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Set immediately after Twisted Garden Paths
AdHoc:
The soul of Alexis Bartram flies across the abyss like a shuttlecock, arcing forever towards its destiny. The claws of cloying beasts of the Abyss try in vain to arrest her course, but she has an appointment with fate. Ordained forever, and forever ordained. What should feel like the impact of a bullet and a steel door instead feels feather light on the feet, possibly the last bit of gentleness Alexis will experience for the duration of her stay.
What her mind interprets of the experience is some distant shore, lapped at by sickly blackish water. Fine sand underfoot, but hot. The need to move from foot to foot is keen and nearly immediate. There is no comfort to be found here, no water to refresh her thirst, and no cool sand to rest her aching head. There is only forward, or back into the dark abyss of the ocean.
The thread she followed here lies in the sand, loose and flickering, tied to a life she's in the process of losing in a body a thousand billion billion measures distant. Ahead, a brick facade rises out of the shoreline, the loose stones and flotsam of the abyssal sea having hurled cast off monstrosities onto the shoreline. Angels with blackened wings, groaning for mercy. Twisted animals, creation itself gone unfailingly wrong. Shades that do nothing more than shriek and tear at their corpus in the futile effort to end their forever suffering, only to reform from the same stuff they leaked from their self-inflicted wounds. A snake forever eating itself, formed by the refuse of other Paths and other lives.
A single door rests in this bleak edifice, far beyond which rises a twisted, leering tower. One upon which rests a masked figure, resplendent on its throne, one hand holding a skull, the other a gleaming golden cup. Even from so far a distance, she can see this creature. And even from so far a distance, it can see her. And in that moment two voices enter her mind at once.
"Come closer."
"It wasn't personal."
"Confront me."
"I had to do it."
"Know me."
"You would do the same in my place.
Alexis Bartram:
"Would I?" The bitter wind, hungry and wet with the smell of ichor and lies, whips in her hair as the abyss behind her howls its indignation at her passage. Alexis steps forwards, glancing about her at the gnawing refuse, forever consuming itself with its own anguish, taking quick strides across the burning sand, "We all lie to ourselves. Everything we ever say is deceit. What lie are you telling me, here, in this place, I wonder?"
AdHoc:
"Lies are what defines truth."
"Lies are the origin of truth."
"To find the truth in yourself, you must confront your lies."
"And truth is relative anyway."
"You will come, regardless. Or you will become as they."
"The day is looking up, said the burning man to the chained prisoner aboard the sinking ship."
The door on the edifice looms large, drawing the eye. Drawing all eyes. Heavy with portent, ornate, carved with runes esoteric and ancient and so deeply resonant with potentiality that contemplating their meaning makes her headache worse. It's like staring into the sun, only the light is centered in herself. Above it, written at once in every language and only the ones she can understand, are the words: "Enter, coward."
Alexis Bartram:
"Say rather that truth is the origin of lies." Alexis rubs her fingers against the bridge of her nose for a moment, waiting for the aching flare to fade into a dull throb, "For that is the heart of all communication. All language. A broken attempt to convey the truth, foiled by our own limitations." She reaches the door (or does it reach her?) and presses a hand against it, "What is cowardice? What is courage? Are they different, or the same?"
AdHoc:
"Some say courage is persistence in the face of terror."
"Others say cowardice is succumbing to reason."
"Both are wrong--"
"--But it's all bullshit."
"Anyway, kid. You're about to learn the true meaning of both."
"For once? We agree."
At the touch, several of the sigils written on the door frame light up, as though she herself was the key to open it. Perhaps she's been expected? There's a rumble, a shudder in the supernal ground, and the doors slowly begin to withdraw to either side. A moldy, sickly air pours out of the caverns beyond, gray-green with spore and stench. Cobwebs cling to the surfaces, dust and mildew seethe on the floors and walls. Before her, a single serpentine corridor. Twisting passages, all alike.
"Come into my parlour."
"You know the rest, don't leave me hanging."
