Helkey 5 – Hell Gate in the Arch of Time

Tick frigging tok.

We move swiftly down the halls toward Ivan Volkov – pausing at corners to make sure we’re unobserved. Mori is handy with his brief case. It has a switch that shoots out a signal interruption for any cameras in the halls. Mundanes and their tech are our most likely trouble up until the point when Ivan starts the big sploosh. I’m not too concerned about actual live demons rampaging right now. But our contacts with Felix and Gannon have me more than a little freaked out. Their wisp-hungry paw-prints, claw and tooth marks are all over the damned place. Part of me is wary of stumbling on mangled corpus, blood, viscera. Less likely this side of Hell. But man were those guys freaky with their combined curse resistance and pigs in shit wallowing happiness with just plain wrong. I slip my sweaty hand into my pocket. I produce my cell phone. I breathe out. I turn it on. The time is now frigging 6:23. I have 7 minutes left to live.

Omnis scienta shows Volkov again alone. He’s shaken off the red-head fem exec. He licks the last of the crumbs off his fingers, then thrusts a hand in a pocket. He pulls out an ear piece. Plunks it into his right ear. Flipping out his phone, he produces what looks like a play list. But he doesn’t turn it on yet.

“Really?” I whisper to my parents.

Beatrice shushes me. “He’s right down the hall,” she mouths more than speaks.

“But, musical dumps? Really?” I mouth back, pointing to the scene floating before us.

Mori smirks. I know he’s trying not to nervously laugh. He clasps me on the shoulder instead. Trying to reassure. But the effect is opposite. He does this every time he’s worried around me. Doesn’t calm me down for squat.

Ivan approaches a door. He produces a key card. We rush up to the corridor corner about 50 feet behind him. I peak around. The facing hall is bordered on one side by clear glass. I have an unobstructed view of the Berlin skyscape unfolding for miles and miles. The lights of evening are flickering on in the gloaming. Those distant storms have mostly departed leaving behind feathery cirrus that shade the sky in hews of pink and blue. At the end of this picturesque hall Ivan comes to a stop. The omnis scienta fades out as I see him in the flesh for the first time. My weirdo thought is – I’m taller than this man.

Ivan swipes his card over the reader. There is a little ‘beep’ as his access confirms. He turns the latch and I get a glimpse of marble floor ending in a platform edged with golden stairs beyond. He passes through the threshold. The door begins to swing shut behind him.

Mori lifts a hand. “Teneo,” he incants, casting a holding curse on the door. It swings shut and seems to close. But I know better.

Omnis scienta returns as we walk down the hall to the door. Ivan is moving across a marble floor with metal eagles ringed by circles embossed into it. There are three eagles. The eagle to the right appears poised to prey on the center eagle while the eagle to the left looks away. What they stand for, I’ve got no clue. But they seem way too fascist for comfort. Ivan comes to a set of ascending stairs as we reach the outer door. The stairs are golden and rise along the side of a black wall of glossy marble in juxtaposition to the white floor. The stairs terminate at a golden platform facing a frosted glass pair of double doors, each with another eagle emblem upon it.

We stop at the outer door as Ivan approaches his inner sanctum. He pauses for a moment, flips out his phone, then pushes play. Omnis scienta pulses with the sound of a revving engine and squealing wheels followed by heavy metal music.

“Gimmie fuel, gimmie fire, gimmie that which I desire!” rocks our eardrums through the sensor. Ivan Volkov is playing Metallica.

He lifts his arms wide to finger tap a rhythm. With that goblin grin, his face looks kinda like a bat. Rocking out to Metallica in a pink polo shirt. OK, then, a pink bat. He breathes deep, then opens the double doors. Inside is a globe-like chamber that seems to jut out into the sky. Most of the wall and ceiling is glass. The floor is a semi-circle of black marble. Toward the center is a raised section of golden metal. It’s probably actual fracking gold. Upon it is perched a single golden toilet with a golden bidet beside it. Ivan makes his way toward the toilet.

We’re still at the outer door. Mori gives it a little push. The latch never caught. Mori’s Teneo curse held it. It slides open without a sound. We enter, pouring in over the white marble and three eagles. The door shuts behind us, releasing a spark as Mori lets go of his curse. Holding two curses at the same time takes serious concentration. Mori’s had omnis scienta going for more than a half hour now. That’s true grit. Mori doesn’t show it. Hasn’t even broken a sweat.

