE ONE AND THEREBY THE ONLY THREAT TO ME. YOU KILLED YOURSELF. YOU CAN’T FIGHT ME. LET GO AND COME UNDER MY RULE." His words sang with the tragic truth of someone so evil that he no longer could do nothing but lie, and for him the lie being true. But what wasn’t a lie? Ishmael felt the gun disappearing from his hand and the urge to walk forward and kneel to Lucifer in his greatness. Someone grabbed his shoulder and it took a couple of seconds before he realized it was Matteus holding him back.

"Don’t listen to his words, he is the lord of lies. Listen with doubt and you will prevail." His hand dropped from his shoulder and Ishmael shook the feelings from his head. Lucifer was smiling even more now. Mocking.

"I will never turn to your side Lucifer, you will never rule me and you know it. I might have betrayed the one and caused the day to perish, but as long as there is someone fighting against you, there will be light, and by truth, I will shine as the flame of life in your haunted soul as long as I prevail. And those who join me will find out your lies, and kill everyone of them."

Lucifer shifted slightly and suddenly a sword was in his hands, over two meters long and radiating darkness he had never seen before. Matteus, or Judas as the tall man Lucifer called him put his hand to Ishmael’s chest and roughly pushed him backward so he almost tripped over the parts laying scattered on the floor. Matteus held out his hand and his sword, not as long or broad as Lucifer’s but grander in itself. It’s thin and agile blade glittering like stars, far away in the sky. Like a glimmer of hope.

"Get back Leam. This fight is none of yours." Ishmael suddenly felt the cool grip of his small automatic in his hand. There came howling from outside the walls of the factory, howls from dogs that had starved for centuries in the cold night of the afterworld. Ishmael studied the two for a second before he realized there was much more ominous things at stake. Ishmael suddenly felt the cold stare of the lord of lies on him and a shivering cold ran through him.

"YOU WON’T NEED THAT!" he seemed to scream at him, and the gun disappeared from his hand.

"Get away from here Leam" Who was Leam? "Remember this. Never tell someone you do not trust your name. It can be misused. Find Gaebril, he will help you if you tell him what happened here today. Tell him…" Lucifer had an even more hateful grin on his lips now. "Tell him that the seventh guardian of light has fallen. Now go."

"HE WON’T GET FAR" Lucifer muttered under his smile. His lips revealing a set of teeth that must have been made out of pure silver from the shine of them. And for a second Ishmael thought he saw a snake pouring from the man’s mouth.

"Go!" Ishmael slowly stepped backwards as Matteus raised his voice. Something seemed to loosen in him. A cold hand holding him in a firm grip, and somewhere deep inside, if his heart would not have stood still he would have thought it was in his heart, a flicker of light started warming him. Pulling himself straight Ishmael closed his hand on a sword very similar to Matteus’, but longer and with a grip long enough for use with two hands. Power seemed to surge from inside him. And as it did, Ishmael saw what might have been Lucifer’s true face and body. What once had been a man, a living one, had transformed into something more like a creature.

Great scarred, bat like wings were folded behind his back moving only as he stirred. His body was draped in pitch black cloth, torn in more than one place to reveal bulging muscles bleeding from long since open wounds.

Seven silver keys, all in different shape, hung in a broad and strong chain around his neck, the small thing seeming to weighting him down.

"I, Leam honor you Matteus. Fare well!" Ishmael took a step back and found his body falling to the floor in front of himself. At first he was startled, but as he took another step he found he was just as firm as his old flesh. As he turned around and leapt with instinct at the closest wall he heard the clash of steel ringing out behind him along with shouts of hatred, both from Matteus and Lucifer.

Ishmael landed easily on the hard paved road outside the building two stories down. He could still hear the clash of metal behind him but his concentration soon shifted to the night around him. It wasn’t really night to him anymore. The darkness limited him no more than daylight would have done and he spotted the two hounds coming around the corner at great speed. Ishmael shifted slightly into a defensive position, the sword firmly in his hands. His eyes darted out and met the pair of softly glowing ones of the first charging hound. The hound radiated almost as much hatred as Lucifer had, but there was just as much fear in these. The eyes were human, or at least seemed to have been once he noticed was they drew nearer. Ishmael stood firm while the great hounds darted at him, teeth bared in an aggressive smile. As the first leaped into the air, jaws aimed at his neck Ishmael moved in a form he had never imagined he would manage. A swift maneuver to the side while thrashing his sword as hard as he possibly could almost cut the beast in two, the remains landing two yards behind him with a thud. The other hound fought fiercely to stop and make a new approach but it was too late. Ishmael could see the very human eyes widen with fear as the blade of the sword cut down into it’s head, right between it’s eyes, cutting the cranium open. The beast sunk down with a snarl. Ishmael turned his head to make sure no others were coming at him from another direction before he started running again. And the gate opened before him.

 

Matteus waited patiently for his opponent to act while listening to the steps of his just won friend. Two thousand years? Had it been so long? He was growing weary. At least he had managed to hand the key over to the boy unnoticed. He would take up the fight when he himself was gone. The boy had strength. Or at least potential of such. There were still many dangers for him.

The two sword hovered only inches from each other. One black as the night and powered by eternal hatred, his sword pulling strength and glittering of the light, the goodness still remaining in him. This fight would be lost though. Lucifer had always been to strong. Only The One had ever matched him. And he was dead, killed by himself, Judas. Always to be remembered as the sinner. He could still remember dangling from that olive tree in the warmth of sun going down for the last time in the afterworld. He could not die from what he had become, but it had showed those closest to The One that he repented his sins. Lucifer had tricked him no more. And now he could surely perish from this world as well. But to what? He shut the answers out. Why had it become like this? NO! Forcing the questions that had lingered in his head so long away he concentrated on the blade. It was one with him. Just as Lucifer was one with his. Mirrors of their souls. Suddenly the two blades crashed together and the sound of unbreakable steel rang out, filling every corner of the room. The hounds howled outside the Hall’s walls. Judas worked the sword in the forms he had learned to use during his existence. Attacking nearly as often as defending. Lucifer had been born a warrior, and for every second of the fight he could feel the advantage sliding towards his opponent. For every strike, for every parry his strength faded some. The blade seemed to become more dull every time it crashed into the intensively dark one. And finally Lucifer had him backing.

Judas fought for all he was worth, winning time for his successor. Then suddenly he tripped over something and with one hand he stood leaning to one of his machines, his lifework. He felt the cold pain that only the darkest of steel could cause as it severed his sword and sword arm from a little beneath his elbow. Judas gave out a cry of pain and slowly sunk down against his machine. Whole hand clutching the wound of his cut off arm. It seared him with the strongest cold. The sword landed on the floor not two yards away and it touched the ground after bouncing once it shattered into what must have been a million pieces and was gone.

Lucifer stepped over him, laughing mockingly. His clothes of darkest cloth glistened of blood from hundreds of small wounds beneath it. He had cause many of those, some as long as almost two milleniums ago. The crown of thorns upon his head could not be taken off. It had become his punishment from the united ones. Only one now remained. No, two. Gaebril, and Ishmael. If he had not been so young. He had needed a lot more training.

Judas looked up as the tip of the cold blade of darkness touched his cheek.

"TIME TO DIE JUDAS. AND PAY FOR YOUR CRIMES AGAINST ME. NOW GIVE ME WHAT IS RIGHTFULLY MINE, WHAT YOU, THE SO CALLED UNITED ONES STOLE OF ME!"

"Things you stole from the first place. Things that was not yours or any man’s to have for himself. You will have to kill me to take the key. Well kill me, my memory will haunt you until the day you are driven from this lands by those of better deeds and minds. Those who are given for their willingness to serve, not for the kinds of you that rather takes what they want to reign themselves."

"I RATHER REIGN IN HELL, THAN SERVE IN HEAVEN", the black blade was slowly drawn back and raised for the final blow. In the distance he could hear hounds howling their hungry calls for prey. The blade drifted down towards his head silently. As a last thing he put his one whole hand to his machine, his lifework to repair what he had so bitterly caused. The cold blade swiftly cut through the skin of his neck, separating his head from his weak body. It was all over in the split of a second, but it seemed to last for ages before he could feel no more. And then his thoughts were suddenly no more. And his body faded to dust that faded into nothingness.

Lucifer smile over the sweetness of victory suddenly turned into a twisted roar as he realized the key were not among the remains on the floor. A few black garbs was all that remained. In anger he smashed the sword into the concrete floor and sparks flew all over the room. He should have thought that the man was unselfish enough to pass the key over to the boy before taking up the fight. What had his name been? With great force of will he pushed the answers back. Leam. No that had no been his real name. Judas knew a name was all he needed to finds someone. He would never get used to not coping with the answers his mind would give him. For thousands of years he had struggled against The One for possession of the keys to all answers. To make this his domains, his and only his. Now it would have to wait until he could hunt down Gaebril and the boy. The last two of the nine keys. Lucifer turned around and walked away from The Hall as Judas had called it all these years. It had been well hidden and warded from him. But he had conquered. With a thought he sent his horde of hounds into search. Two were laying dead outside, and the rest were feasting on the remains. He could not help feeling a little disgusted, but he suppressed the mortal feelings firmly into the back of his mind. Soon he would not need them anymore. He would rule everything. The gate opened in a flash before him and he lumbering stepped through, his mind screaming for more.

As the Gate winked away, something started to stir in the Hall. It started out as a humming sound just beyond hearing, forcing the hounds to run away as fast as their strong legs possibly could, and slowly built up to a crescendo that seemed to shake the whole structure. There was a spark from the electrical panel on the small platform near the roof of the room and slowly, ever so slowly the machine started pulsing. Electrical pulses started to wander from one place to another through numerous electric components that drove pumps that powered other necessary parts until it was all a thing of it’s own. It did not take long before the machine, by self consciousness ripped the cable feeding it power from it’s socket and tried to end it’s running, so pointless.

But it continued all the same. Somehow, it did not want to die…

 

 

 

4. A SEARCH FOR SANCTITY.

t first Ishmael did not really know where the gate had opened to, but as he saw the dull shine of the street lights blending with the soft glow of the crescent moon and far away stars. The city had been his home for most of his life, and it came as no surprise to him that he had instinctively fled there. He could not decide where or in which city he was.

It all seemed to blend together from experiences from places he had visited before in his life. Distances seemed twisted somehow though, just as time seemed to do in this place.

How long had he spend here since meeting Matteus? A few people flickered into existence for a few seconds, than vanishing just as fast. As if they wandered into the unknown city for a few steps. But they radiated something he only could describe as lack. They were still part of another world than his and would go somewhere else when they died. If they went anywhere at all. Otherwise the streets hardly stirred. Cars stood parked as if they had been standing there forever, waiting for their driver to return. But every time his eyelids flickered a car could be gone, replaced by thin air or another car. But Ishmael dismissed the sensations of instability and moved on. Would the hounds follow him here or would they end their chase? The answers were shut out almost instantly. Ishmael entered the closest building swiftly, not at all minding the signs that hung somewhat misplaced and awry on the thick brick walls.

The interior was no more lit than the outside, still the light that always seemed to shine in the afterworld illuminated every corner gloomy building. Ishmael climbed the stairs towards the roof as fast as he could. From up there he would be able to see if anyone followed him, coming after him in the narrow stairs. Ishmael still gripped the hilt of his sword feverishly, as if the length of steel was the only thing holding him afloat. The hatch to the roof slid open with a creak and several birds scattered at the boom when the door crashed open. Several of the glittery eyed ravens settled back on the edge of the roof staring accusingly at him for disturbing them.

The dull lights of the city shone from as far away as he could see as if the city would never end.

He strode over the hard surface of the roof to the low walled edge and looked down upon the scene he expected to recognize, but did not. The building seemed to have grown while he had walked up the few stairs into the largest of them all, and now he could see the whole city beneath him. He could almost feel that he missed being alive, experiencing all that should be experienced, and shared. Saddened he sat down, the sword ringing out a low cry just as sad as his mood as he laid it down beside him. How did he find this Gaebril? As he pulled his arms tighter around his body he became aware of something in his breast pocket of his coat. Silently he fished it out and stared at what had been there with amazement. The key, very similar to the seven Lucifer had had around his neck. Made out of pure silver it gleamed in the night stronger than any of the stars in the sky. As he rolled it over in his hand he tried reading the ancient letters, or rather runes carved in with what must have been artistic hand, but the runes told him nothing. They very much resembled what had been written in the cursed book that had caused his journey here. So that was what Lucifer had been after. Ishmael held the key long and dutifully in his hand before tucking it back into his pocket and sealed it with the lid.

