To Hell and Back

Date: 28th day of the 8th month of the Year 5895 of the Unified Calendar
Location: Fae Continent, Northern Hemisphere, Terra, Tav Universe

It was still dark as Gato, a young farm-boy who was almost 15, carefully walked down a narrow country road. He knew he should have been in bed at that hour, but his eldest brother had asked him to make a delivery in the big city, and he couldn’t refuse the request.

Gato had left the family farm a mile northwest from Alfheimwood, Sylvania, going to the city of Spriggandale, ten miles to the north. He was about halfway there when he suddenly saw a lance of blinding orange light striking the ground north-by-northwest. Seconds later, a tremendous thunderclap deafened him momentarily, and a shock wave threw him to the ground. The air suddenly became extremely hot and filled with dust and debris.

He staggered to his feet and saw a vast cloud resembling a mushroom where the orange lance had fallen. What… what just happened? He stumbled down the path to Spriggandale, confused and bleeding.

Three hours later, as Gato continued to struggle down the road, he came upon the first signs of a tremendous explosion. All living plants and animals were destroyed and blackened. He also encountered the first corpses along the road. He groaned as he walked around a corpse. As he walked further, that he had to walk around multiple corpses was sickening, but it was sadly the only recourse. Not only that, not all the corpses were humans; there were also dwarves, elves, and other species—humanoid and not. In some places, the explosion had piled bodies on top of each other. The corpses he walked around were barely recognizable because of the damage done to them. This had been a field where a lot of children played, himself included, but now it was covered in ash and was nothing more than blood soaked earth, caked in the remnants of life. How this had all come to be, he wasn’t sure.

He passed by a dilapidated castle wall to his right, about a hundred yards away. It hadn’t been that way even yesterday; it had appeared beautiful and well maintained. Something had dramatically annihilated the wall. There had been a tremendous explosion that had hurled bricks hundreds of feet.

How unfortunate, he thought. Although this was not the castle of the royal family, I’m certain that all the enchantments applied to it made it as significant as the royal castle. Whatever destroyed it must have undone the blessings placed on it by the current High Priest of Sylvania… enough to curse the very land around it. He shook his head. Nobody’s going to want to settle down here again—maybe not for a thousand years. The destruction of the castle made it obvious that its divine protections could not work, and they were now gone.

This had been a castle handcrafted by over a thousand men. The High Priest had blessed it every fifty years and checked for outdated enchantments every ten. The castle was in ruins. What could have possibly caused this much damage in such a short time? It must have been that lance of orange light that did it.

The field where he used to play wasn’t the only casualty of whatever had happened. He’d heard of devastation throughout the country of Sylvania, where he called home in the world of Terra, but didn’t know if it was widespread all over the world. The surrounding damage appalled him, and he shuddered to think what the rest of Terra might now be like if the rest of Sylvania looked like this… after the destructive explosion that hit his region of the world itself.

He stepped over an arm—at least he thought it had once been an arm. Disbelief gripped his mind as he stumbled forward, trying, and somewhat succeeding, to avoid the gore on the scorched ground around him. A man, emerging from around a pile of bodies, collapsed in front of him, coughing up blood. Gato looked up at the heavens and cried, “Divine Spirits of Nature, what have we done to anger you?”

No response came forth.

He clutched his left arm, and he felt the blood he was trying to staunch drip around his fingers. He had not thought the damage was that bad, not at first, but had been injured when the explosion that triggered Hell on Terra had thrown him to the ground. It was enough to ruin his arm; in addition, there was an open gash on his forehead causing blood to drip down his face. Since he didn’t know how to heal injuries of this size without access to supernatural powers such as magic (which he didn’t have), his arm was useless.

Maybe I should have hidden behind any cover I could find when I saw the lance from the heavens falling toward the ground. That way, not only would my eyes be clear, my left arm would still work, darn it!

No one could blame him for not finding cover in time. He didn’t understand that the damage could be so extensive! As if he could have known it would happen…

A jolt of pain through his brain alerted him that what he was saying was a lie. Almost as if he had known about this devastation beforehand. But how? He had never in his entire life experienced anything like this disaster.