We move halfway up the stairs, careful to stay out of sight through the doors. They’re frosted glass. So semi-opaque. If we bob our heads forward a little, we can see Ivan’s form as a pink and khaki blur through them. Omnis scienta shows quite a bit more. I’m kinda thinking I don’t want to watch what happens next.

Ivan is on the pedestal. He turns toward the glass and looks out over Berlin. The sound of Metallica is raging through our sensor. Mori lifts his hand and whispers – visus capitis – adding a modification to his sensor. Our perspective of Ivan blurs and shifts once more. We are now seeing through his eyes. Thank goodness. Looks like we’ll get the PG-13 version.

The view from where he’s standing is spectacular. At his perch he appears to be flying over the city. The glass walls bend in, giving the illusion that his platform toilet floats on a golden pedestal in a circle of black marble in midair. Above are the fading colors of twilight sky. In front, to the right and left, the German countryside rolls ever outward. Dim, but still visible in shades, mists, and little twinkling lights. Below on every side is all of Berlin bustling with evening activity. Cars and trains move like little toys. People seem insect size. Ivan’s fiddling with his trousers. He begins to unbuckle his belt. There is a zipping sound. A rustling of clothes. My phone says 6:29. The shit is literally about to go down on those poor people heading out to dinner or slogging through the still scorching evening outside air.

Ivan lowers himself onto the golden toilet with a happy sigh. He makes little motions with his hands to the music. “I am king,” he says in English at a break in the song and then sings along, badly and off-key – “Oooo wanna burn, fuel is pumping engines…”

There is a loud farting sound. I flinch. It sounds like a trumpet – continuing on for a good five seconds. No-one ever said anything about temporary Hell gates being aromatic. Well, maybe not entirely PG-13 either.

“Faetor oculorum,” Mori encants, now weaving in a fourth spell to our shared sensor. At first there is no distinction other than some red strands that look like fire rising up around Ivan. Yeah. That’s demonic influence all right. Like the guy has been rolling around in it. But other than Ivan the environment starts out pretty clear.

Ivan is still singing in narcissistic fugue — “Gimmie fuel…” and then a wet ‘plop!’

Below him, the glistening black marble pools. It seems to swirl hungrily. The little golden pedestal appears to float upon it like an autumn leaf skimming the surface of a dark, bottomless sea. I startle as a ripple of purple-red light flashes in its depths. Tiny, at first. But growing in size. I have a vision of a shark beginning to rise toward an unsuspecting sea otter floating on the surface. Another light appears. Then another. The edges of the marble begin to flicker, steadily bleeding into a circle of spectral red flame.

“This is it, Myra,” Beatrice says. “When I say go, I need you to run to that circle. Mori and I will make a distraction. Hopefully one that will last a year.”

I don’t fully get what she’s saying. But I guess that’s the whole point. I’m committed now. Hell I’m pretty much defiled. I will never be able to scrub this whole event from my memory. Ever. I nod, “I’m ready mom,” I reply. I can’t say ‘I love you’ because that would feel like a too-permanent goodbye. But I grab her arm and squeeze. She is suddenly holding me. So is Mori. He is just there as this big crow-like presence.

“Now Beatrice,” Mori says softly.

Beatrice strokes my hair, looks into my eyes and chants the curse — “Indespectus.” My body suddenly fades into invisibility. I hold my right hand up. I don’t see anything. I have gone completely blank. I turn to see if I have a shadow. Not even that. It’s a little disconcerting. Frack. Mom’s never used this one in my presence before. She’s still holding onto my left arm. I’m still getting my new invisible bearings when she taps it and invokes the second curse – “Infernum Clavis!”

Oh shit! That’s my name curse! Sparks immediately begin to fall from my arm. These are not entirely invisible.

Beatrice is pushing me forward. “Go!” she says, throwing away all caution. I spring up, driven by some kind of inner surge of bravery I didn’t know I had. There’s a niddling in my mind that I actually trained for this action. My muscles sure as hell remember what to do for some reason. I’m at the glass frosted doors. Mori has already rushed forward to kick one open. With his right hand he has pushed a third button on his briefcase.

Not the third button!

I spring forward through the door. My curse-enhanced sight shows the magic circle – now clearly formed. It is fully red and double ringed. Angry words in alien tongues fill out the gap. From the black marble, three spectral shapes have arisen. They appear to be formed of flesh and sinew without skin. Humanoid. But at least 7 feet tall. Their heads are skull-like but taper in the back toward points. Their hands distend into wicked claws the size of hedge shears. Before now, I’d only heard tales of the Pride-Eater demons. Yet here were three towering directly in front of me. Clutching hungrily at the glistening red tethers streaming off of Ivan’s inner wisp. They’ve gathered over Ivan – who is now playing the air drums on his golden toilet. One reaches out to stroke at Ivan’s head with a massive talon. It flicks some of Ivan’s thoughts from his mind. They appear as more red mist. The demon’s long tongue flickers out and laps at the bad-thought-mist like a cat lapping milk.