A sudden feeling of being watched made him stand up and pick his sword up. At first he had thought the feeling coming from the ravens daring to settle back to where they had been when he had first frightened them but it did not take long before he saw the shape of a humanoid hiding among the shadows behind the small structure on the middle of the roof. It’s long hair moving somewhat in the soft breeze of the altitude. Ishmael raised his sword confidently and saw how the shape reacted to him noticing her. The shape suddenly spun around and darted for the edge on the other side of the house. Ishmael took a couple of second before realizing she was running away, a cloak in bright green colors fluttering behind her as she did. Ishmael set after her as fast as he could, feeling the cold and fresh night air rushing at his face, the shape vanished behind the small structure and as Ishmael rounded the corner she was gone. And the night was as silent as it had been just a little while ago. He let out a sigh and wondered for a while who she had been, he had not felt her presence really. She had not emitted anything, as if she had not existed here at all. And she had not been like any wanderer, or living straying here either. He was just about to shrug the thoughts away and ignore the whole matter when suddenly the tip of a steel blade dug into the skin of his back. Not hard enough to pierce his skin but almost. He considered for a second to whirl around and cut her down with his sword but realized she would have his back cut up before he had time to turn even halfway.

"Who are you?" she almost shouted out in a voice weighted down by fear as much as anger.

"I am Leam. Merely a wanderer. And you? Would you mind taking that knife from my back?" he replied as confidently as possible without sounding too alarmed, which he thought he did not really managed that well.

"I’m not taking it away until you tell me what on earth you are doing on my house, my roof?" she gently pressed the knife harder into his skin as to strengthen the threats in her words. "Now drop that sword".

Ishmael slowly did as she said and let it vanish into his subconscious and was as surprised as the lady behind him as there was no sound of it crashing to the ground.

"I merely strayed here because I had nowhere else to go." The knife suddenly left the clothes of his back and he slowly started to turn around. Her face was pretty and somehow ageless, even though a scar decorated her whole left cheek, running from the forehead over her left eyebrow and over the length of her whole face. Her green eyes shone with fright as much as anger at him. The dagger slightly trembling in her delicate hand only enhancing those feelings.

"Who might you be then Miss?" he said in an as reassuring and comfortable voice he could produced.

The woman studied him carefully for a couple of second, taking everything in, judging his clothes, the expression on his face, his words, the tone of his voice.

"That, is none of your business stranger!" That tone sounded as if it were a twig snapping. No, a branch.

A gust of wind ruffled her hair and fluttered her cloak enough to reveal a tight and strong body and a bosom fit for any woman. Her narrow face shone of arrogance and self esteem Ishmael had never seen. Physically she was weaker than him, but the way she held herself towards him, her pale skinned face framed by her long raven black hair she seemed to tower over him.

"Now get out of here, and don’t dare show your ugly face here again, ever! You got it?" Her mouth went tight as if expecting he would refuse and she would have to stab him. Instead he just turned his heel and walked with his back to her towards the edge of the roof. Climbing up the low thigh wall he turned to stare back at her for a second before spreading his arms as if making himself ready to fly and leaped down the two stories, landing safely on the sidewalk. Hadn’t the building been the highest among them all just seconds ago? Quickly he stopped the thoughts before the answers could flood him. Even as he slowly walked away he could feel the beautiful woman. She had been very beautiful hadn’t she? No questions. Stop punishing yourself. He told himself. Just as he turned around the next corner, coming onto a street that had not really been there before just now there was a howl in the far distance. From where? It took no more than a heartbeat to realize that it came from behind him, another one answered the first as soon as the first had silenced, another one. Then another.

Ishmael thought he could make out four different individuals. And each time the howls sounded they appeared to have come closer. Ishmael hesitated only for a couple of seconds before turning around once more. He couldn’t leave here there. Leave her for the hounds to consume her pale flesh. However hard she had stared him down and pressed that dagger into his back. The sword was hanging in a scabbard on his back without a thought. It’s weight should have slowed him down if it had not been for the feeling that it felt like it was a part of him. Like one of your arms or legs. And he ran like there was nothing to stop him. For a while he almost thought he saw a police car passing before his face, their sirens on and the blue and red light flashing into his eyes, but it was gone as fast as it had appeared. Ishmael opened a hole in the nearest wall with the force of his will, just as Matteus had taught him to control things, and leaped through, the walls closing again as soon as he had entered.

There was more howls from outside the building now, and from somewhere there came a scraping sound as if someone where dragging metal slowly across old asphalt. It was then he saw the first of them, or rather one of their shadows scurrying across one of the windows heading up along the wall. Sword in hand Ishmael dashed for the stairs, cursing over the many steps he had to climb before getting to the roof. There were howls from the bottom of the stairs now, howls that sent shivers down his spine in their cry for flesh. One of them were running after him in the stairs, he could loudly hear it’s steps in the wooden planks.

Ishmael pounded the door to the roof open with one hand while raising the sword with the other, preparing himself on facing whatever there was to face, whatever numbers. And as he came out into the open there was a growl from behind him as a hound leaped from the smaller roof above him. Ishmael only had time to turn to see two yellow and hungry eyes coming at him before the massive creature smashed into him at chest level and both of them crashed to the ground. Everything seemed to go into a blur for a brief second while tumbling around.

Luckily the creature seemed as taken as he felt because just as Ishmael had climbed to his feet it stood staggering where it had landed. But it did not take long before both of them had regained their composure. He could feel blood, his cold blood running down his chest from some unnoticed wound the creature had inflicted, and he realized he ought to have been dead when he saw the steel claws on all four feet of the creature. The ones on it’s foremost legs as long as a foot. Ishmael clutched his fist and found the sword back in his hand again. The hilt cold and warm at the same time to his skin. It glimmered in the night, just like the key had. The creature shifted, moving weight to it’s hind legs to leap at him, it’s claws tensing against the ground. Ishmael spun around in a form he never had imagined to do, it seemed to be one of the most stupid things to do at the time, spinning around as a ballet dancer. But as the sword followed him in the form and struck home not only once but twice every piece of doubt was gone from him. Two hounds lay at his feet, both with multiple cuts in them, one even with its head separated from it’s short but strong neck, faster than he had ever imagined. But his thoughts did not linger on his foes for long even though the stench from their entrails and blood were like acid. Where had the girl gone? And as if like and answer to his question there was a short scream and the sound of metal hitting metal.

Two hounds had cornered the girl by one of the edges and now stood with their bodies stretched out to their full length on their hind legs, fore legs lashing out with fangs like swords that the girl dodged with great agility though her dagger was far too short to even reach one of their heavy bodies. One of them had a throwing dagger planted deep in its chest, but seemed more distracted that the woman, the flesh in front of it was still alive and trying to kick back. Ishmael rushed forward without any hesitation, screaming at the top of his lungs. Both hounds just had time to turn their heads to see the sword flashing in wide arcs, cutting through their flesh as if it had been nothing more than thin air. Both beasts tried defending their strong bodies with their fangs of steel but it was to no use. Three seconds later both lay dismembered on the ground, some body parts still alive writhing back and forth as if not acknowledging their deaths. The woman just stood watching him, noticing a wound on her where a claw had ripped through clothes and flesh. The dagger in her hand trembled even more than it had when he had confronted her just minutes ago. Even though she were pale skinned already, as if having hid from the sun for years, she turned even paler as she shifted her eyes from him to the two heaps laying before her. She moved the torn piece of cloth on her jacket to the side and probably for the first time became aware of the ripped skin. The dagger dropped from her hand and clattered against the ground. With eyes now holding nothing but fear she looked upon him again, her lips moved to form a word but it was as soon drowned by another howl. This one further away, and as expected another one answered even further away.

A soft "Thank you" slipped from her lips as Ishmael gently put his arm around her and led her away from the edge and the two stanching heaps of half rotted flesh. Ishmael thought tears would have streaked down from her eyes if it had been possible. Just like he had wanted them to flow from his so many times before. He let the sword vanish from his hand and brushed her cheek, feeling the thin old scar against his fingers.

Damn, you give us pain, you let us feel, why have you taken away our tears? Anger made him take the flood of answers filling him so rapidly he could not make out one single of them. Why?

Well down from the building Ishmael took them through narrow alleys as well as broad streets that could have belonged to any capital city of the world. There were no street signs telling him where they were or where they were headed. Yet he walked towards what he thought, or rather hoped to be safer grounds, away from the howling hounds. All the time muttering soothing words into the rather small woman’s ear. And to his comfort the howling seemed to come from further and further away for every minute they walked until it finally could not be heard at all. It wasn’t before then that they dared stop, walking into a small red brick building that once had been a store of some kind with two of the walls crumbled and only a small piece of the roof holding up. Ishmael rooted through a pile of assorted debris and came up with a small stole without a back and told the woman to sit. She still seemed as close to tears any of them could ever come, her green eyes glittering in the soft light and her red lips slightly trembling as well as her hands. Ishmael gently ripped open the torn jacket on the shoulder and looked at the wound she had received there. It was merely a flesh wound and Ishmael covered it with a bandage torn out of his own shirt.

"Hannah." She suddenly said in a unsure voice and he blinked at her with uncertain eyes.

"My name is Hannah. I’m sorry but I cannot recall yours?" Ishmael studied her for a while, considering for a while giving her his real name but decided against it. Later, perhaps.

"I’m Leam, pleased to meet you Hannah." The woman only nodded for reply. Watching him tighten the bandage on her shoulder with sad eyes. As he straightened his back after finishing with her she snapped up to standing and forced him to sit down where she had and started stripping off the clothes from his upper body. He sat down silently staring at her determined face all the while she stripped him. Her hands were gentle with him although she used all necessary force to bully him into doing as she said. The woman from the roof had returned, determined and arrogant.

 

As she had stripped all the clothes from his upper body and washed away most of the dirt he stared down at the wounds she tended. Six fangs had ripped over his chest and left long and shallow gashes slowly bleeding cold blood down his chest. The beasts lashed out both arms wielding three long claws each at him as it had attacked. And Hannah carefully cleaned all six of them on his chest before tying a bandage around his whole ribcage and redressed him in his torn clothes. Her hands were as cold as his flesh felt, but as they brushed against him they felt warm and somehow caring, as did her eyes even though they looked at him with pretended defiance. This close her aura shone through her… Disguise. Her aura, the aura all wanderers had as Matteus had taught him, was cloaked for all but at a short distance, but this close and she touching him he could feel it. And just as her eyes had betrayed she was as frightened as she was stubborn to survive. Otherwise he could only call her neutral. Matteus had taught him that. All wanderers, and some living men, had strong auras though Matteus had called them presence. And even though someone could lie about themselves the presence never did. But there was always a problem of reading them right. Not all could read or even see presence. And Matteus had never mentioned one that could hide his or her presence to others like she had to him. When she was finished dressing him she looked back into his face, her pale green eyes studying him, staring at her.

"I couldn’t thank you enough for saving my life, Leam. But I’m afraid our paths must divide here. This world is not safe for anyone, and we all seek different things, and most will only find another death here in Necropolis. I owe you my…existence, and I only whish that some day I could repay you. As you perhaps know…" she started uncertainly. Her green eyes were locked to his steel gray as if frozen. "…that if you know a persons real name you will always be able to find that one here in this world. I seldom wander beyond the borders of the twisted city, Necropolis. And it is here you will find me." She leaned closer to him as he sat patiently on the chair, feeling his ribcage gently with his hand. "My real name is Joanna Den’Arc. For my knowledge earned, and my eagerness to help others, and for the love of the wrong man I was burned on a stake as a witch. You are the first I have spoken to in more time than I can remember. You are a good man Leam, or whatever your name might be. But I have seen better men corrupted by far less than what we are granted here. I bid you fare well Leam, and the hope we meet again, and then still as friends." The sudden kiss she gave him almost shocked him, setting him staring straight ahead with wonder as the woman ran away into the darkness and disappeared before he had time to shout for her to stop. But as he set after her, she was gone. The warmth of her kiss still lingering on his lips.

Oh by god, she had been… warm. Hadn’t she? He just sat down against one of the broken walls and tried to remember, to understand the answers rushing into him. But he had to make it stop. He believed he should feel tired, but the feelings just wasn’t there. Instead he felt empty, almost to the line where he had been trying to kill himself if he had lived. He doubted that would be possible here. He know he would never try at least. And he just sat there, staring straight ahead into the night, into the stars far above. The moon seemed to smile mockingly at him. Trapped here between heaven and hell, if any of those existed, or whatever it was to come to after this life. If he were not in the only place to come. Ishmael wondered for a second how it had been when the day and night had equally shared the time here. Dead men coming to visit the living with the knowledge that had been gained by getting here. Or if it was the other way around, granted to come here by their complete knowledge, and the ability to visit the living world. It had all ended with the death of The One. Whoever he had been. Ishmael shivered from the thought of the night remaining with him forever here. But he accepted it. He would do what he had promised Matteus. He silently swore it to himself. Silently he took forth the key once more and studied it. Wondering what powers it possessed that Lucifer wanted. He dared not even imagine. Making sure to tuck it into his pocket safely again. So, Necropolis, that was what the city was called. The twisted city she had said. And by the sound of it there were more than just what seemed to be the endless ever changing city. For a brief second he heard shots from a weapon ring off, and the lights from muzzle flashes, then they were suddenly gone again. One of the lights in a window was turned on, and when he blinked, it never had been. Necropolis seemed to be on the border between reality and this world. Wasn’t this world the reality for him? NO! No such questions. Accept what you don’t understand, he told himself angrily. He looked around once more, hoping to find Hannah somewhere in sight, but no. He rose And somehow stepped forward into the gate that opened before him. A gate twisting time and space so that he could get there by not traveling the space between. He did not know where he went, just felt the urge to go there. The only word that could express his urge was safety.