Alexis Bartram:
"Oh, this is going to give me like ten different kinds of allergies, isn't it?" Alexis walks forwards, one hand out to sweep aside the cobwebs that would otherwise hit her face. Her other hand digs in her pocket for her flashlight as she continues. "I am so glad I'm not phobic. Yet." She occasionally has the momentary scramble for balance as she clambers over the moist rocks of the cavern, moving in the only direction apparently avaliable to her.
AdHoc:
As she steps foot into the labyrinth, the doors begin to close behind her. The miserable creatures writhing on the heated sand on the shores of the Abyss call out to her pleading with her.
"It was only the one time!"
"I didn't think it would hurt anyone!"
"If you leave me to my consequences, you're no better than I was!"
"WHO MADE YOU GOD?! WHO?!"
One of their reaching, burned hands claws through the doorway as its bearer wheezes, "Don't leave m--"
His words are cut off, along with his hand, as the door closes upon it, crushing it. It flops to the stones, still twitching in this new, novel agony.
There is only one path, and it is forward. Even the turns lead forward. Even walking backward leads forward. All the roads lead to the same destination, in the end. Mortal human. That will die. And know ceasing. And be forgotten.
Alexis Bartram:
"This feels very labyrinthian, you know. In the classical sense." Alexis muses, as she takes yet another turn that leads in the same direction she was already heading, "One path, leading to one destination." She grimaces as another wave of pain crashes over her, "I don't suppose you happen to know why it feels like the inside of my skull is trying to pour itself out through my eyeballs?"
AdHoc:
"Because you are dying, Alexis Bartram. Your body lies on the cold ground along the banks of a river, in a garden named for your forebearer. When you fail here, your life will be summarized in less than three column inches. Your festering corpse will be placed in a box, lowered into a vault in the ground, where the chemicals intended to keep your cadaver in a state of suspended rot will eventually break down, and your chemistry and matter will become a thick black soup in which your bones gently and forever welter. Until the sun expands, and the world and all of its history are consumed in a flash of fusion and fire. But, yes. Let us focus only on your insignificant speck of a head."
"He's just being that flashy because it's actually me that tried to kill you. I think I succeeded, too, because I'm used to success. Hubris is my greatest failing. Well. Next to my lack of willpower to tell them no. Not that you can, either. You'll see."
The path she walks is fraught with rot and peril. Or the idea of peril, in any case. Figures lie chained to the walls, gurgling obscenities. Some, their flesh flayed from their muscle, drape like tapestries, their skins spread wide apart, upon which are written the most delicious and tempting of blasphemies. But those ones, they always make eye contact. And without their lips, they're always smiling. So attentive, too, since without eyelids they can never blink.
"We'll find out where you're weak, too, you meddlesome little bitch."
Alexis Bartram:
"Well that's just fucking inconvinient." Alexis pauses and glares about her, "I'm not sure if I think dying should hurt more, or less." She kicks a pebble over towards one of the flayed figures, "I can't say that I'm a huge fan of the decor in here, so I'm just going to keep on keeping on." Walk now, process the whole dying thing later. Yep, that's the ticket. Besides, she never was one to let little things get in the way of going after the next answer to a puzzle. Why let them do it now?
AdHoc:
The flayed figure she kicks the pebble towards, opens its mouth to speak. But without lips or a tongue, that's not really possible. So a wet, choking gargle is all she gets for her efforts. That, and some salty tears streaming down the open wound of the entirety of itself. That has to be a pleasant feeling. She caused that. She and her interference. Her callousness and her self-centeredness. Leave it to none other than Alexis Bartram to treat supernal hell like a curiosity and a vacation. No wonder she doesn't have many friends. Who could love such a horrible, self-absorbed, shit-stirrer?
Not that guy, clearly.
"We can explore the question, if you like," that first, booming, unholy voice suggests. And true to the suggestion, the pain in her head becomes debilitating. Blinding. Almost to the point where she can't even perceive the labyrinth before her. "More? Would you like more pain?" It ratchets up higher. As though she can hear pain, taste pain.
