The Winners!

[Legio]

Yup guys, the polls have closed and we have our winners.

But first off, I would like to thank each and every one of you for participating in this competition, whether you won something or not- for without each and every last one of you, this competition would simply not have existed. It would be amazing if all of you could not only participate in the next competition but also get your friends to join! <3

First off, the gold medal. Kaitsar has conquered all opposition with his brilliant story entitled 'Armageddon'.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Armageddon dwelt in his corridor, thinking. Some called him Ragnarok, others though of him as "The End of Days", many more named him Shiva. He shrugged, and California suffered a magnitude 7 earthquake. Despite all of his different names, all who believed in him called him God. But not all did believe in him. Those that did knew very little of his true nature.

He heard everything; the cries of joy, the laughter, even the most minute sounds: a child's skin creasing for a smile, a person blinking away tears of happiness. But not all was well. He also heard the croaks of dying innocents, the fire of weapons that extinguished the lives he loved, the weepings of a family never able to speak to their loved one again. Thousands dies every day. He sighed, and a large typhoon hit the coasts of Japan. He could do nothing. So much power yet so little control.

All of these thoughts he had had over billions of human years, over and over, thousands of times. Ragnarok had thought all there was to think. There was no thought, emotion, or feeling he had not already experienced. It angered him. People, everywhere, worrying. Worrying of nothing! They hadn't felt, couldn't have felt, true worry, true fear. They didn't know. They knew nothing, nothing! His face tightened in anger, a sinkhole opened in China, killing hundreds.

And they hurt him! They worshiped him, they preached and predicted his coming, and yet, in their ignorance, the hurt him. He recalled the pain he felt in the year 7,206,942.67, or somewhere in their 1940s. It hit him right between the eyes, a tremendous pain. To him, the pain and aftereffects lasted a mere fraction of a second, compared to the scope of his life, which went on as far back as he could remember, and probably longer. But this pain was so immense it took all he could muster not to stretch and roar. Of course, this would mean the end of the people he loved, yet hated and despised. His feelings for them had maintained their balance for hundreds of their years, but the pain and animosity he felt started to compound, he noticed, in the past few decades. He was more spiteful now than he had ever been in his life, at least the life he could remember.

They continued to drill and mine and dig into him, bleeding dry his precious lifeblood. He knew they weren't aware, yet he still allowed his loathing of them to grow. It was destined. As their hatred and rejection of him grew, as did his towards them. They were manufacturing their own destruction. He chuckled at the irony of it all and tornadoes ravaged the Midwest of America. His chuckle quickly descended into further anger.

They hated them! He hated them! They would pay for what they had done to him! They would pay for their ignorance and worries and evil! They would pay for making him listen to their sufferings! Roaring, Apocalypse punched out of the earth's skin, tearing a hole in central Africa, he kicked, draining the Pacific of its contents, he writhed, destroying the buildings and creations of man. Mustering all of his force, he broke through the earth and escaped what had been his eternal prison. The rubble that had been the earth flew into space, never to be seen again. There! They suffered and died for what they had done! They had felt his pain!

He began to weep.

In second place is Maurits, a talented modder for the Rome Total Realism team and a talented writer as well!

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

The Letter

A Short Story

"Naval battles are more terrible than land battles, for the victors come out beaten and battered, and the enemy - well, there is nothing left to be said of them. They are shattered"

It was a warm afternoon in June, and Tacitus was standing on the roof of his house. The air baked, and on the highway no one was to be seen. Then, suddenly, a small breeze touched his skin. At times, some of these would blow inland from the wide seas that surrounded the Italian peninsular. When he was lucky enough to meet one, his thoughts were drawn to these masses of water behind the horizon. They were mysterious, beautiful, but also very dangerous for the people that didn’t know how to tame them.

A cloud of dust appeared in the distance, just behind the top of a hill that blocked his sight in that direction. Tacitus wondered who would travel at this hour of the day. Only the most urgent of messages were delivered when the sun sent its burning death to all who dared to challenge her. Soon the rider emerged from the dust, and Tacitus wondered where he would be heading for. He was surprised when the rider rode to his villa. Quickly, he shouted some orders to his slaves, to give the man water and bring him onto the roof. ‘’My lord’’, he said when the man arrived on the roof, ‘’what tidings do you bring me?’’