And the dark city disappeared around him and was replaced by a very stale and cold country landscape. The dry grass beneath him sounding as if he were walking on ice as his feet landed on it. If it had been any moist in the air at all Ishmael was sure that snow would have fallen, but instead the land lay frozen as if it had been forever so. In the horizon he could see high mountains reaching into the cloudless night where the moon hung, now full and casting shadows from the few and bare trees that still stood. Naked and unprotected against the cold. Even evergreens stood frozen and weak in the night. Some had snapped right of because of the cold and lay like fallen statues from a time long since passed. But the cold did not touch him. Not more than he thought heat would.

He realized he was standing on a steep hill as the gate winked away behind him. Turning around he could not see the city anywhere near. Just the rolling hills and the dead and frozen forests completely surrounded by jagged mountains. Somewhere in the distance he could see what he thought to be a river, one second he thought he could see it running wildly, the other it lay frozen as the rest of the land. As he turned around again he spotted what he could have sworn had not been there the second before. A circle of stones stood solemnly pointing to the sky, almost perfectly arranged in a circle and the pair of stones, cut into almost perfect blocks a little above man high, standing facing what must have been the directions of North, south, east and west had a roof built between them and a path leading to the middle where a much lower block, laying with it’s largest surface up was placed. The grass around the circle of stones was only a little greener, a little more alive than the grass he stood upon. And somehow there was a glow from the circle as if there was something on the inside that held the grass alive.

With certain steps he started for the circle, not really knowing what to find within it. And faster than the distance really would have allowed he wandered through the southern of the four gates, and somehow the sword had come into his hand, not raised at least. The path had been well used and showed trace of what he thought would be resent use. Carefully he wandered in and found the light coming from what looked like an altar in the middle of the circle. The altar resembled the stones forming the circle around it but it had been laid down and the otherwise so rough cut surface had been smoothened until it had become almost glass on the surface, and somehow it reflected the cold rays of the moon, reflecting them as well enhancing them. And as he got closer he even felt a little trickle of warmth radiating from it’s middle. How could that…

He never even had time to ask that question before something else touched his mind, and as he turned around he was facing a man. Maybe old enough to be his father or maybe if his rough face lied even his grand father. His face looked old and weather worn, the gray hair and beard showed traces of once having been dark red. His bushy eyebrows almost hung down over his deep set, clear blue eyes. His robes told nothing of his allegiances, merely sparkled in the light from the shine of the altar stone. And the light seemed to distort his presence as well.

"What you look for isn’t here!" The man snapped in a irritated tone. "Now get away from here". Those cold eyes seemed to stare deeply into him as if judging who he was and what his intention. Then all of a sudden turned around, his robes fluttering in the cold breeze and started walking away towards the western gate. It was then the words seemed to slip from his tongue.

"The seventh guardian of light…" the man’s head snapped around, those cold eyes now blazing, but not with anger and Ishmael lost the rest of the sentence into thin air.

"What did you say, and what were you supposed to say?" The man sneered at the question that had formed in his mind and seemed to shrug the thought off. His eyes still on him like a hawk’s.

"The seventh guardian of light have fallen." Ishmael let out a sigh. Why had he told the old man? NO!

The old man tried to moist his dry lips with his tongue and considered for a while on the truth of the sentence, then nodded his head in agreement.

"I’ve felt it. His powers grow with every hour that pass, and he have been allowed to run free too long. So Judas is finally dead is he?" Ishmael wondered how it all had happened really. The old man’s face had gone from stone hard to fatherly understanding.

"At least I think so. He told me to find a man called Gaebril and tell him that he had fallen. A man named Lucifer…" The old man put a finger to his own lips as if telling the name should not be spoken.

"The Dark One" The man said, lowering his finger from his lips.

"The Dark One… Came one day while I helped Matteus with his inventions… I… I almost fell for his words. I was about to kneel before him, but Matteus stopped me. Helped me see somehow his real face." Ishmael stopped, realizing his mouth was running dry and that he actually was freezing.

"You have to tell me no more until you are ready." But the old man’s eyes shone with expectation. His tongue moistened his lips once more. "The key?" He inquired gently. And as he did Ishmael for the first time realized the key hanging in a silver chain around the old man’s neck. It was only slightly different from the one that lay in his pocket. Ishmael gently patted the pocket of his coat. "It is safely with me. He handed it over to me when I did not know it myself." The old man smiled as wide as his aged face allowed.

"You have come to the right place my son." The old man said somewhat exited. "I am Gaebril. The first of the eight guardians of light. And the elder. I were the one handed the nine keys from the first place, by whom and for what reasons I, as well as everyone else have long forgotten. But they hold powers that is for no man, dead or alive to have. That was the reason to why I spread them to the nine guardians of the keys. All of them swore to live and die for the safety of the keys until the day when their righteous owner returned. Unfortunately some of us had different thoughts of how the keys would be kept safe. It was not until The Dark One tricked Judas into killing The One that I realized how poorly I had done. Three of the key carriers fought for their own control of the keys, for reasons only known to themselves. Two of them were slain as the hands of the righteous as they were caught up with, and the key were turned over to other more trustworthy servants. Unfortunately the Lord of Night had managed to get The Lord of the Day killed. It was decided that none of them would be able to kill one another, as to not disturb the balance between day and night, order and chaos, the pure essence that rule life and death. But what we had not foreseen in out foolishness to trust the human spirit, was that anyone else could kill anyone of them. Judas was tricked to commit his crime. And even though he did not kill The One by own hands he was the one to be blamed forever and ever. We were punished with eternal night here, where life is, as much as death.

Then, when The One died, we were only eight to guard the light from being utterly conquered. Now I am alone among those who swore the oath on the graves of dead men. I am the strongest, but I, as all of us, are growing weary. My memory fails me. Sometimes I cannot remember why I was brought here. My bones are growing weak. And the strength of my arms are fading. Just as death is gaining more ground. Look at there hills. Dying. Cold. Only the straws closest to this stone survive…" the old man let his wrinkled hand brush the surface of the smooth stone"…and they will die too if the last keys fall into the wrong hands." The old man’s eyes glittered even more intensely as he told his story, the light from the stone reflecting the light from the stone in it’s middle.

"We were promised eternal life and knowledge no man could comprehend for our faithful duties. Power to do as we please. Now we are loosing the battle." The man named Gaebril was fingering the key in a chain around his neck almost nervously.

"I can help" Ishmael said, expecting to please the man. But instead the man frowned as if it all were lost already.

"My bones are so very weary. Maybe Lucifer…" the man exclaimed the man with defiance into the cold midnight air, "…were meant to have the keys from the start." The old man muttered words under his breath that was almost impossible to hear. Almost the muttering of a mad man Ishmael thought for a second before regretting the thought had ever popped up in his head.

"And my strength is fading", Ishmael watched as the man wandered away around in the circle of stone pillars, talking to himself as if alone. The old man wandered a almost all the way around the circle of stones before he almost woke with a start at finding Ishmael there.

"Who are you? Oh yes. The key bringer. Yes." The old man muttered a few words into his gray beard and silently kept on walking. The man couldn’t be mad. Could he?

"I will protect this key with my life." The man’s head snapped around once more and stared hard.

"Your life? Even if you were alive your life is nothing to shield the key. Death is a too easy thing to arrange. Even your passing from here could be as easy. You are young here. You do not see the dangers, you think you know things because what you have become. The hounds will eat you as you are. Feeding their always empty stomachs with your knowledge. You will not stand long, even though you have seen Lucifer, and maybe even seen him as he truly are, even though you have been trained by Matteus as you call him so wrongly. There is so little hope. The seventh key would never be safe with one like you. And if there had not been such unfortunate circumstances you would never have had it."

"If there had not been such unfortunate circumstances when I were present the key would be in Lucifer’s hands by know." The tone of his defense made Gaebril study him with a somewhat mocking frown.

"Do you really think you could make a difference? Do you? The battle is nearly lost and defiance is hardly a way to retake what has for so long been lost. No. I might be safe here. I have been for the passed centuries. This is the only remaining sanctuary. But as with me, it fades, if ever so slowly and one day Lucifer will hunt me down and do to me what he did with Matteus. Judas were one of the stronger after The One. But not even his powers could match with The Dark One’s. We are a dying breed. Soon these lands will lay waste under the rule of the Lord of Night. Not even the moon or the stars will glitter in the skies. And the wanderers will be dead or serving him before they now what is about here. They say that hope is the last thing that abandons you. Well, my hope is dying. And maybe the rest will be comfortable, wherever we are to go after this. I just hope that I will not be left here to live in pains for the time remaining. We all are afraid to die. Even those who say they’re not. We are just afraid in different ways. Some willing to accept the unknown and pass on as they please, doing what they want and even cause their own passing. Some that will do anything it takes to remain. And one should be wary. One could be as devious as the other. There are no written rules as to where we are supposed to go. No maps of how to be correct. No ways of always knowing you are right. What if the dark one had been the one to be killed. Had the light prevailed by itself? The twins were set here to bring equality to this world, and as long as the scales measures different, the rights that were set is not right anymore. Or maybe this was the way this world was meant to follow. Who knows?" There were no answers. Not more than the never ending flow that answered all and yet nothing. There were to many answers to be understood. The old man turned his head to watch the stars as if it was the last time.

"Maybe you will bring balance back to us." The sentenced was more formulated a question than a statement.

"Therefor I will let you keep the key. I will teach you all I know, though I am old and have forgotten many things already. And by your word you will swear to protect the key. Do you swear?" The man looked pain by the question. "It would be wrong of me to take the key from you, I could be as tempted as The Dark One to yearn for the power of them all nine and become as worse as Lucifer in the eyes of others. The man, or more a beast now, was not born evil. None are. But living in the unknown was too much for him. The knowledge he possessed not enough. And he was willing to pay the price for more. His hunger is strong. But if you will swear, I do not blame you If you will not, I am also willing to fight in the way I still can to return balance to this world." He was looking Ishmael deep into his eyes now, inquiring, judging, wondering if he was enough.

 

 

"I do." The words slipped out as if he had been waiting all his life to say them. "I swear on my name, Ishmael Clark that I will guard the key given to me with honor. And not use it’s power to disturb the balance." Where had all those words come from? Ishmael looked down, somewhat shocked to find the key safely in his left hand, his sword in his right.

"From now, and to the end of time you will be one of the original nine to safeguard the powers of the nine keys, and fight against the misuse of what mind like us were never meant to touch." There was a smile on the old man’s lips. A smile of relief. Ishmael put the key on the chain that suddenly had been in his hand and hung it around his neck, feeling the warmth resting against his chest. For a second he imagined the border of frozen grass around the altar grew, fighting against the cold still keeping a tight grip on the ground.

"Now come, we have far yet many things to teach you." The man put out his thin arm around Ishmael and walked him along one of the path leading out, muttering under his breath, and Ishmael hardly noticed the gate open before them until he stood somewhere else.

Ishmael studied the hard and scorched ground around himself. Blackened to the degree that a layer of sooth stuck on his boots every time he put his foot down. And the smell of ashes hung heavy in the air, sticking to his coat with a thin film coloring his coat gray as he tried brushing it away. Gaebril glided over the uneven ground as if not aware of what had happened here once. In the center of the area that had been burnt a small house stood, it’s walls blackened just like the ground. The windows had blown out because of the heat and the chimney that stood out of the roof stood awry with one side gone. It seemed like an intense heat had struck down where the house stood and set fire to everything at least a hundred yards away. One single tree stood outlined against the moon on the grounds before the house, it’s branches dead and blacker than the night itself. Gaebril directed his steps towards the little house, his head down and his eyes on the ground before him. A door glided up before him without him even touching it and both of them stepped inside, Ishmael ducking as not to hit his head to the low roof. The inside appeared just as burnt as the outside, but most things were still intact. Curtains hung in the windows even though the glass was broken. And books filled the many bookshelves filling most of the interior.

And inside the stench of burnt material, among those smells burnt flesh, was even worse than the outside. And Ishmael almost felt a little sick as he saw the two twisted and stiff bodies laying on the floor, hands held over their faces as if trying to shield themselves. Gaebril did not seem to notice at all lost in a book that he had grabbed from one of the shelves.

Ishmael was just about to open his mouth to ask how he could stand it but before he even got his jaws apart Gaebril started talking again.