“Swallow future, spit out hope…” I hear it hiss along to the song. Hey, demons can enjoy Metallica too, I suppose. Information I really didn’t want to know.

My boots squeak as I race across the marble floor toward the circle. I’ve got more than a little fear driving me on now. Pride-Eaters are serious bad mojo. The three demons don’t notice me. Ivan is too wrapped up in his Metallica and hubris-high to hear the sounds of my footfalls. I definitely notice the serious stench of his farts and offal. Whew! I don’t give a flying fuck at the godsdamn moment as I make my way for a portion of the Hell gate not presently occupied by demons.

Mori is in the doorway. He pressed the third button, remember? There’s a whirring sound as his briefcase begins to transform. Yeah. Cool, right? A frigging transforming briefcase. The front section pops upward, extends and narrows, the bottom section splits, the back section elongates and widens, the handle stiffens and produces an optical scope. A few seconds later, Mori is no longer holding a black briefcase. It’s now a dreadful-looking magical, long-barreled assault rifle. He spins the optical on his scope and lifts his weapon into the ready position. From a pocket in his leather jacket, he produces a blue magazine that, to my curse-sight, crackles with divine energy. What’s he gonna do with that? Protect Ivan?

Not my problem. I am now at the edge of the circle. Sparks are flying from my arm. One of the demons tilts its head curiously at the falling light. It lifts a clawed hand. Its tongue flickers out – tasting the air. It doesn’t see me. But it senses something.

“Hey! Over here!” Beatrice has moved up beside Mori in the double doors. Her rapier is out and is glowing like a golden-silver beam of sunlight through a window on a winter’s day. The demon turns its eyes toward Beatrice.

“Blyat!” Ivan curses as he now sees my parents standing in the door, one holding a full-on overgrown assault rifle, the other a freaking sword. Another loud fart escapes his ass.

Beatrice’s shout has bought me the second I need. I jump into the air, cross the magical circle’s threshold, flip forward, and do a hand plant like a skater on my left arm. My hand hits the marble and for a moment I am suspended upside-down — staring into that black, flickering with red, marble. My active name-curse dumps sparks into the gateway which lights up brighter. It flashes once. Like a camera shudder opening. I fall face-first through it.

Darkness surrounds me. The sparks from my arm drift about me like lazy stars as I fall. My stomach is now in my throat. I shout “fuuuuccckkkk!” I can’t help it. I’m plummeting to my death or worse. Above, Ivan and the demons are rapidly receding, they don’t even notice me. No Earthly sound seems to cross the threshold I just breached. Though the harsh ethereal scrapes of Pride-Eater claws is quite loud. I shift to face the direction of my fall. Ahead is blackness and a little rainbow dot. The dot rapidly grows as I approach it. It bends into a rainbow arch that seems to stand on a rainbow floor. As I drift still closer, the colored archway moves in three dimensions – becoming a circle. It is the frigging Arch of Time. To pass from one world to the next, you have to go through it. Time seems to slow. The darkness in the center of the Arch bends toward me. I feel that I bend toward it. There is a ‘pop!’ and a feeling like I’ve been turned inside out. I am through! The darkness blurs away into a greenish glow as I tumble onto hot sand and take a gulp of noxious air.

I somersault three or four times before I come to a sprawling stop. Spread eagle on the ground, I look up at the green as goo colored sky. To my left, oily clouds of black smoke rise from an array of jagged dark-metal towers. Above, a merciless sun beats down. Beside the sun is what looks like a floating black web. It casts shade below it – providing pitiful relief to the scorching lands.

“We did it!” I choke in the rotten-eggs air. “We fucking did it. Holy Hell! Oh my gods! I’m in fucking Hell. What do I do now!?”

(Haven’t yet read the first chapter? You can find it here: Helkey 1 — The Memory Draught.)

(Looking for another chapter? Find it in the Helkey Table of Contents.)

Posted by robertscribbler on March 15, 2021

https://scribblersfantasticalworkshop.wordpress.com/2021/03/15/helkey-5-hell-gate-in-the-arch-of-time/