Saturday, October 3, 2015

Chimera: Class of 666 | 1.3.2 | Part One "Waking Up" | Chapter Three "The Iron Gauntlet"

Story: Chimera: Class of 666
Part: One "Waking Up"
Chapter: Three "The Iron Gauntlet"
Authored by: 
Hannah Nyland (The Irreverent Revenant
All Rights Reserved.

Chimera: 
Class of 666
By Hannah Nyland and Jerad Sayler

I glance around to make sure no one had been paying
attention to us.  The other cousins are chatting to each other on the opposite side of the basement.  They aren’t of course, Jack seems pretty thorough, maybe there was magic he was working here as well.  I resist the urge to scan the room for spells and notice Jack has not stopped in his tale.  I mentally rush to catch up. 
“Once I entered the greatest most horrible rubix cube in creation the fun really began. The labyrinth of iron and brimstone was a maze in at least three dimensions,” he says before his face grows solemn. 
“…This part gets very private. Actually, I may literally have PTSD from my trip there. This is the first time I have ever gone into this much detail about it. All the other times I was asked I always say ‘I went to hell, it was horrible, I don't want to talk about it.’”
Jack breaks off and looks down into the heart of his half empty cup. He stares into it, brows furrowed and knitting. Then he snaps out of it and keep going. As he continues his tone goes from matter-of-fact to tired and resigned. Acceptance and self-realization perhaps?  I wonder how much I have really changed from my ordeal.
 “…And… I guess I still don't really want to talk about it... I faced my inner demons, my literal inner demons given form in the Supernal. I relived every horrible thing I did, every selfish thing I have ever said. Anytime I was weak or hurt the people around me. Anytime I hurt another through action or inaction. There was a lot of material to cover. I played all the parts in these revelation sessions. By the time I was in the middle of it I knew I deserved this pain. They tortured me. I tortured myself. Physical pain and emotional pain are the same thing there, no body, just the mind and the nightmares. I created this place, or maybe I was perceiving Pandemonium through the filter of my life experience. I really                                                                               thought I was in the Christian Hell, and that I was never going to leave.”
“In fact, at one point they did trick me. I thought I was out. I continued life as soul liberated from hell.  Life went on for a subjective year. Then that angler-demon showed up and said it was all a lie and that I never really left.  Then Bam! I was back in it, the lights came up. I think that is part of what finally broke me Hell. And then I truly believed that the damned never escaped this place, in some ways I never survived, never left, or part of me died there.”
I was very, very wrong about Jack being casual about telling this. No one could be. I don’t say anything, just listen, completely unsettled. My drink is still mostly untouched.
“Then through the new round or torment I started fighting back. I had nowhere else to go but up.  The only weapon you have against a Pandemonian demon of this kind is your willpower alone.  And when you have nothing else to lose… well you have nothing else to lose.”
He pulls out a deck of cards and pulls XI (the Hanged Man) from the deck.   On the card a man hangs upside down in a vaguely angular way that perhaps invokes an inverted crucifixion.

“The Hanged Man… to bear pain stoically and never again cry uncle. It took forever to insensate myself to the point I could actually resist. Pain started to become my power, it fueled my will. I waded through thorns of psychic torment... faced all my sins... my weakness scourged from my body. Not purified… but melted down and forged into iron.”
Concern flashes across my face, and then I go still. Waiting, almost with dread.  He sips and starts again.
“Then I reached it… At the center of the endless labyrinth… a maze that defied all reason and concept of distance or direction… I got to the center. All my agony and willpower formed a singularity.”
“I saw the Iron Tower. The tower is a clenched fist, a phallic gauntlet. The prison inside the prison. But I was about to become a jailor. That is what I thought was going to happen. I would be destroyed or I would become a Demon. I was ready. Inside was an Iron maiden of jagged Iron rusty spikes. The tower burned like a forge. Through the guardian Manticores I formed my will into a psychic blade that pieced the pain and carved my name into the walls of the brimstone crucible forever.  I wrote my name … my one True name, the center of my identify. I forged a link to this Truth and was awakened!”
Jack smiles this last, it doesn’t touch my eyes. His voice seems dead now, grim determination.
“So that was it. My psychological being was torn limb from limb by demons of my own making, every pain was a judgment, a consequence and a lesson. Until I finally let go of all my hang-ups, my baggage, my damage, my unclean soul was rarefied as if sandblasted away. Gleeful surgery without painkillers, the act of healing a tumor and cutting it away has to be felt to actually work. I suffered the eversion (turning inside out) of my soul many times. And you experienced this same vertigo and loss of reason.”
 “When I woke from the longest most horrible dream I knew I was really back. Pandemonium was more real than my entire life, the lessons forged from ever act, sin, fear, weakness were instilled into me.  It was so vivid… by contrast, this reality seems so… cloudy.”
I understood.  “I remember.” I meet that cold gaze with my own.  He nods in acknowledgement. 
“And you know the rest. I still felt it when I woke up, the channel back to that place. My soul was changed, my will was refined. I had a body, an actual body. And it hurt to be alive. It was a joy. Then I, like the rest of us, quickly found and called upon the Sights for the first time. Which you have already found.” Jack downs the rest of his cup of coffee. “Are you okay? I didn’t scare you too bad did I?”
 “Fine. I’m fine,” I lie. There is nothing I could possibly say that would be an adequate response to the story I have just heard. Hesitantly, I reach out and pat him on the back before letting my hand drop. It was just as awkward as when he tried to comfort me.  I think about my test and my face hardens. “We won. So I guess that’s what matters.”


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