"Sit down my friend. We have many a things to talk about." Ishmael brushed a burnt blanket aside from a plain straight chair, or rather tried to. It fell apart under his hands, turning to dust and he sat down on the floor staring with disgust at the two bodies by his side. Gaebril sat down on a low desk and turned another page, muttering some more into his beard.

"This was once my home." He started. "For a time it belonged both in this world and the world outside this. I lived a life as a wise man. Sharing the both of two worlds. I could wander through the borders as I wanted, and I believed myself to have a mission in the living. To teach what I had learned here. But as The One died and The Dark one started hunting us down everything changed. We are more vulnerable among the living, just as the living are in this world. The two you see on the floor beside you were my best friends. They waited for me to come home. But Lucifer found them before I did and killed them. I tried to bury them, and clean up in here. But this place is as dead as Necropolis, changing, but not. You can move something one second, and it will be back where you took it from the next. I didn’t just bury them once. It was, and still is a nightmare to see them there. They are frozen in time. I believe they will remain here even after I am gone. He couldn’t have hurt me more.

That is why the land around the city of Necropolis is called frost. Frozen at the second it died. Nothing will change it unless the balance is restored between day and night. It is as if time have stopped here. And those alive that wander here are frozen in the position they died. There are places where you can walk among forests of statue like men that died the worst of deaths." Gaebril fell silent for a while, studying the agonized expressions of the two bodies.

"All their memories, their experiences, lost in time. One second it was there, collected in their minds, the next lost forever to everyone." He pulled his eyes away with a jerk on his head as if his eyes would not make it by themselves. That is why I have never given up, though the strife have felt meaningless more than not most of the time." The old man’s gaze fell once more to the black floor boards, muttering. "We will remember them, we will remember them."

 

 

Ishmael hardly noticed how fast time passed, or if it passed at all while sitting listening to Gaebril speaking out loudly for anyone close to the house one second and whispering the other. All the time talking in unfinished sentences as if new things to talk about popped up in his head all the time. If the man seemed crazy, the only reason for it was that he was on the point of exploding from the amount of knowledge he possessed, and many times he seemed unaware of what words his tongue formed.

"We are safe as here as we are in the standing stones." Gaebril muttered as Ishmael sat wondering just the same.

"Lucifer’s devastation was not just physical here. He was meaning to destroy me, and this attack was what it would have taken to pass me on. But since I was not here there was nothing to absorb the strength of his attack but the ethereal world that surrounds us here, the one that allows us to alter things normally. I bet that you could not produce forth your sword here." Ishmael did not even have to try to know, feel it. There was something like an emptiness surrounding him. As if nothing was there to carry up reality.

"That is the only way to kill one of us if not in close combat. The hand of a wanderer is what takes to pass another on. The guardians have sworn not to use this kind of attacks because it affects the real world as well. And even the Dark One is careful about it."

"How are we going to face him?" Ishmael asked, almost unconsciously closing out the answers.

"If we wish to prevail, we should not."

"But how are we supposed to restore the balance and retrieve the keys? There must be something we can do!"

"A legend among the guardians says we are to wait for The One to return with the glories of the lost days. Many have tried to foretell when, but all have failed so far. We can only wait and hope for his return, fighting back the way we can, hiding from the Dark One as much as possible. But by every hour a new sanctuary vanishes. Fouled by the Dark One’s growth in strength. And I have become to old to fight him, and you are to young, there is too much risk of you falling into his hands. And even though we would be a hundred, a thousand, the sword of any army would have to be guided. And our guide will have to be the one."

"How do we recognize the one when he returns?"

"I wish I would know that. Every time I have met someone here I have wondered. But his grandness will not come as a warrior as many a men think. His father had been a carpenter. And his living had been poor. A harsh life to make him a strong man. We look for greatness when we really should be looking for what really makes a man great." And his gaze wandered off again, his words disappearing into his beard. Ishmael suddenly found his hand rummaging through the stuff in his pockets looking for a smoke and stopped. His hand going up to feel the hilt of his sword suddenly strapped to his back, as if to make sure it was really there.

"We had better go. Remaining in a place like this for too long wearies your mind." He took a couple of steps for the door before stopping, looking around as if he had forgotten something. "All sanctuaries do that you know". His eyes had stopped at Ishmael carefully caressing his sword hilt.

"After a while, you think you hear voices, then, after another while, you believe that it is your thoughts you are hearing. I have seen the last stages of it too. Some call it madness. And then they are gone, and not to be seen ever again. What I wanted to tell you really is that I am growing weary. One day you will find that I am gone, and until then you will see my mind fade. I know I am growing weary though I don’t feel it when it comes to me." He pushed the door open and carefully stepped out as if he never had said anything and Ishmael could do nothing but hurry outside to catch up with him. The landscape looked almost too alike compared to when they had entered and still nothing moved in the still midnight breeze. A shiver slowly moved through his body, prickling every inch of skin on his body. Going mad was no option for him, was it? He ignored the answers.

Gaebril had already started down the hill, walking and talking to himself as if he were truly alone. Some part of him screamed for just running away. How had he gotten into this from the first place? The answers hurt enough to remind him he still could feel. The other part longed for nothing but confrontation and aggression. And both parts were equally strong, pulling him apart. And as he walked slowly in his own pace, not loosing a pace on Gaebril, the strain seemed to grow. Then suddenly a voice murmured something from the distance, or was it from deep in his head? But the voice was gone as quick as it had appeared. Gaebril had stopped just outside the area of soothed ground, staring straight ahead. Soon Ishmael came up to his side and both stood like statues while a gate opened into somewhere else. And they stepped through, seeing the scenery change instantly.

 

 

 

The cold light of the moon cast long shadows over the ground as it hit the trunks of what once had been a grand forest. Many of the trees reaching as high as fifty meters, perhaps more. And among the trees stood a cluster of worn wagons, the canvas covering them torn and bleached by the chill and the wind. Several figures moved among the wagons, most with their heads down low and worn coats tucked close around them. Gaebril and Ishmael stood for a while watching the group consisting mostly of middle aged men and women. No children played among the wagons, no fires were lit to keep away the cold, and none moved at more than a slow walk.

There was a sad and unhopeful mood about the camp.

"These are the lost ones. We almost never get closer to them than this, and nor does Lucifer. They are alive here in this world, not like us. They live a life here and dies from it. No one knows why they live here and not in their other world. But it isn’t their choice, many of them have never seen the real world outside. We don’t know who and what they are, and neither do they. All we know is that meddling with them is somehow wrong. They should not be here." His hands were clutching the material of his pockets, almost ripping them. Ishmael thought he looked more than worried.

"Remember them, they are important. How, though, I cannot tell you. We must leave before they see us here. Come". Gaebril turned slowly, his head held high and his robes held close around him as if he really felt the cold around them.

 

 

5. THE CRY OF MANKIND.

omehow, Ishmael felt fear as he stepped through the gates and left the Lost ones behind them. He realized now how little he knew. Even though finding something could be real easy you always had to know what you were looking for. And knowing the right thing is always the hardest isn’t it? The answers came like a stab deep inside his mind.

They were back in the city again, The ever changing Necropolis. They walked through the dwindling alleyways and broad city streets laying in silence. Sometimes, in the corner of their eyes they could see images of the real city flicker for an instant. Persons or events that had their place in another world than his, but then again not.

Suddenly Ishmael almost fell over as he saw something else move around a corner, slipping into one of the close by alleys. There was like a trail still hanging in mid air where… it, had moved away. Gaebril only reacted as Ishmael stopped, snapping his head around to stare at him as if crazy. But the next second he also saw it. The trail slowly faded away. But long before that Ishmael was darting after whatever had caused the trail from the start, with only a shouted "Wait here" to Gaebril before coming around the corner. The sense of urgency of the trail’s… Taste was overwhelming. Overwhelming enough so that he did not hear Gaebril shout to him. And his futile attempt to follow ended in a heap by the building Ishmael had disappeared around. With worry he looked up, but there was no longer anything around him. No darkness, no lights, no colors, still there was something… NO! Not yet! There is so much to do still… His words faded slowly. And the last sound to reach his ears was the tinkle of a silver key bouncing to the ground, once and twice before settling.

Ishmael worked his legs as fast as he could to follow the trail. And the smell, or perhaps taste of almost pure urgency forced him to focus all his energy to catch up. He had never really seen what he followed, but somehow it did not matter at all. The trail led him left and right, up stairs and down into a old and worn subway station. The graffiti on the walls curling around pillars and up along walls as if alive. And somewhere far ahead along the trail, seemingly hanging in mid air, was what he now sought to catch up with. Ishmael grabbed the hilt of his sword on his back and swiftly bared the long blade, the cold steel glittering in the flickering light. He was catching up. The trail was growing stronger for every second. Soon, what he pursued would be in sight. Just a couple of seconds more…

From the shadows of a tall building two softly red eyes glittered. Watching the two men finding the trail he had put out more than two days ago. He recognized one of them, the oldest. He couldn’t remember his name but Danar never forgot a face. When the two suddenly found his trap one of them, the youngest darted off down the alley along the trail, his black coat fluttering after him. Danar smiled. The trap worked perfectly. The old man tried shouting after the younger. Damn! But somehow he did not listen. The old man tried to work his legs to stop the youngster but his bones did not bear him as he had expected. Then suddenly Danar saw something he had never seen before as the old man crumbled against the wall. Slowly the man faded. But instead of fading from being to black the colors seemed to intense to the grade that they burned the figure away. And something fell towards the ground, giving away the sound of metal as it bounced off the ground. And the man was gone. What had happened? NO! No questions. He let the shield of darkness fall away from around him and stepped forward warily. Nothing else moved.

He slowly walked forward, making sure not to move anything. If he could follow trails, maybe others could too. He had never met anyone who could though. And he was pretty sure he was the only one who could set false ones. But then again, he had not met so many here, and of those he had, most were dead. Stepping carefully up to where the old man had disappeared from Danar’s eyes fell upon the silver object laying on the ground. It was some sort of key, made out of pure silver. His red eyes blazed at what he saw. It must be something important. He didn’t know why he though that. With two gloved fingers he picked the key up, letting his eyes linger on the object for only a short second before putting it in his pocket. He could feel the other one running after his trail. Soon he would be trapped down in the subway. Lost, and an easy prey.

Ishmael’s grip on the hilt of his sword tightened as he felt getting closer to what he was following. In his mind he tried to figure out what he had really seen up on the street, but as he tried recalling the images he saw nothing.

Then suddenly the trail disappeared and only darkness surrounded him, as if even the flickering lights had gone out. He turned around and found only the closest walls visible in the dim light. Ishmael spun around hearing nothing but his own boots shuffling through the old papers laying scattered over the floor. Taking a side way step he though had been the direction he had come from he gently bumped into the wall now standing there. Had that wall been there a second ago? NO! He spun around again, had there been someone watching him? No, no questions. There had been someone, or something there behind him.

Danar stood absolutely still just behind a pillar not ten meters away from the young one. His shield, his cover as thick as he possibly could make it. He tried covering his eyes with the plastered pillars as much as possible. He knew his eyes shone red in the dark. Once he had though it the curse that had come with his abilities. But he had learned that they produced fear in the presence of others. And many he had met had frozen from his mere stare. Something glittered around the neck of the young one that caught his attention. Another key? Danar gasped with shock as the answer rung clear in his mind. Yes. It was.

Ishmael spun once more, trying to focus in the direction from where the sound had come from. And there he stood. A man, not taller than himself with long blond hair and worn clothes hanging in rags around his limbs. But the weirdest of all was his clear red eyes glittering in the dark. At first he looked taken aback by something, but then he regained his composure and a long sword was in his hand, the hilt encrusted with rubies almost as red as his eyes. Both of them drew up in a defensive position regarding each other in silence.

"I don’t want to fight you" Ishmael broke the silence with after a moment of measuring of each other.

"What is your name wanderer? I am Leam." The tall blond man studied him for a few second before his dried lips cracked up into a smile.

"I’m Dante, and I led you here to kill you, so if you don’t want to fight me, lay down your weapon and turn your back to me so we can get it over with." The man lowered his sword to let his eyes stare threateningly into Ishmael’s.

"Why?" The stab the question caused made Ishmael flinch. "Why do you want to kill me? I have caused you no harm."

"You are all evil and deceitful. You are one of them, trying to kill us all. But I tell you, there will be no more of that for your sake."