"Flippant. Nice. That'll work."
Alexis Bartram:
Whoops, there goes the entirety of the contents of her stomach, all over the floor. Alexis isn't quite cognizant of the space of time between that hideous spike of pain and the point at which she, on her hands and knees, finally stops heaving up the dry ends of nothing, her throat burning from the acid. "Fuck." She croaks, before a coughing fit, "You." Of course she was being flippant. The alternative was...well, wallowing in the horror she could do nothing about. Paralysis. Like now, stuck on hands and knees going nowhere. "And fuck me." One step at a time. Crouch. Hand to knee. Stand. Step. Step. Step.
AdHoc:
"Now you're starting to come around, kid. I told you."
The pain recedes with her self-castigation, a sense of smug certitude lingers in the wake of it. She can almost envision the figure on the tower, chuckling to himself.
When her vision clears, it becomes evident either the labyrinth or herself was continuing to move. Maybe it was both. But she has come to a massive archway, gilt in glittering treasures. All the unseemly riches of Sygia, save... not. It's all rather like gold leaf lovingly pressed onto dogshit. Gleaming white enamel encasing a rotten out tooth, just begging for a corn kernel to let the truth reach the nerve. Skin deep and vain.
At the doorway is a man her mind tries to fight to remember. A face so familiar it's been forced to be forgotten. And it is he that offers a gesture of the hand towards the kingdom of false riches beyond. "Ah, my dear. You've made it this far. Perhaps I could interest you in a golden coffin? I'll let you carry it with you for your return trip. You might prefer that to passing through this place. Keep going in this direction, and you'll meet the demon. But then again," his face distorts, a melding of unfamiliar likenesses. Haughty faces. Prideful faces. And, briefly, her own face, "maybe you already have."
Alexis Bartram:
"No, John, you are the demons, huh?" Alexis shakes her head, still reeling slightly from the pain, "I've made it this far, I might as well keep going. If I die, at least then I'll die knowing." Her face grows set, determined, "What use is a golden coffin, anyway? The corpse doesn't care." She steps past the man/the demon/herself and his treasure horde of vanities, looking for the way forward, onward.
AdHoc:
"Ah, you remember. Well. What a pity. And an interesting topic for debate. What use is a golden coffin, indeed." The figure, in the form of her former master at the very least, if not the master himself, follows along with her. Rather like an obsequious tour guide, or used car salesman. Smarm and effusive charm.
"Here in the galleries of pride, we can bear witness to the fruits of meddling. Some of the most heinous of meddling, you know, has given us some of the most perplexing fruits. Not that you'd know. Always nose down in your work, missing the forest for the tree." John pauses and gestures towards a stage, festooned with velvet curtains, gilt in gold and silver, lit with bright lights, glimmering with jewels and riches. All of them base, obvious, disgustingly false and of no value. A public face hiding a hideous soul.
On it, a troupe of actors are staging a very overwrought stage production. Highly stylized, in the manner of high theater in the age of Shakespeare. Or perhaps later. Airs of Commedia Dell Arte, too, as the players don their masks, and their late Tudor / early Stuart dress.
The panel of judges sit on a comically high dais, peering down from miles above-- miles that are merely meters --on a woman in a mask that bears the likeness of a tree, shedding a single bright tear. Her escorts treat her roughly, as she goes through pantomime of suffering and pleading, debasing herself before this haughty collection of men.
"Just think, Alexis. That could be you!"
Alexis Bartram:
"Hm. I'm not sure I much desire to be the judge or the judged. The guilty and the wronged?" She stands and ponders for a moment, scratching with one hand at the back of her neck, "A play for me. Alas, I am not a player for this stage, I think." Alexis turns and walks on past the show, "How much of this, I wonder, is just a reflection of myself? But that's not all it is."