Why the heck am I thinking like that? I need to fix the way my mind works sometimes. Well, at the very least, I will not die at all… I hope!

He heard a distant giant stomping noise ahead of him. He could not identify the cause of the noise, and it was not because of the blood still flowing into his eyes. It was as if the source of the noise was invisible to the naked eye.

Why do I feel that I just walked right into my grave? Okay, now, this time is the wrong time for that. I need to find a way around the source of these footsteps. Somehow.

As he staggered onward to find other survivors, he sensed that beyond the surrounding devastation, there was something wrong.

Why do I think I’ve been through this before? It should not be possible at all…

He walked on further, even as he passed a few spots where he could rest if needed. He already was on his last legs, so why shouldn’t he rest? It was not like he could recover his health that fast at all. Still, with a considerable effort, he got to a clearing that looked cleaner than the rest of the surrounding area, where there were a few wounded survivors who needed treatment. “Is everyone all right?” he asked them, even as he noticed the bleeding in his useless left arm had slowed.

“Yeah. Yeah, we are,” said an old man who needed crutches. “I don’t understand what is causing the Divine Spirits to destroy us all.”

Gato said, “Does anyone here have any clue about how the disaster affected the world?”

“The explosion—” a young woman with teal hair gasped before she began coughing up blood.

“Hey!” Gato cried out, trying to run to her. “Hang in there!”

“I… I am fine,” she said, though the blood coming out of her mouth was not reassuring.

Gato thought to himself, No, you are not fine. Who would say they’re fine if they’re coughing up blood?

A man whose cloak the explosion had partially burned spoke. “The explosion has destroyed our land, and we don’t know why. Survivors have grown extra flesh on their bodies, and they look like demons. It incinerated others beyond belief.” Shaking his head, he continued, “It’s the end of the world.”

“No need to say it like that,” an old woman said. “The Divine Spirits clarified they will keep working to have a world around that will have our descendants living on it. I will hope for that one.”

“Do you not think they’re telling a lie, though?” A young man wearing a hooded cloak asked. “If the Divine Spirits are as magnanimous as you say they are, then they would not want us to die like this.”

Gato looked at the man with a raised eyebrow. “What are you talking about? I’m sure you know that they have a time and a place for everything—”

“Shut the hell up!” the young man yelled, punching Gato with a right hook that knocked him flat to the ground. “The Divine Spirits are liars! I know the truth behind their lies, that is for damn sure!”

Gato, in his weakened state, tried to get back to his feet using only his right hand. Some part of him wanted to know what ‘truth’ the survivor was discussing. “What… what are you talking about?”

“Oh, so you want to know, huh?” the young man taunted Gato, pulling out a dagger from the sheathe on the small of his back. “Well, guess what? You need to prove yourself willing to spread the truth, by having this blade carve it into your—”

Just then, they heard thunder and a strange whizzing sound. The young man turned in the direction the sound came from… only for a projectile to strike him and blast him into many tiny pieces, the largest chunk being a pinky finger.

“Marcus!” the old man cried out in horror, before a smaller explosion hit the area, knocking the remaining four off their feet and a fair distance away.

Hurled to the ground, Gato winced in pain. Not another explosion! How did this happen? Is there any way to escape this alive?

The giant stomping sound happened again, only it was much closer than the last time. In fact, it seemed about fifteen yards away from his current position and… to… his… right…

There was a sick crunching noise, like something heavy crushed one survivor. Gato turned to look and felt the blood drain from his face. I’m going to be sick… he thought. The blood! And I see bones! He tried to escape the clearing, but bile built up in his throat, and he barfed.

After he finished puking his guts out, but before he could think of running again, a maniacal laugh tore through the air. “Now, time to end all resistance to the reformatting of the realm!” a god-like male voice boomed. “I will wipe all traces of native life off the face of this forsaken world, all for the honor of ruling this new colony!”