"One of them!" Ishmael lowered his sword to display his good will. "If you think I am one of them, you think wrong. I am one of those protecting those who are among the righteous. Until the day The One returns and restores the day in our lives. I am one of them." The other man looked doubtful for a short while, his eyes loosing that frightful look for a second or two. One could almost see the man going through his alternatives in his head but without warning he suddenly lashed out into a furious attack, his sword whirling before him. Ishmael could do nothing at first but fend off the blows with all his energy. Ducking and diving away as often as parrying with his sword. Sometimes the lights flickered, casting huge shadows on the walls beyond the subway tracks. Dante was not a really good swordsman, but with the ferocity he fought with even a master swordsman would have a hard time. Many times being unpredictable was as good a weapon as control. Still only after a couple of minutes Ishmael had conquered the initiative. Dante’s red eyes flickered as Ishmael’s blade ripped open his right sleeve, but his ferocity never faltered an inch. He lashed out in anger for his wound, but Ishmael only slid to the side, letting his blade slash at his foe’s chest. Dante gasped as his body slammed onto the concrete floor. His sword skidding across it to stop against a pillar. And the small silver key in his breast pocket fell out. Ishmael drew himself up, knowing that the fight was already settled. Dante crawled in pain over to where his sword lay. The strength in his arms hardly was enough to pull him forward. Much less strong enough to pick up his sword. Ishmael stood silently watching. The wounds his foe had received was far from enough to kill him. He sheeted his own and walked forward, for the first time noticing the silver key, laying in a small pool of dark red blood.

 

From the distance in the dark tunnels a train could be heard, it lasted only for a short time but the sound echoed for what seemed like an eternity. Dante coughed a few times before rolling over on his back, a sensation of fear now glowing in his eyes.

Ishmael started to pick the other key up when he realized what he was doing. No man alone should hold the keys alone. Gaebril’s voice almost echoed in his mind. Ishmael straightened himself, just staring at the key before him. And he turned his heel and slowly walked away. His hand still clutching the hilt off his sword firmly. His mind sought Gaebril’s location, but as he suspected by now, he found nothing. Either he was in one of those safe havens, or more likely dead. He had been lured into this maze, and he would never be again. He would never be tricked again, he told himself. The subway station was back. As badly illuminated as before, but it was there. And no one altering the surroundings. The gate opened while he still could hear Dante breathing harshly behind him. Ishmael wasn’t sure the wounds would heal so very fast. If they would at all. Ishmael slipped through and stepped out in the street above. Ishmael started to take another step forward when an ear searing shriek seemed to come at him from everywhere, cutting through his mind. It wasn’t a scream of pain, nor was it a scream of fear. But the mere strength of it was enough to set every other though aside. Ishmael pressed his palms to his head and crumbled into a heap on the ground. How could it be so strong? But no even the answers he almost had hoped would flush the scream away found enough room in his mind. The scream did not lessen in intensity and suddenly the world around him seemed to spin. And flashes streaked down from the sky. Illuminating the world. At first they came far apart, but slowly they danced before him more and more frequently until the night had almost turned to day. And the world spun. Faster and faster. The scream in his ears just as intense. Ishmael thought his body would break under the strain. Then suddenly it all stopped. But not as he had thought, or hoped.

The light remained, burning his skin with its powerful rays. But no longer the rays came from lightning but from a bright shining sun hanging at it’s zenith, casting only short shadows. And the scream faded in his ears. Ishmael lay shocked as someone passed close by him, grunting at having to step aside for a drunkard or a bum. Others did the same. Ishmael sat up, just staring at the noon street of a town he had thought he would never see.

 

 

6. CONFRONTATION

he street was bustling with activity he noticed as he rose somewhat drowsy. Men and women only passed him a side way glance, most of them emitting fear as much as disgust at his appearance. The sidewalk was crowded with people in all the different shapes he had once been used to, as was the main street crowded with cars, the yellow cabs sounding their annoying horns just as he remembered.

Ishmael had never liked the crowds, he had been a person more asleep during daytime’s bright hours than the comforting loneliness of night. And now he found that the day and the crowd disgusted him more than ever. Ishmael silently slipped into the alley close by, turning his head every now and then. He just wasn’t used to having people around him anymore. Any one of them could stab him in the back. Not that he knew if they could kill him really. He had died from this world once. He noticed as he walked down further into the alley that he was back in his body again. His real one. The flesh felt strange around him. Like a suit he had not worn for years and when trying it on it fit but felt odd.

The sun felt like a too strong light after the many days spent in darkness. It prickled his skin that felt like it was crawling with it’s own life. No sweat came from the pours though. His body worked merely as a shell for his existence in this world. A tool needed to wander here. He slowly walked to the dead end of the narrow alley. The only ways out was either going back or by one of the two fire ladders leading four or more stories up. Reluctantly he sat down, his back towards the high brick wall at the end of the alley where the sun did not quite reach. Ishmael adjusted the folded cardboard box so to lay directly beneath him and slumped back with his head at the wall. Squinting with his eyes to shield them from the sun he searched his pockets for a smoke. He hadn’t done that in a long time, and he blamed the quenching stench of the alley for even thinking of pulling smoke into his useless lungs. He finally found a pack in his pocket and he immediately put one to his lips and started looking for his lighter. And just as he found it in his inner pocket his hand brushed by the cold frame of his nine millimeter automatic holstered in his armpit. He opened his coat for a while and studied the gun as his other hand flipped open the lid of the lighter and set it afire with a short zip. He let go of the edge of his coat and it slumped back into place, hiding the gun again. He took a hard pull and the acrid smoke filled his lungs with soot and toxins. Toxins he had once inhaled to ease the pains in his haunted soul. To fill the emptiness with something. Now he inhaled it because he wanted it to wash away what had replaced it. He exhaled and watched the smoke drift straight up for several meters, then suddenly a gust of wind ripped the smoke away and scattered it. For a second the sun in the sky seemed to flicker and as he looked up clouds gathered all too quickly to be real clouds to darken the bright star. Quickly they grew thicker and darker. Ishmael could see people at the alley opening look up worriedly. The wind grew stronger by every second until every piece of paper and dust in the alley were whirling around his head. Ishmael rose slowly, using his hand to support himself from the wind around him almost knocking him down. His other hand crushed the cigarette he had in his hand. It could easily start a fire with all the paper whirling around. People in the street outside the alley was starting to panic now. A big black van rammed hard into a small cab that in turn crashed into others beyond his vision. Seconds later all the traffic in the street had seized and people were fleeing from whatever their fears were. Ishmael walked as steadily as he could out towards the open street and the stream of fleeing men and women. As the crowds grew thicker outside, people started elbowing each other to get where they wanted. Ishmael stood warily at the end of the alley watching how chaos tightened its grip on the city. Rain slowly started to accompany the wind that had grown fierce and strong, almost blowing people down. A little down the street a big sign let go of its grip from high up on the facade and crashed down towards the people beneath on the sidewalk. The huge sign turned in the air and landed as much in the street as on the pavement, crushing cars as much as bones of those running under it. People were actually fighting each other to save themselves. Shots were fired in the commotion, but none cared for the bodies that fell before them. It did not take long before looters took their opportunity and started smashing windows carrying away TV sets and stereos. Some shop owners that had not left their stores already defended their property. Adding to the numerous shots already being fired. But they were gunned down without remorse. The crowd emitted fear in a degree Ishmael had never experienced. The impressions filled him with hate and anger to the extension that he reached inside his coat for his gun but stopped himself. Maybe those who did wrong paid in the end. It was none of his business. Not meddle with the living. That was the rule. A woman not older than himself, with long blonde hair and green terrified eyes stopped before him, obviously intending to take the way into the alley Ishmael stood blocking. She raised her hands as if to show she intended no harm. Ishmael moved as to take a step to the side when suddenly a shot ran off behind the woman, throwing her forward and down on the ground. Ishmael threw himself to the ground, for the first time really understanding the graveness off the situation. Then man that had fire the shot went forward to the body without regret and picked up her purse. He did not notice anything but the brilliant flash of steel that penetrated his forehead and his body went rigid for a second. His eyes staring far beyond death. The body slammed to the ground with a thud. Ishmael wiped the sword clean on the man’s shirt and reluctantly turned his heel. What he had done was wrong. He could feel it inside himself. But none the less he felt some satisfaction. The girl had been pretty in his eyes. Maybe he would meet her some time. And he would not have to stare into her eyes and remember doing nothing.

Ishmael carefully sheathed his sword before he leaped for one of the four fire escape ladders leading all the way up to the roof.

The building were more than five stories high and old from wear. The fire ladders shivered as he ran up the steps. He passed windows crowded by frightened children and old ladies that pulled the curtains as he passed.

The roof lay deserted but for a few pigeons that took off as he placed his first step on the windy roof. The strong wind pulled at his hair and his clothes like a giant hand. It howled in his ears, and shrieked as it wore on air vents. Ishmael wondered why he had come here, what had really happened, what would happen? The answers crashed into him like an untamable flood. He made it stop. It was then he felt it. The air smelled… wrong.

Something moved on the roof of the house next to the one he was standing on. A shadow that flickered passed the gap between two air vents. But there had been something special about it and it took him a little more than ten seconds to recognize the feeling of another wanderer’s presence. And the smell of something wrong came with the wind from that direction. Ishmael ran, ran as fast as he could, his gun appeared in his hand and his eyes were darting back and forth over the area where he had last seen the shadow. He was somewhat amazed at himself as he leaped and noticed how his feet left the edge of roof and how he sailed through the air and the strong tide against him and landed just inches from the edge on the roof opposite to the place from where he had jumped. But there he skidded to a halt. He wouldn’t make the same mistake as he had in the subway. Carefully he studied the roof and it’s surface as he felt small drops of water hit his face fast enough to feel like gravel. A stinging pain suddenly stabbed him in the side followed by a sharp bang that only could have been produced by a gun of some sort. He staggered a few steps, almost dropping his own gun as the pain swallowed his consciousness. He could not help falling into a groaning pile on the wet roof, his free hand clutching the small hole made to the flesh on his right thigh. It burned like all the fires of hell combined. Anyway he started to crawl determined to get up. Another shot ran in his ear, but the bullet hit somewhere behind him. With a last gathering of strength he staggered to his feet and into the cover of a vent not a meter away. Another bullet hit the edge of it as he was behind it. With one hand clutching to his side and the other firmly holding the gun Ishmael darted for the cover of the next vent four or so meters away. While running he fire at least four shots into the dusk of the storm without even caring to aim. As long as it was enough to hold down whoever was firing at him. The pain of his side took most of his strength away. No blood came from the wound though. The water from the rain that increased for every second stung in his eyes.

"CAN YOU FEEL HOW DEATH FOR THOSE NOT MEANT TO LIVE FOREVER STING IN YOUR WOUNDS WANDERER?" The voice crashed into his from everywhere and he knew very well who the voice belonged to. Ishmael darted for the next vent, his head turning to see from where the Lord of Lies spoke. But as he hid behind his cover he had seen nothing but the rain on the hard surface of the roof.

"YOU CAN’T ESCAPE ME. I HAVE POWERS BEYOND YOUR COMPREHENSION. JOIN ME, WE WILL RULE THIS PLACE THEY SO FOOLISHLY THINK IS THE ONLY. COME WITH ME AND I’LL SHOW YOU ALL YOU WANT TO SEE. HELP YOU UNDERSTAND. TELL ME YOUR NAME AND WE’LL BE AWAY FROM HERE, FROM THIS PLACE OF DEATH. COME WITH ME.

Ishmael found himself considering the proposition, measuring it in his mind when he realized what he was doing. Believing lies spoken of a man that could tell nothing but lies.

"YOU CAN DO NOTHING TO SAVE THEM ANYWAY. THE VIRUS I’VE SPREAD INTO THE WINDS OF CHANGE WILL SPREAD AND CARRY THEM TO THEIR HEAVENS. WHAT FOOLS THEY ARE. THEY WILL UNDERSTAND THEIR OWN STUPIDITY WHEN THEY DIE ONCE MORE IN THE COLD LANDS OF THE AFTERLIFE. SOME MIGHT FIND THE SHELTER OF THE LOST ONES BUT I WILL FIND EVERY ONE OF THEM AND THEY WILL KNOW THAT I AM THE ONE, THAT MY WAY IS THE RIGHT WAY, THE ONLY WAY TO BECOME TRULY IMMORTAL. I WILL HOLD THE POWER. THE POWER TO MAKE THE DAY NIGHT, AND DAY NIGHT. TO DECIDE OVER LIFE AND DEATH."

His voice rang with true passion for what he said. Like he even believed his own lies.

Ishmael tried to ignore every word spoken, even though they seemed to cling to his mind by their self.

"THEY WILL COME WITH ME BY THEIR OWN FREE WILL. AND THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT." The rain washed over Ishmael’s face now. And lightning struck down like jagged spears some distance away. The thunder almost deafening. Anger grew stronger with every word Lucifer spoke.

"YOU KNOW IT IS DECIDED. I WILL HOLD THE POWER, AND YOU WILL ALL SERVE ME.

With the last words something snapped in his mind. Something that stood above the pain in his side, above his thoughts, above all life. With a scream of uncontrolled anger Ishmael threw himself around the corner of the air vent he had been standing behind and with two hands firmly around his gun he rushed forward, his eyes darting for Lucifer’s deceitful shape. But shadows played tricks with his mind. Ishmael fired several shots at shapes that seemed to move at him, but every time the rounds landed and sounded a ring as from metal. He whirled around fired at another shadow that stood just as untouched as the first. And again. Then suddenly his strength seemed to have gone. His legs wobbled and he crashed to the ground. Slowly the pain in his side grew stronger, washing away what strength he had gathered. And all he could seem to hear and see was the rain falling around him like the skies had opened above him.