AdHoc:
"That would be like you, wouldn't it. Just passing through other people's lives, poking at events and objects which are not rightly your own. Meddling, meddling, meddling. Yes, by all means, what possible lesson could the proscenium of hell's stage have to teach Alexis Bartram. This doesn't speak to you does it? You're not a player for this stage. As you say. We should continue."
John places a guiding hand on her shoulder to turn her away, to lead her from the performance as the central figure on the dais rises from his seat and points one impossibly long arm down, down, down, to hurl reproach upon the groveling woman. The other judges adopt poses of shock, surprise, wonder, and pure lustful delight. A spotlight comes from nowhere, lighting the woman from everywhere and nowhere at once.
But John is leading her away. Because it isn't a reflection of herself. And, as usual, that's all Alexis is interested in.
Alexis Bartram:
Alexis' hand snaps up to grab the wrist of the demon, "What aren't you telling me, hm?" She glances back, at the woman/tree, "I see. Another in their dying moments. Maybe I do have a role to play on that stage. But doesn't that make you the judge, casting condemnation and reproach?" She sighs, "Its not that I have no interest in unraveling any of this. I simply have no time. As you and yours have so kindly reminded me, I am dying at the moment, demon." She pushes his hand away, but forges onward, leaving one mystery behind for the greater mystery of what lies ahead.
AdHoc:
Without an audience, the curtain falls on the brightly lit woman, just as her mask turns up to the sky, bathed in light, and her arms stretch out in surrender. But the velvet curtain in all its garish falseness obscures whatever happens next. Such a shame, such a shame.
"What am I not telling you, Alexis? Oh, I told you literally everything you needed to know, and you chose to walk away from it all. Do you think someone like you just happens to be deserving of a private tour of Pandemonium? Do you imagine we all went to all of this trouble--" he has to break character for a moment to let out a peal of demonic laughter --"for YOU?" Another guffaw.
"Maybe you're just celestial trash, thrown across the wide expanse of the Abyss to land on our starlit shore. Someone else's accident. A mistake." He could cut diamond with the inflection of that last syllable. "Just another silly little bitch with half-lidded eyes looking for reason from monsters. Well. Alexis. My dear. You are an effect. You are a result. You are what happens when things do not go to plan. You are aberrant data. You are the unfit gene the telomere forgot to snip. And I'm the clerk filing your visa papers. Now. Get out of my Kingdom. Even we find you tiresome."
Alexis Bartram:
"No." Alexis glares at him, "I am an awful, vile, selfish human. I am made of contredictions and mistakes, and none of that matters." She spreads her hands, "Because that's what humans are. And what I am, here, is seeking the truth behind all these gold-frosted lies." One hand held out, "So. I'm an accident. A fuckup. A meddler. Here I am. Meddling. Because in the end...I may be made of my demons, but I refuse to be the shackled slave of them."
AdHoc:
"Think what you will, Alexis. You always have. But if that's all humans are, you must ask yourself why we go through all of this trouble. We could just kill you. Or simply keep you here and let you die. Keep meddling, then. Keep picking at the scab and peeling the onion. What are tears and blood, anyway? Just salt and water, really."
John lifts his hand beside his face and offers a mocking wiggly fingered wave. "Now. Begone!"
Alexis is promptly catapulted out of the Kingdom of Pride, sent hurtling through the labyrinth of tunnels, past the suffering of countless tormented souls, only to find herself-- eventually? Or was it instantly? Standing atop the tower. There is a throne there. Cold, hard, black, bleak iron. It is the throne from which all power is derived. The throne upon which the only power that truly matters in the world, on occasion, comes to rest. The demon that sat there at first is... missing. Perhaps.
Chained to the throne, by tethers of heavy iron chain, is the figure of a man in a standard work-a-day trench coat, a white work shirt, and a plain blue tie. He has a badge on his hip that is not a badge but a federal ID. Maybe it's a a masonic ring. Or a secret handshake. It is whatever he needs. The keys to the castle. The supreme authority from which all other authority is derived. Chekov's gun. His face is unknowable. Familiar and forgotten. He looks up at Alexis when she arrives and slowly pushes himself to his feet, dusting himself off.