A crashing noise came from behind Gato’s right ear, causing the self-proclaimed potential ruler of the world to cry out in surprise. The giant stomping noises stopped dead in their tracks, replaced by a loud metallic screech, the earth being torn apart, and the roar of a blazing furnace. Through the smoke from the burning landscape, Gato could see what was tunneling and what was roaring like a lion full of power: two metallic giants, both of which were twenty yards tall and resembling men. They had to be gods fighting in a brawl, unlike anything he had ever seen before, even as they crashed and struggled together.

Gato had no other choice but to stay where he was and watch with his limited mobility. First order of business: become as unnoticeable as possible and hope to live.

“Why, you little—do you not have any idea who you are messing with here?!” the would-be ruler’s voice roared out from the first (and banged up) ‘god’. The ‘god’ had a cyclopean appearance to show off, though the being lacked a mouth and a nose, something Gato thought was strange. Nor was it normal for a cyclops of any sort to have an unblinking eye. Darkness was settling in, and Gato could not see the skin (or whatever it was) of the ‘deity’ for certain, but he could hazard a guess the skin was an unpainted steel. “I am Patrick Dunkirk of the Ursa Confederacy! I’ve never lost a single piece of my unit in all eight hundred battles I’ve taken part in because I am just that special!” With another defiant roar, he pushed the other ‘god’ away from him and drew a long sword from his left side, getting ready to swing the blade at a moment’s notice. “So don’t say I didn’t warn you!” With a loud noise, the long sword began vibrating, as if that would kill the other ‘god’!

Gato tried to cover his ears, but a bolt of pain reminded him that his left arm was useless. He had few options, and it terrified him.

May the Divine Spirits, or anyone, help me! Why are those two giants fighting each other like this? He could not figure it out. I mean, they are emissaries of the Divine Spirits of Nature, right? Why are they doing battle?

At that point, the first god began swinging at the second one with his sword, though the second one dodged the swings each time by briefly flying out of the line of fire with movements so minimal that Gato had to blink to catch them. In a swift manner, a blade-less hilt popped out from within the right wrist of the second god, forming a defense against the attacks of the first one. With a flurry of movement, the second god evaded any further attacks by the first, forcing that one to retreat a few yards momentarily.

What is happening here? Why is the second one not fighting back against his attacker?

Gato’s thoughts floated through the head of the god Patrick, as Patrick roared out, “What’s wrong?! What happened to your blade, huh?! Don’t tell me you are nothing more than a coward who can’t even fight with a weapon of war and thus should not be in the cockpit of a Giga Armor?!”

What’s a Giga Armor? Is that what they call the gods that are fighting each other?

He wasn’t sure if he could really know the details behind the two who were fighting it out like that. On the one hand, one of them wanted to kill all the life in the world, which meant he would die as one of the many numberless casualties. He didn’t, however, know what the other god was doing and why said deity was doing it, whatever “it” was.

I don’t want all of us to die at the hands of this mad deity! Someone, please, save us all!

With no response forthcoming from the other god, Patrick again yelled, “Well how about I drag you out of the cockpit and expose you for who you are to this entire world before I become its true monarch?!” In laughing triumph, he yelled out, “Get your just deserts! By decree of the new God of this world—huh?!”

The second ‘god’ gave off a melodious noise, showing something was going to happen, which came true when it grew wings of flames out its back.

Gato gaped as he saw what was going on. One moment, the first god was about to strike the second one down. In the next moment, the second god began spreading its wings of fire, for which the first god apparently had no defense! It was completely unreal!

I thank thee, O God, for saving us and our souls!

Before Gato could give any further thanks, he noticed something. There was a cone attached to the back of the second deity, and there were seams going around the cone connecting it to the main body.

Is it just me, or is this fight not between actual gods as I had thought they are? Is that true?

A few moments passed, and the one with wings of fire stood still, as if waiting for the right opportunity to do something.

What’s going on with the one with flaming wings? Gato thought, eying the situation warily. Is it going to attack its enemy, or will it not attack at all?

At that moment, the stalemate ended, in such a way that it was impossible to predict.