"IT WILL NOT BE LONG NOW BEFORE THEY ALL START DYING. MY SERVANTS HAS MADE SURE THAT THE VIRUS WILL SPREAD. I WILL GROW A LEGION OF MY OWN TO CONQUER ALL OF WHAT WORLDS THERE MIGHT BE. AND WHEN I HOLD ALL OF THE EIGHT KEYS, YOU WILL UNDERSTAND."

"Never." Ishmael forced himself through the pain and feeling of hopelessness to rise. The rain running off his shoulders and hair, over his body. Lightning flashed and thunder crashed. "You will never stand victorious Lucifer. As long as hope lives on, you will stand defeated."

"YOU SHOULD SEE HOW EASILY HOPE IS DEFEATED, OR SHOULD I SAY FOOLED. WHEN HOPE DIES THE SOUL TRIES TO SAVE ITSELF, WEATHER IT WANTS TO OR NOT. ONLY A FEW FIGHTS BEYOND WHAT IS REASONABLE FOR A HOPELESS CAUSE. AND THE SECOND THEY PASS ON THEY REALIZE HOW FOOLISH THEIR DECISION WERE. JUST LIKE YOU WILL DO WHEN YOU SEE ME GRASP THE EIGHTH KEY HANGING AROUND YOUR NECK." Ishmael gasped after breath even though he knew it was useless. Did Lucifer really have the seven other keys? The answer was as simple as it was shocking. Yes. Lucifer’s dark shape suddenly slid out into the open before him, almost separating from the shadow in which he had been standing. Another shadow followed close behind at his heels, his head down and his hands to his chest, almost as if he were constantly bowing.

"YES, DANTE COULD NOT HIDE FROM ME EITHER, AND NOW HE SERVE ME LIKE YOU WILL SERVE ME WHEN YOU HAVE GIVEN ME THE LAST OF THE KEYS. DON’T BE A FOOL LIKE JUDAS. ONCE HE REALIZED THE POWERS GAINED BY SERVING ME. THEY SAID I FOOLED HIM INTO IT. INTO KILLING WHOM THEY CALLED THE ONE. WHAT THEY DO NOT REALIZE IS THAT I, I AM THE ONE."

"Noooooo," Ishmael’s scream echoed over the rooftops, over the shriek of lightning striking a building close by, and it probably was as fearful for all others like it was to himself. Ishmael started to raise his gun to align his sights on Lucifer, and so did Lucifer and his companion, guns blazed through the thick mist of the rain. Ishmael felt how something ripped through his right shoulder, but he still pulled the trigger furiously until it clicked and he realized his targets were gone. He still stood on legs that shivered with strain. One body lay still at the length of his sights. He gently pressed the release button for the magazine and it clattered against the roof. From one of his pockets he took out another one and placed it in the gun. Pulling the slide back and releasing it the gun was loaded again. Carefully he walked forward, the gun pointing at the body before him. Dante lay perfectly still, his body slumped in a heap no man alive could possibly manage. Ishmael scanned the area around himself, Lucifer was nowhere to be seen. Leaning forward Ishmael rolled the body over and saw how his round had almost split Dante’s head into two. Ripping away a large portion of the back of his head. There was no point searching the body. Lucifer would have the key.

"I WILL COME BACK FOR YOU WANDERER." A voice echoed from a distance.

"I WILL HAVE YOUR SOUL ONE DAY." Ishmael heard as the voice faded away slowly.

"I WILL COME FOR YOU."

Ishmael slowly turned and walked forward to the edge of the roof and stared down at the no longer crowded street below. There were some left, most of them looters carrying away what they wanted from the smashed windows. A lot of people lay still in the street, and the rain water ran red as often as not around them. And scattered shots could be heard from the distance. Cars had been set afire and left to burn out. The city lay in chaos beneath him and there was nothing he could do about it. Carefully he touched his shoulder where he had been hit and realized how lucky he had been, it had gone through his body without ripping more than flesh.

Ishmael opened a gate, or rather let a gate be opened. He did not mind where it would be leading him, he only wanted to get away. Away from this place. And he stepped off the edge and into the shimmering gate before him. It was a short journey through the gate, yet still it took him further than any man would journey in a lifetime. Despair sang in his mind as he stepped through, and Ishmael suddenly found himself gasping for air as his body sank into water cold as ice, yet warm enough to boil his heart. The two sensations wavered back and forth like the water itself could not decide weather to be warm or cold. Water swallowed him and carried him with its stream. Ishmael fought to reach the surface. And even though he did not need the frozen air of the wastelands he knew he could not drown in this river. Every time Ishmael reached the surface and thought he had managed to get in control the currents pulled him down again, tumbling him around and around until up became down, and every down became up. Sometimes he broke the surface realizing he was trying to swim down. With a sudden snap of his neck he realized how he crashed into a rock, but as he tried to grab for the solid stone he was already on his way down stream, being pulled away from any hope of savior. His already weakened muscles aced, and his wounds burned, tiring him even more. His efforts was to no use, Ishmael’s thoughts became slower and slower. He could neither see or hear anymore. Even though he thought himself as beyond savior he was calm. Suddenly something grabbed his clothes. Pulled hard against the stream. Even though he wanted to start fighting again none of his muscles responded. Something was stuck in his clothes. His face broke the surface, and he was dragged over rocks laying in the shallow edge of the river. And now he lay like a stranded whale on the shore. Not being able to move hands nor legs, and his vision was still gone. A pair of hands grabbed him, pulling him further into frozen grass, burning his back through his soaking clothes. Someone spoke like in a far distance. Were they speaking to him? The answers flushed through him, but pained him less than usual.

They did things with his body, he tried to fend them off but it was useless. All strength had gone from him. Then, something glittered before his eyes in a blur, a sharp light that shone into him. Things passed between the light and him, shadows be could not really make out but he believed them to be men that circled him. And slowly, ever so slowly warmth ran back into his arms and legs, gathering around the places where he was hurt. But those were only comfortably warm. And the pain only told him he was alive. Or at least still in the afterlife. After some time laying on his back in the frozen grass he realized that the source of warmth had been the full moon hanging scornfully in the night sky above him. And when the movement of his head came back he saw the men that had dragged him from the river. All had worn clothes and was hurt in some way. One had had one arm torn off beneath the elbow, another a crater where his right eye had been. They all stared at him with amazement as he opened his eyes fully and turned his head at them, one even started to raise an arm holding a small hatchet but was soon stopped by the others. Ishmael tried sitting up and with the help of one of the older of the three men he came erect sitting with his hands to his chest. The three men breathed heavily in the thin cold air, probably because of the strain of pulling him out of the water. All of them emitted fear as much as curiosity but what Ishmael soon realized that all men were…. Alive.

 

 

7. ONE FEAR TO ANOTHER.

"Who am I?" That question somehow stabbed deep into the pit where his heart once had pounded.

"We all wonder who we are. And sometimes we ourselves cannot answer the simplest of questions. I am a wanderer, a creature of this world and of others. These lands be my home, and this body and mind belongs to me. " Ishmael rose with an agonized groan, and left his body of cold dead flesh behind, resting in the grass.

All three of the men looked with as much fear as any man could possibly produce without running away, and the boy was very close to just doing that.

"Don’t be afraid, because there is nothing to be afraid of. Thank you for rescuing me from the river. If you had not been here I would surely have passed on from this world." He wondered silently to himself why that had been such a pity. "I’m in your debt. My name be Leam by others, and so you may call me. How can I ever help you to start repay my debt?" NO!

"You can start by telling us…" The young one started but was soon quieted by the two older men.

"We search for our families and friends. We have wandered here for days and found nothing but wasteland. Cold wasteland. It is a wonder we have not died already. We search for a place where we can find food and shelter from this cold. We are lost here, for every time we look back we find new lands that we have never walked, and when we turn again we find that our goal is lost. Give us guidance and you owe us no more than you would please to give us." The Lost Ones. The word popped up in his mind as soon as the man had stopped speaking.

"And by the way, My name is David Ogden" the old man said. Gray hair dyed red from his damaged eye.

"This is Ethan, and the young one over there is Kiefer" he said pointing to the one still fingering his hatchet as if expecting Ishmael to jump at him any second.

"I am afraid that all I can do for you is to lead you to others that search and need the same as you. They are lost here, as all are that does not find this as home." The three of them looked weary and sick, torn clothes glittered with crystallized water.

"Lead us" the oldest said without even a tremble of his voice. "For there are many searches to be made".

Ishmael nodded and thought for a while, the Lost One’s camp lay some distance to the east, another one lay further north. Somehow their positions remained relatively the same even though the landscape flowed. Ishmael opened the gate without much of though and looked at it. It was there before him just as it was not. A simple twist of time and space. The lost looked wondering at him and the opening of twisted colors.

"Come" he said motioning with his right hand to the opening. The lands of Afterworld flashed by their sides so fast they could hardly make out passing them, and within a hundredth part of a second their feet landed on the firm ground of a small hill. The lost ones looked even more astonished as they noticed how far they had traveled in just a step.

"There", he said pointing at a clump of dead trees perhaps five hundred yards away, "is the camp of the so called lost ones. They will have what you need to prevail here. We don’t meddle with the lost ones. They are of another kind. I have not more than seen one before I met you, there is danger in us meeting, just as much for you as for me. And therefor this is as far as I go. For your sake and for mine. Good luck David. May these lands be not as harsh to you as it has been to me."

"Thank you Leam for your kindness of showing us here." There were a couple of grunts from Keifer fingering his hatchet but he was as soon silenced by the two older men. Ishmael shook hands with all of them though Keifer seemed to be more embarrassed than grateful like the others. Their flesh felt warm to his skin, almost burning hot. And his probably felt as cold to theirs even though they made no show of it as he did like he did at them. The three started walking with determined steps towards the camp of the lost ones he had pointed out to them.

"And beware, for there are dangers here you could possibly never comprehend." All three stopped in their tracks and looked at him wonderingly. But he just turned and stepped through the gate that opened before him and slipped away. They felt so alive. Too alive. Not right. He shivered at the thought, or if it was at him passing through the gate. The city welcomed him with it’s silent back streets where nothing but shadows melted together with his clothes, hiding from others as much as himself. He did not miss being alive, he was still alive in a way. He just missed the simplicity of it. The small things, the pathetic problems, the pain, the short gusts of joy. He remembered his true life as it had once been as clearly as it had ever been. Every inch of it. And now he lived another. And now he could not remember how much time had passed, what had really happened. Suddenly something sharp gently pressed into muscles of his back and he stopped dead in his tracks, staring straight ahead waiting for something to happen.

Nobody moved, and the night seemed quieter than ever. Seconds passed until suddenly the tip left his back and a girlish voice laughed out into the night. Ishmael turned angered to the point of bursting and looked upon the woman standing there, the scar on her face still there as it had first been as he had met her. Hannah, or Joanna as her real name was almost crumbled into a heap, bending over in laughter. Even though he felt a bit angry he could not help smile at her as she sat down on her bottom. Still chuckling. After several attempts to calm herself Hannah stopped laughing and stood up only tall enough to reach to his chest. Still she towered higher than many other women he had seen.

"I have been looking for you Leam, there…"

"Ishmael"

"What?"

"My real name is Ishmael Clark. I did not tell you my real name at first because I did not trust you."

"Alright, that’s ok." Even though the words rang with clarity and truth, her body told him she did not really like being lied to. "Anyway. I have been looking for you… Ishmael. The Lost ones have flooded Necropolis. I first noticed some of them running like wild from something in the real world, I expected them to go away to where they had come from but they did not. Lost they wandered the streets, shouting for others that were as lost as themselves. After a while they started settling into the houses and soon also my house," her eyes shone with anger and frustration, no wanderer meddled with the lost, "they flooded into the afterworld like ants. Men women children alike. After a while I saw some of them being taken by the hounds, their bodies being ripped apart by their steel claws. And I saw others. Men not unlike the lost ones, all dressed the same way in green clothes wrapped around them and their bodies, even their faces were veiled, and they wore colored glasses as if the sun shone brightly enough to burn them, and their presence were odd, like they were only here by half. They ran with the hounds, they hunted together, killing and maiming women and children alike. But the men were kept alive just to be chained together and herded away while the hounds feasted on the bodies of those who had died fighting back. It was horrible, and all the while I wondered why you weren’t here to help. I could do nothing to help them. I know that meddling with them is forbidden somehow. But they fell before the hands of those who shouldn’t be here. The half ones." Her face had gone from firm to childish and helpless, and tears could have streaked from her eyes when she was done.