"You made it. Still alive, huh. Man. Wish I knew that. This asshole's gonna make me pay for fucking this up. You could really get me out of this scrape, though, you know. Just. Hear me out. Don't sign anything, or think your name too hard, or click your heels or whatever it is you want to do, here. I'm trying to save you from a lifetime of suffering."
Alexis Bartram:
"A lifetime already is suffering. We build it that way, as we lie to ourselves and each other. Or did you skip past all of that down there and jump to the top?" Alexis jerks her thumb back at the seething mass of Pandemonium, "That really seems to be the kind of thing you would do, now that I think about it. Skip the suffering. Skip the mess. Just bow down, and let yourself be a small, blind, selfish thing. But at least you won't be suffering." Alexis reaches into her pocket, coming up with a brass pen, "As for me, I'd rather look an awful truth in the face than blind myself with gilded lies. Don't sign my name to anything, you say?"
AdHoc:
"If you would just condescend to serve them, Alexis! You would be rewarded. Love them, serve them, be their slave, and they will give you riches! Power! Love! Sex! Whatever it is you want. It can, and will, be yours. That world, that lie?" And here the man gestures down at the vista of pandemonium, across the feathery silver thread flickering as her life force ebbs, all the way past the abyss to the world upon which her body is slowly expiring.
He draws it to his hand, holds it before her to view. As though it were right here, spinning on his palm. And she can see herself, the blood trickling from her nose, strangers gathered around her trying to render aid to a body they know is going through more trauma than their medicines can possibly attend to, here in the supernal.
"That Lie is Their doing. They separated all of this here from all of that there. They ascended the great ladder and they cast it down. Look. You can see the ruins of it, even now." He gestures out across the expanse of Pandemonium, causing heaps of broken stone to glimmer at the mere suggestion they exist. "They run this show, kid. Your side is losing, because they already won. Ages ago. Before any of this, anything having to do with you or me ever existed. We're nothing to them, you understand? They can, and will, crush you. And they won't lose any sleep over it. That's your awful truth, kid. And gilded lies aren't so bad when the gild spends like theirs does."
He holds his left hand out to her, the world and all it contains spinning slowly atop it.
"C'mon kid. Just. Just take it. Chances like this don't come around twice."
Alexis Bartram:
"Wow. I never thought I'd actually get any use out of something I learned at my parent's church, but here we are. GET THEE BEHIND ME, SATAN." Alexis flips him off with her left hand while reaching out with her right to sign her name on a piece of twisted iron thrusting up from the surface of the tower.
AdHoc:
The man's face falls. Not out of anger, but out of pity. He lowers the offered world and with a flick of the wrist casts it back across the wide expanse of the Abyss.
"Come closer."
"It wasn't personal."
"Confront me."
"I had to do it."
"Know me."
"You would do the same in my place."
The words echo in her psyche as she pens her name onto the tower, the idea of the ink sufficient to etch her name in light upon the cold hard iron of the tower. And in that instant, a thousand thousand doors slam shut, while a million million more click gently open.
"Come closer..."
Her soul is suddenly hurtling through space, the shape and form of the watchtower forever close, and forever receding. Pandemonium becomes a distance speck on the dim horizon while that tower still looms large. Her body slowly pivots in space relative to the thread it follows, until she can clearly see the earth hurtling towards her.
"Confront me..."
Her soul rockets back into her body. To the searing pain inside of her head, to the blood oozing from her nose and pooling in the back of her throat. It makes her choke. Spit it out or swallow it, there's nowhere else for that clotting ichor to go.
And as the full magnitude of her excruciating circumstances begin to settle in to her awareness, there is a niggling thought that it's not so bad. That she's been through worse.
The thoughts of the supernal recede as the lights begin switching on in her head. And there, kneeling over her, is Jeremiah. Concern on his face, but also hope.
"Alexis? Do you know who I am? Do you know me?"
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