A bright glow formed at the hole in the sword’s hilt held by the second god, then a blade of pure flames grew to form the weapon that was a mighty one of war. It grew from less than an inch long to five and a half yards in a single second, and the heat emitted from it would injure the other god no matter what he tried to do to evade it. With a soundless motion, the second god charged at the first one, flying in the air as the first one tried to pull up an additional weapon with his left hand. A single slicing motion later, and god Patrick lost his right hand… along with a good chunk of his right arm. To Gato’s amazement, there was no blood spilled, nor was there any flesh to spill blood, either. The arm, and what seemed to be most of the body seemed to be made up of metal and… clockwork?

Gato couldn’t help it. He had seen the impossible happen. “What the hell?!” he cried in shock.

Patrick gasped in surprise, before yelling, “You bastard! You don’t get it, do you!” He made a quick grab at what appeared to be an advanced flintlock pistol holstered behind him on his left side. The weapon had a long barrel and enough ammo to be more than a one-trick pony. He fired a shot of something, only for the second ‘god’ to dodge out of the way. “I’m—” ‘Patrick’ fired a second round, and the other being dodged again. “—special!” A third shot fired and missed by less than an inch. “I’m the one who’s been—” The fourth round of ammo shot and missed again. “—chosen to be god here!”

Gato couldn’t take it anymore. “Oh, just shut up!” he yelled at ‘Patrick,’ the giant deity wannabe. “Like you can even handle the hard work that comes with being a deity here! Wait, is your purview as a god Death, Chaos, and wanton Destruction?!”

‘Patrick’ growled before aiming his gun at the prone Gato. “That’s one big mouth for someone who can’t fight back, boy!” As he was about to pull the trigger on his gun, though, he found himself face to face with the other god. “What the—you again?!” Before he could pull the trigger, the sword from the second god carved into his frame and caused him to go up in flames with a huge explosion. There was no damage done to Gato from Patrick’s exploding demise except for his sudden loss of hearing, which he didn't immediately sense, for the second being had shielded him from an untimely end.

Whoa… how did that happen here? I was having trouble understanding what was taking place, and I was right there… ugh. With a great struggle, Gato lurched to his feet. I would ask the second god, but I don’t know how much he will tell me.

As if someone in the Heavens heard Gato’s thoughts, the second god turned to face him and began motioning him to come close, after shrinking the glowing blade. Gato saw the survivor looked akin to a traditional knight, with a plume of a sort atop its helmet. The plume, though, stood out upwards and straight, like a spike. The god didn’t seem to have anything protecting its eyes, and so Gato could see that they were bright green.

Well… I’m alive, that’s better than I expected to happen! Gato began walking closer to the surviving god and doing as it gestured him to do. I hope nothing bad is going to happen to me, now, nor will anything bad happen to the rest of the world.

Gato stopped walking after a few more moments, a feeling of euphoria hitting him as he placed his foot down. It’s like… it’s like my feet no longer want to be on the ground below me… am I dreaming, or something? That was the only thing that made sense about this situation.

I hope that I can remember what this dream of mine is about by the time I wake up. This is one of those times when I really need to figure out what’s going on around here, though I don’t know how to get that information. How do I get it?

The deity spoke to him, but Gato couldn’t hear what it said. Was it possible that he was not supposed to hear a single word of it?

How am I supposed to understand what all the giant figure wants me to know? If I can’t understand it, then I’m going to be a right fool for life. How do I understand this being in front of me?

Gato strained his ears to hear what the giant being had to say. Of course, given the fact that this being was like a god that looked at him with a penetrating stare that seemed divine, it was highly likely that he was doing it wrong. At the least, he probably should be opening his mind to the god for conversation purposes.

How do I open my mind to the god in front of me? I need to know that right away… this is a problem that I need to fix immediately. How do I fix this?

After a few seconds, he struggled to stay on his feet, which proved to him that he was in the presence of the Divine. He tried to hear what the being was telling him, of course, but it was next to impossible at the rate he was going.

What’s going on? Why can’t I hear a single thing clearly from the giant? Have I gone deaf? Is it because I’m unable to open my mind properly? Gato thought, even as he tried to understand the issues he was dealing with. It was infuriating that he couldn’t hear the giant before him. Ultimately, it didn’t matter, because, a little thereafter, the voice faded into silence, for Gato had fainted with the sunrise.