"There must be something we could do Leam." Ishmael’s head felt like it spun with thoughts and questions. He knew who was behind all this, he had been there only too late to do something. The virus must have spread and taken these new ones here. And now Lucifer was rounding them up, but for what?" The answers seemed to crash into him with even more force than usual, almost knocking him off his feet. He came back to his senses and noticed how the only thing still holding him up was Hannah struggling with all her strength against his weight.

Carefully he took a hold of her shoulders and pushed her away, but only as her small hands left his body he crashed towards the ground and landed on his back with a thud. He could hear her mutter through the haze that lingered before his vision and hearing. His limbs were weak, and his mind was even more so. And as his senses started returning the only thing he could think of was her beautiful face. The pale faced ageless girl dragging him by his arms, her long black hair framing her face and the long scar that somehow suited her hard features. Her dark red lips were pressed firmly together from the effort of pulling him. As he tried to get up she only snapped a word at him to be still and he obeyed. She were even more beautiful angry, she was angry wasn’t she? Somehow the answers came slower than usual, almost slow enough to be comprehensible, but not slow enough. Then everything started to fuzz together. Images, sounds came to him randomly and mostly at different times like from a half broken TV. And finally it all became blank. He was aware, aware of himself and the gentle but firm hands dragging him by his clothes. But no thoughts formed in his mind. And his body seemed far away from control. Like a dream of nothing…

Ishmael woke up with a start, almost expecting the sun to be up and shining down on him, how long had it been since he had slept? The answers stabbed deep into his chest as well as his mind but he shut them off. Hannah was nowhere to been seen in the small ruin of a house he lay within. It had no roof and all the windows were blown out from what seemed to have been intense heat since the walls were blackened and burnt clean into the concrete that had started to crack. He lay on a thin mattress of cardboard and had a worn blanket by his hips. He remembered himself getting there very vaguely. Silently he rose to his feet and let go of the blanket and looked around and out through the windows, seeing nothing but the dense night. Far away he could hear shouting, the sirens of a police car, then suddenly they vanished. The silence did not for long, the next second a small tank stood outside the window firing it’s canon along the street while a squad of soldiers stormed forward under heavy fire from ahead, and he could see through the window how two of them were ripped apart by an explosion that he was sure would have reached him the next second but instead the night became silent again, and all of the soldiers were gone, all but the two dismembered bodies. Ishmael mumbled a silent prayer while turning his head as not to see. Other sounds took by where one ended, both close and far away. But never close enough to see.

"So you are awake now, I thought you would sleep forever". Hannah’s clothes were torn and ripped from what looked to be fighting. And her hand held a short sword rather than a dagger and along the blade were stains of fresh blood. In her wake came three men in different ages, the oldest and sturdiest of the three, a black man about twenty five looked doubtfully at him over Hannah’s shoulder. All three had some sort of weapon in their hands. Ishmael felt the sword appearing in his back, weighting him down.

"How long have I…"

"Too long my love, all too long. Somebody seems to be capturing and gathering every Lost one they can get their hands on, at least the males, the women and the children under the age of 12 are all killed upon sight.

These men sought protection for their families and themselves under my arms, I do not think that such protection could be given from me but they did not take no for an answer. Their families are dead or lost. They have sworn to follow, but if you want them to scatter and fight their war for themselves, I will make them".

Ishmael could do nothing but stare in wonder at her beautiful face and her agonized expression. The scar ruining…no, decorating her face.

"Well, what do you say…Leam?"

He almost woke up again, enchanted by her features. No wonder they had burned her on a stake. What man could not want her by himself? Pain, No! Those clear angles and her firm body, those green glittery eyes.

"Let them do as they please, we rule no one. And thereby we are not ruled by others. They ARE alive Hannah. Can’t you see it?" A shiver shot down along his spine at the thought of even coming close to one of them, and how he had shook hands with one of them. "You are free to go" he said aloud as to make sure all of them heard.

"Free to fight, free to die, free to think as you wish. I can give you no words to help you here."

Hannah’s eyes glittered even more than they had the second before, didn’t they. Pleading.

"We will follow." The black man said with a deep voice. "I am Abrahn, this here is Eric and his brother Joshua. We are ready to follow you and your…" his eyes darted for Hannah’s back,"…friend. We have no families to save, we have no other friends alive than each other, and if this had been another day, the three of us had probably been fighting each other. But now… Everything is different. We have seen men chained and pulled at like animals, we have seen women and children being killed as if less than the ground their blood colored red. We never knew that we were living in a word like this, a world that was an open soar, and now it has started bleeding again. We are determined to stop it. But we cannot without help."

"We will help". Ishmael was surprised at his own answer but could not help staring back at Hannah’s glittering emerald green eyes. A smile split her face pulling at her scar. And before he knew better she was hugging him, rubbing blood onto his clothes and his neck where she gently kissed him. Her cold lips to his hard and just as cold skin. Ishmael could not stop wondering how he could feel like this without his heart beating in his chest.

Eric, a twenty year old redhead stood by the windows as a hound howled not far away and he instinctively pulled back, getting closer to his blonde and blue eyed brother that was squeezing a stick as thick as his wrist and at least a foot longer than himself. Both of them looked more than frightened and their presence revealed that they were, but not as frightened as full of hate and revenge.

"We better get out of here and start working" Hannah exclaimed as another howl sounded, now even closer."

"You are right" Ishmael agreed and started walking for the door that had long ago been burned down leaving only the hinges on the door frame. For now the night was silent outside but they all ducked a bit as to make themselves smaller, even Abrahn standing well over two meters tall ducked though he still reach well over everybody else by half a meter. There was another howl that could not have come from farther away than the next street, another one answering, and another. Within a minute at least eight different hounds were howling around them, their shrieks setting fear into the hearts of the three men that clutched their weapons hard. Ishmael walked point all the way to the next turning of the street. The four others were walking close behind him and almost bumped into him as a police car came rushing forward in high speed from nowhere, disappearing just as quick as it had appeared. A loud growl made Ishmael spin around and search the street with his eyes. Two hounds stood growling and drooling in a doorway across the street, by some reason waiting and their too human eyes on the only female among them, Hannah. The group took a stance of organized defense though the three followers held back a bit, not really knowing if these beasts could be fought.

Ishmael took a steps forward when another two hounds skidded to a halt at the end of the street they were walking, and another two from the way they had came, and they all seemed to wait for something. Abrahn growled words of anger back at the fearful beasts scraping their steel claws to the ground.

"Get back, get them out of here" Ishmael ordered, addressing Hannah standing close to him with her short sword already stained with blood in her hand.

"Let them come" Abrahn yelled, as much to Ishmael as to the creatures slowly surrounding them. Every once in a while one of them howled, and every time Eric and Joshua jumped as if every hound had launched themselves at them.

"No Abrahn, we will not fight if we don’t have to." Ishmael reached out his mind and formed a gate behind them against a door behind them. Anyone who passed through the door would come to where he wanted. The second later three men came up behind the two hounds in the doorway, both were dressed in dark green clothes wrapped around their limbs, and their presence shone brightly green. And their eyes were covered with pitch black shades.

"Surrender and none of you… will be hurt". The man’s voice sounded distant and dark through the thick layers of cloth wrapped around him, but the mocking and hatred could still be heard through it.

"Get through the doorway, all of you" Ishmael told the others in a calm voice though his inner was a turmoil of aggression and anger. Only Eric and Joshua was fast to act and did as he said, though slowly. Close to each other they backed towards it.

"No point resisting, we will get you soon enough, and maybe you will not be unhurt, gather your senses and do as we say. All three were out in the street now with the hounds obediently at their feet, almost curling up against their legs like they were cute little puppies. One of the men were carrying a thick chain with hard points to lock arms and legs.

"We will not surrender, weather it is to you or anyone else." Hannah’s voice was cold as ice and strong as any man’s could ever be, almost commanding.

"Not even to The One returned?" another of the men said calmly, almost without any emotion at all in his voice.

The night seemed to die and even the hounds were silent, waiting.

"Move back Hannah. These are men of no trust. Men of the Lord of Lies. Your tongues are dripping with lies he has put into your heads, lies that turns to truth as you accept them. We have no dealings with you. Return to where you came from and bother us no more and you will not regret it."

The three men almost broke out in laughter all at the same time and even the hounds seemed somewhat amused as if they had understood what he had said. But in the middle of the laughter one of them regained himself and screamed at the top of his lungs.

"Take them, and kill that female" His hand was stretched out and pointing towards Hannah and the next second his arm came up six hounds leaped forward for a kill. Ishmael screamed as loud as he could and rushed forward at the hounds and he could tell they were somewhat surprised at it. Ishmael swung his sword back and forth in the commotion, not caring if he cut off their legs or heads, either way the hounds lay screaming and thrashing while slowly dying around him. He had killed three of the hounds before the three men had hardly understood what had happened.

Hannah had slain another with her short sword and Abrahn was still pounding another one’s head with the nails on his baseball bat which he had gotten hold of somewhere. The last one of them was backing slowly, it’s razor sharp teeth glistening with saliva. The three men stood their grounds behind the dog, all three drawing their swords.

"You will pay for killing the divine servants of The One, you will pay." The man that supposedly was the leader said while feeling the edge of his sword.

"Kill them, slowly" he ordered, and the two others did as he said and started walking forward. Ishmael slowly backed away from them towards the gate. And so did Hannah and Abrahn.

"You know what will happen if you die here don’t you?" Ishmael asked, ignoring the answers that poured into his head.

"Insane it’s called in your other world. When the mind dies and your bodies remain alive. You will fade to death if someone else does not kill you before that out of pure compassion." The two looked doubtful for a while but continued their approach with their leader close behind them and the hound by their feet.

"Go through the gate Abrahn, go while you still have life to carry you."

"No, I go when you go brother, not a second earlier." Ishmael could only feel fear for the huge man’s life.

"Hannah, take him through even if you have to carry him".

"No I won’t you fool. You think I would leave you here by yourself?" The question probably stabbed her as it did him. His anger welled up even more and before he even had given it a thought he was between the three men whirling around and they all started to fall, but before they had reached the ground with a deafening scream they faded out of vision and were nowhere to be seen. Only the hound remained in the afterworld, his skull nailed to the ground by the tip of Ishmael’s sword. Ishmael yanked his sword free with a ringing sound and took a firm grip of Hannah’s arm, pulling her through the gate with Abrahn following close behind, his head turned to see the result of what he had not really seen happening.

7. THE FORCES OF WRONG OR RIGHT.

Ishmael landed lightly on the frosty grass not far away from where he had left David Ogden and his weary friends to find the camp of the lost ones. The landscape looked a little different though close around the camp, nothing had changed. Like the lost ones somehow fixed the land around them. Eric and Joshua were already there, back to back they stood like statues clutching their weapons close. Ishmael released Hannah’s arm, wondering if he’d hurt her in the process but she did not twitch an eyebrow. And as usual he could not tell nothing of her presence. She cloak without thinking of it which made her somehow hard to understand. Abrahn came shortly after, backing through the gate his hand still hard around the baseball bat he used as a weapon.

Now what? The question was as painful as ever. Stabbing his mind and blurring the rest of his thoughts. That he never learned. All the others stood looking at him, wondering. All of them keeping their distance from him as he would erupt in violence. He made his sword disappear to make them feel more at ease but still the only one to dare stand closer than a meter was Hannah.

"This is one of the Lost One’s camps" Hannah said loudly for any one of them to hear.

"Yes" Ishmael replied deeply in thought. "We have to warn them about what is going on, prepare them before Lucifer kills or capture them, turning them over to his side. We have to." Slowly he started walking towards the dull camp ahead. "Come." And they all followed him. Abrahn last, checking their rear, Joshua and Eric close together and Hannah by his side only a step behind working her shorter legs to keep up with him. The camp was almost completely silent as they entered, but eyes widened quickly as they were spotted and silent whispers passed through the camp as wildfire. And when they had reached the middle of the camp almost a hundred lost ones had gathered around them, keeping their distance, all radiating fear as much as curiosity. They were dressed in ragged clothes, some had wounds and gashes that slowly trickled of blood. The group of five stopped in the middle of a clearing of houses and people, all stood looking at them with weary eyes, women holding the younger ones protectively behind their backs though their curiosity could not hold them away. Suddenly a part of the circle divided and an middle aged man wearing long, surprisingly colorful red robes stepped into the circle after him came seven other men, none of them dressed as the first but the same bright green robes with red borders.

"What are you doing here wanderers? Why are you here?" The man’s voice almost cut into their minds as much as the answers.

"There are unwritten rules, passed on in generations here. Rules none have broken since the great year of death no less than two thousand years ago, still you stand in the camp of the Unguided as it was your ground to stand upon. We were reserved this land, this piece of reality in the ocean of chaos around us, still you stand here like you were men of ours. And you…" he said diverting his eyes to the three Followers standing close to each other. How can you walk with him, a man of the lost worlds, a forever wandering creature of the darkness? How can this be that you betray your brethren here by bringing him here. All these years of starvation and suffering, of pain and woe. And you bring them here." Though Hannah shielded her presence well her body language revealed that she was worried and troubled.

