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This story is completely mine, and any similarities between persons, characters and the like, living or dead, is completely coincidental, yadda yadda, blah blah, don't steal. Got it?
Introduction
In all of the planes that exist, Ereth – or, what the humans would call Hell – was one of the legendary planes that everyone within the mortal realm feared and became a vital part of religion; its true name and appearance lost within centuries of tales and imagination. It was a realm that held no clear sky or multi-colored hues. As some tales of Ereth are described, the lands were painted in blood reds and bright oranges and tints of yellow, created by what is explained as hellfire that sparked up freely along the cracks within a ground that held no grass or plant life. Where plants would grow along the crusted and cracked floors of Ereth, twisted trees grew with branches feathered out, their color but a dull, depressing gray, some even black, but seemed to glow from within as what people explained as magma coursing through their veins. Rock formations were that of cave formations; where cliffs jutted out, stalactites clung underneath the overhands of land, reaching desperately toward the black seas or the ground beneath, and on such land, spikes of stone jutted up from the earth and towered high into the ever-dark and cloudy skies that sparked with an odd red-hued lightning. There are nine different layers of Ereth, and most are similar to one another – the main changes being the heat and just how much of the red hellfire consumes the lands, spurting to life and spreading with what seems like a mind of its own.
And within this dark, strange realm lives a multitude of species, a fair number of them being tamed into pets by the people of Ereth, of whom go by many names throughout the planes; Yauntril, Haun’na, Gods, and even Devils. These are the native people of Ereth, who are similar, and yet so different from the human kind. The majority of these great, immortal beings are tall, ranging anywhere from six to twelve feet in height, and some even taller. They are chaotic, arrogant, greedy, power-hungry, and a great number of them could even be considered heartless. Although immortal, they are killable. Due to their usually corrupt personalities, war is waged on nearly a daily basis, grudges are held between one another, and most never live past the age of sixty. Although, there are few that have either a high amount of luck, or the skills to survive, and escape death for around double that lifespan, if not a little bit longer.
Each of these nine layers of Ereth has its own name, and these names are really but numbers in the ancient tongue of these people. The most spoken of these layers is called ‘Nehn’, the ninth and lowest layer. As the stories of Nehn among Ereth go, its fires roar deafeningly, unending across a purely flat, black land, the cracks upon it seeming to lead into an infinite abyss, and the heat is unbearable to any being dumb enough to set foot within Nehn. Though none can go within this layer, somehow it has become an unseen legend within a number of different realms separate of Ereth, and the most typical description of Hell today.
Now that you know a little of the truth about this realm and its main inhabitants, I would like to tell you a story of one of these legendary ‘devils’, as you people call them today, and his adventures on another plane of existence.
Who am I, you ask? Well, names really are not that important, I believe, but, if you insist on me giving you one… I suppose you may call me the Writer. Or, the Book, if you prefer, I really care not. Besides, are you not more interested in the tale I have to tell?
Either way, I intend to tell it. Read if you dare to be interested, or merely place this book back where you found it for another to read. The legend of this man that I speak of will be spread, one way or another, I am sure, for he deserves not to be forgotten.
“We’re the only ones that came!” Esrad answered truthfully, though through some other bout of horrible luck, a scream of agony from behind the door betrayed those words, followed by several other muffled voices. About every eye in the room went to the door, and several curses sputtered about the area.
“Liar!” The same guard spoke up again before glancing over at one of the others, “Lock that door!” He ordered. One of the guards broke their little formation around Esrad, and the others spread out a bit to fill in the space he had left as he moved to bring down the giant piece of metal that served as a latch of sorts.
He then turned his attention back to the young fire demon, and raised the point of his sword to him. “Kill him!”
The fire demon narrowed his eyes at the guard with the mouth, and gritted his teeth, slowly backing up as they approached. He should have known that they would have wound up wanting to kill him, especially since that robed loud mouth seemed to be just a little too open about the damn gate.
He could attempt to get past them, unlatch the door, and make a run for his life, where he was sure dozens of guards, along with whoever else was out there causing trouble, or he could attempt to fight, rather quickly get exhausted in a building full of Aeruns, or, he could possibly jump through an incomplete, untried portal, and see what happens. Thinking through his chances, Esrad could not help but think that the latter of the three alternatives was the best. The way he saw his options were, in order: either risk the chance of getting killed, wind up getting killed and wearing himself down to the point of where he was little more than easy target practice, or have that very slim chance of surviving and even, just maybe, escaping the Aeruns and their damnable caging and training…. Otherwise, get killed by transporting gate that would ultimately rip him to shreds one fragment at a time.
“Well, you ugly bastards,” Esrad began as he heard the magical hum of the gate drawing closer to his back and blaring in his ears, “I hate to break it to you, but none of you are going to get the satisfaction of running me through!” He gave them all a cocky grin and watched as they roared curses at him and attempted to get in one swing, one single cut, but neither of the guards could manage it before he disappeared into the blue glow of the gate. Where his body touched the ripples of the air between the stone, more of them sprayed outwards, an audible, soft boom reverberating about the room as he vanished completely.
Esrad shut his eyes tight as he fell backwards and felt the ground give way, and the air shift before him to the point of where he could barely breathe, a horrible heaviness pushing against his chest. To add onto that, there was a sickening twist in his stomach and a stinging ache in every one of his joints. He could not quite tell which might come first, but he felt as though either he was going to be split apart by the force the portal sent him spiraling in, or possibly wind up suffocating to death.
What was but a single moment seemed in this state to last an eternity before he felt a sudden burst of warmth against his skin and a blinding light against his eyelids. A split second later, his back hit something hard, rough, but relatively flat, causing him to gasp for his breath. His lungs protested to the air he inhaled, and he wound up choking over it, finding himself rather light-headed. He rolled over, off of his back, and balanced himself on his hands and knees as he desperately attempted to catch his breath – he could breathe just fine, but the air itself seemed to choke him.
The ground beneath his hands and feet felt so strange. It was almost soft, and a bit grainy, and from this ground jutted up what almost felt like giant, short bits of hair. Esrad risked a glance, for what his choking could let him, and caught the hazy image of dark brown, and green. Green was a color that was actually rather uncommon within Ereth... and to see such a color covering the strange floor beneath him was definitely odd.
His lungs very slowly adjusted to the equally strange and different air around him, but the rest of his person did not seem to be able to recover at all. He felt his limbs grow weak and buckle out from under him, sending his whole body back to the earth before him, his head lulling a bit as everything went numb, and pitch black. The last thing he could hear was a distant rustle, and muttering.
 F a t e of P a i n · Sun Nov 20, 2011 @ 09:35pm · 0 Comments |