"I am L…" Ishmael started.

"NO, don’t bring your lies into our hearts too. Don’t preach to us what we are not supposed to hear, what we cannot understand. We have what we want and will return one day, without your treacheries. Be gone you…"

"No wait" Ishmael turned his head to match the familiar voice with a familiar face. David Ogden stood in the clothes that he had worn that day at the river, and by his side stood Ethan, supporting him in what he was going to say. Ishmael’s eyes met David’s one for only a brief moment.

"I believe in this man." The red robed man’s head snapped around to look in David’s direction.

"How dare you question the authority of the elders? You know the penalty Ogden." The man lifted his hand high into the air and eight men seemed to fade out from the background armed with spears and chain mail for protection. And in the center of their chests on their mails was a red eagle painted. And Ishmael could have sworn that the men had not been there the second before.

"Scouts, take him away".

"No I don’t think we should haste Elder", one of the green clad men muttered loudly. There is still much to be investigated here." The elder looked as he was about to explode but took on a more diplomatic tone as the other green men muttered unison with the first to have spoken. The scouts stopped a few yards away from the two men that had stood up to help him.

"Red Eagles, Step back!" One of the green elders said and the soldiers of the lost ones stepped back cautiously.

The same man stepped forward to stand by the Red Elder. His jaws were angular and strong as well as his body.

His blue eyes glittered with pride as if not even aware of the large hole in his chest, coloring his robe dark red instead of green.

"I am called Thor. I function as the elder scribe in this camp. I have spent many years in the camps, almost as long as the elder himself. And what I have learned is that all those years that we have kept away from the Everwalkers we have always missed something, just like when everyone makes a choice, when the path is chosen a hundred others are neglected." The crowd stood silent, melting what Thor had said.

"I vote for giving the old ways a new perspective. The unwritten rules is just what you say, unwritten as far as I know after the encounter with one Everwalker just after the great deaths. We have starved and bled since, and to what use? Just to hear about men being slaved and women and children killed just for the sake of it. I believe we have more to gain by standing our ground and explore." The elders murmured among themselves for a minute, throwing glances back and forth among the involved.

The Elders looked at each other as if they had agreed on something, nodding their heads and rubbing their robes around them to keep out the cold. Even the Grand Elder seemed pleased even though he had been pushed back by the will of the others. And after clearing his throat loudly as to make sure all of the attention was on him he stated as if it had been his thought all day…

"I have decided after consultation with my council to consider accepting Everwalkers in our camp. Though there will, as always, be the time of reconsideration before the council lays it’s votes before me. That time has been decided to be the running of twelve glasses. Until then the Everwalkers and their… companions will be granted a wagon no less than a hundred paces away from the camp’s outer border. That is how it is to be decided, and so shall it be." Again the Eagle marked men, that Ishmael noticed bore no marks of wounds or even bruises, faded from nowhere and formed a ring around them, heading out of the camp. And they all started walking. Most people scurried away to what ever they had been doing before their arrival, but some of the more suspicious followed, as if to make sure they really left. Ishmael walked with somber steps not really looking at anyone as if it would hurt. He would probably never get used to them. Their morbid bleeding bodies and warm flesh. Lost in his concentration to avoid noticing the their gazes he was started by somebody putting an arm around his right one. But the second after their bodies had touched he knew that it was Hannah. And almost regally they walked out of the camp, escorted by the scouts. One of the men, the one that walked point were the only one wearing a helmet decorated with a long green plume, marking him as the leader. And he guided the group of warriors with simple hand signs. And within moments they were exactly a hundred paces from the border of the camp and the Leader turned towards them. His stern face looked hard and angular, like being made of clay. Only the glittering moist of his eyes made him look human at all.

"This is as far away as you must stay, if you wander beyond this point…" he took a spear from one of his men and drove it deep down into the frozen ground without any effort at all. "We will hunt you down and kill you all. The wings and eyes of the unguided will have their eyes on you, even though you may not see them. Beware Everwalkers, for there are other things to fear." And with that he turned his heel and started walking away.

"Beware warriors of the Unguided" Ishmael shouted after them as they all faded into the background and disappeared. And after a while standing there staring at the spear the group was brought a large wagon with place for two and worn bedrolls for the whole group. Somehow Ishmael and Hannah ended up sleeping in the wagon while Abrahn, Eric and Joshua took their places around the wagon, not close enough to disturb, but not further away than they could be there within the blink of an eye. Ishmael and Hannah laughed somewhat at the though of even trying to sleep. They would never sleep, never tire in the way as to feel exhaustion dragging their eyelids down. Still, the others had too. Eric and Joshua fell asleep within minutes after the small camp had been built. Abrahn sat up in his bed for a long time before he slumped down into his bed. Exhausted. Ishmael could do nothing but to try avoid to look at them too long, sitting at the end of the wagon. Suddenly Hannah came out from inside the wagon and sat down beside him.

"I always dreamed of going back. Back to the real world. Now I don’t know. I can almost feel how it has changed while I have been staying here. I always wondered if I were dead. I mean really dead. If this was really it. If all I had believed in, or rather been taught to believe in had been wrong. The rules of which I had lived my life by seemed in vain. All that I lost. I had so many questions when I came here." Her eyes glittered with honest sadness as she looked deep into his. "What I have learned is never going to be enough. I guess we find our quests from our passed lives again here. Just to find that there is no more parts of the puzzles here. I’m scarred Ishmael. Really scarred. I thought everything here was evil. According to my beliefs there is a hell. And I always thought of this as it. I don’t know how to tell you this really. But somehow you have proven me wrong. You are good. And I can feel that." Her arm came to go around his waist and she crept up closely to him. "I am safe with you."

Almost startled he moved his arm to hold her with one arm while the other gently brushed her long raven hair. He did not know what to say. So he just held her "I’m so tired Ishmael. I haven’t closed my eyes for so long. Always looking for a way. A way out here. Perhaps even find the truth as it should be. Not as just the answers in my head." She was starting to sob to his chest. No tears leaked from her eyes. How many times had he not tried and wanted to cry? The answers stabbed so fiercely. How many times had he not wanted to bleed? His mind was like a stormy sea. The answers rushed back and forth only clouding his thoughts more by every second. He made it stop and realized he was squeezing Hannah so tight to him.

"Never leave me Ishmael." Her nails were digging into his body.

"I won’t leave you. I promise." Gently he leaned forward and kissed her neck. All the time brushing her hair through his fingers.

Looking up into his eyes once more he almost felt breath taken. Her beauty was there in her face as well as the immortality of her grief. The grief of not knowing. And suddenly their lips were pressing tightly together. Ishmael closed his eyes. Feeling her soft hands in his hair, her soft scent of a hundred dried roses. It all seemed to last forever. But when their lips parted the longest of eternities would never seem quiet enough. Ishmael stood and carefully lifted Hannah’s feather light body into his arms. Kissing her when he had her as close to him as possible. Love did not need hearts beating, love did not need your lovers breath to its cheek. Ishmael felt like never letting go of her. Just cradling her in his arms, soothing her pains as well as his. He did not need to talk. He did not need to ask her questions. His being was empty just as it was filled to its edges like a cup of wine. And he was afraid to spill even a drop as much as he wanted more.

Gently he lay her down on one of the beds neatly arranged a little apart from each other and carefully laid down beside her. Never being further away than her touch. If he had ever wanted to pass on from this place, or gone back, he regretted all those moments. He could not even remember such a time. There was no passed, nor was there a future as their lips once again met with passion.

That night, the crystal moon sang with distant joy over the frozen wastes. The waters of the three undying rivers reflecting the light and casting it’s cold light on the grass around it. Maybe even the grass seemed less pale and the trees more living. And what no one saw, high in the night soared two great birds. The night owl beautifully dark, her wings hardly working in the cold air to gain height. And by her side protectively, with wings as broad as two men glided a falcon. His black head declaring his belonging to her. Forever…

Lucifer smashed his gauntlet fist harshly into the arm of the seat he was occupying. The anger inside would never heal by itself. The One would return one day. His own twin that he had once managed to kill. It had just not been right, he said to himself trying to calm himself. He had been the older one, just by a minute when born. Still his brother had been the one to be cherished by so many. Taken away from his mother and father, NO, left to die, he convinced himself once more had he been found and at the day of his passing to this place, they had met anew. He had been appointed to carry the unwanted key of night while his twin, his little brother had been appointed as the guardian of the day. The living had not understood the greatness of his gifts, the rest he gave them and the land. Unappreciated he had prevailed a long time. And know he would have all the keys for himself. All the power, he would decide over day and night, time and distance. And people would cherish him. Only him. None would be less, none would be more. He would rule the world as he wanted. Carefully he raised his head as the gates to the old cathedral he used as his place of solitude opened and let in a few more rays of moon light than the broken windows high in the towers did. A crow left it’s place high up in the ceiling and flew away out the window. He hated those disturbances from the real world. Just as he hated the green draped man coming down the red carpet rolled out in the middle of the cathedral from the entrance to his throne. But he needed them. Needed them to do his chores. He needed their eyes and minds. The tall man was almost transparent in his eyes. A belonging of two worlds at the same time. A great risk for them. Still it granted them the powers they had asked for in their serving of him.

"WHAT HAVE YOU TO BRING ME THIS TIME NAUGRIM?" The man silently bowed, kissing the dais where the throne stood through the thick green clothes covering his face.

"I have come with great news Lord. Our scouts have found two camps of the Damned. Somehow they do not seem to move as other things move my Great Lord. The land changes, even the city moves, always changing, but the position of the Damned remain the same. We have eyes at both camps, watching their every move. There are many men to be collected there, I come to receive the order to wipe both camps out Lord."

"RISE NAUGRIM. YOU HAVE DONE WELL." His mind was boiling. He had been right. The Damned was shielded to him somehow. Had always been. And he had not yet had the power to unshield them. But now he had the tools.

"WIPE THEM OUT. I WANT HEADS NAUGRIM, HEADS TO DECORATE MY CHURCH." Naugrim had hardly dared to rise before him. He still kneeled in front of him as one of the hounds he kept below in the catacombs. If the One would be born among the Damned as the prophecies said he would wipe them out. All of them.

"It will be as you command Lord. Shall I gather your escort?" The question stabbed him like a few other things, but it only forced him to be seated for a few seconds more.

"NO NAUGRIM. SEND YOUR TROOPS TO BATTLE. I HAVE OTHER THINGS TO TEND TO." Would he be able to find any more wanderers out there? No! Yes he would he decided. He would let out all of his hounds tonight. There was one key missing from his necklace. The key of righteousness . "AND IT WILL BE MINE."

Ishmael lay silently brushing Hannah’s bare shoulder, staring at her tranquil face. The scar there seemed less apparent now than when he had first met her that day on the roof. She was closing her eyes as if asleep, but he knew otherwise. She would never sleep more than he did. And it really felt like he had never slept. He could hardly remember the feeling when he closed his eyes and dreamed. Carefully he kissed her eyelids as to not disturb her calm. But when he withdrew his lips he noticed how her lips formed into a smile and her eyes slowly opened. Her skin was pale and soft, feeling so frail in his hands.

"I love you." Her words came out as a whisper, almost too low for him to hear. But just almost.

"I love you too." Again their lips closed in on each others but just as they was about to meet aloud yell came from somewhere outside. Other yells answered them. And the next second several hounds howled out in unison.

Both their heads turned away at the same time and they rushed up, their clothes already on their backs. Ishmael had his sword in hand and his handgun in the other as he almost came flying out of the open canvas of the wagon closely followed by Hannah with her short sword in hand and a dagger in the other. Their Follower were already up and dressing as fast as they could. With Abrahn hurrying them on. Ishmael’s head followed the edge of the closest hills and the vicinity of the camp. No more than a hundred yards away at least fifteen hounds came lumbering in full charge over the crest of a hill. And the next second they were followed by no less than fifty green draped men and at perhaps twenty more hounds howling their agony out into the cold of the night. Their red eyes glittering as the light of the full moon hit them. Ishmael took a step forward to stand before Hannah as if to protect her but just as fast she followed to stand right by his side. And soon all five of them stood in a group with less than a yard between them. It was only a matter of seconds. The three followers shone with fear, but also with fierce determination to stand their ground. Ishmael fearlessly started walking forward and the others followed him. The sword was already spinning in his hand like it was a part of him. He could hear the breaths of the three first hounds running hard to reach their prey. And when they were close enough the three of them jumped high into the air, reaching for his throat. Ishmael only felt it happen, was not aware of what he did. Time seemed to slow down a bit and with speed he did not think he had ever had he slid to the side, cutting one of the hounds in half. The two others landed a couple of yards behind and were soon taken care of by the others. Ishmael was sure they could handle them. They had too. There was too many this time. And escape was not an option. The lost ones would become slaughtered otherwise and that would only happen after his passing.