For a moment the man was silent, as if he didn’t know what to say. Then he answered: ‘’Noble lord, I bring you a message from your friend Marcus. He said that it was of the utmost importance that you receive it as soon as possible.’’ He gave him the letter, and bowed while he left the roof. Tacitus opened the letter, wondering what Marcus had written him. He had been writing for five years on his Great Historiae, and Marcus was one of the people that collected sources for him. He wondered what he had discovered, and thought to be so important! He broke the seal, and started reading…

‘’Marcus Tacitus Suo S. (Marcus says hail to his friend Tacitus)

Noble friend, for several years you have been writing about the great deeds of our ancestors, and I know that you’ve only added the ones that have been of great importance for our Republic. But now I’ve seen and participated in deeds so valiant, and so important, that I think it would be justified to add them to your Historiae. Will you, my dear friend, write them down so they will be remembered for all eternity, so that no one will ever forget the valiance showed by the Roman sailors?
It all started three months ago. After half a year of training the VI Classis Venetum, a small but highly disciplined fleet, set sail under command of Nauarchus Decimus. I was serving as centurion on one of the smaller ships, with eighty sailors under my command. The trierarchus, or the captain, was a friend of mine. He was a tall and heavy-built man called Titus. The sailors would row, handle the sails, and when in combat I would lead them towards the enemy ship. The trireme that we used had four small ballistae and a catapult, beside its main ram that was clad with iron. Under my command were further optio Lucius and an artillery officer called Publius. Due to the small staff, the officers of the ‘Hercules’ soon became friends, and we had a nice time together.

After two days of sailing (we were at the middle of the Mare Superum), a heavy wind started blowing. Above the noise of the heavy drums from the belly of the ship, we heard the high sound of the wind and the hearts of many a good soldier were troubled by these ill forebodes…

‘Centurio,’ a young sailor said, while asking permission to enter, ‘Would you like to eat in your room, or will you join the trierarchus tonight?’

Marcus, this being his first long voyage at sea, was only able to bring forward a grumble before he threw his breakfast out. ‘O, beg your pardon sir, I didn’t know that you were ill…’ the young man stammered.

‘Is it always like this on the sea?’ Marcus moaned, ‘How can you live when the flour moves two meters up and then four down?’

The man laughed. ‘You’ll get used to it, sir. But we all pray that we’ll miss the storm that’s heading in this direction. If we’re caught by that one, we’ll face greater dangers than missing a meal or two…’

Marcus went silent. After he’d dismissed the soldier, he went to Titus, who stood on the deck. He was looking into the east, with a troubled look on his stern face. ‘It’s faster.’ He said to himself. ‘We won’t be able to reach a port before it gets us…’

I have never been so afraid, my friend. Not even in the middle of a battle you’ll see the despair and helplessness of men caught upon a sinking ship. But I’ll tell you my whole story. After we’d rowed for a few hours against the current, the sky turned into the deepest blue. It seemed that our small fleet was embedded in the water, for at the horizon the air and the water mingled into a blue line in which no one could discover the least sign that we were close to land.

The wind howled in the mast, while big gulfs crowned with foam hit the ship. Cries of despair went up, and despite all their effort the men weren’t able to row it towards the safe harbor. They had become a toy. A toy, that played a terrible game against the dark sea and the storm. A game for survival.

While the heavy rain scourged our faces, we weren’t able to see any other ship. ‘How do you know where to go to? And how will we find the other ships after the storm?’ Marcus cried against the wind towards Titus.

The trierarchus answered with his loud voice: ‘According to my calculations we could find land any moment now. There we’ll have to try to find a shelter and look for the others when this weather’s past by.’

They stood there, wrestling with the currents to keep the control over the vessel. Suddenly, they heard blood chilling cries above the wind, and then a man standing at the front of the ‘Hercules’ cried: ‘There are reefs! Go back, turn her!’ Then they threw the rudder towards the other side, and while doing so they saw where the cries had come from. At their rear the Poseidon, another galley of their fleet, lay at its side while the waves threw the men up and down. They were thrown against the cliffs and drowned. They managed to turn the ship, but couldn’t do anything for their friends, who were dying in front of their eyes. It seemed that their mission had come to an end before it had even started…

After hours of darkness and fear, the wind finally lost strength and the sea became a bit calmer. We rowed alongside the coast in order to find a port. There we would wait for signs of the other ships, and take in some fresh food and water. Two hours later a soldier cried ‘Port ahead!’, and a small town came in sight. I was very happy that we were finally going to have land under our feet again. Then, we saw a ship. It was the ‘Augustus’, another trireme of our fleet. We joined it, and later the ‘Apollo’ came rowing into the port. Its mast was broken in two parts, but the sailors quickly repaired it. The officers of the remaining ships gathered, and we decided that we’d wait for one day for the other ships. If we hadn’t got a sign of them by then, we’d sail out again to kill those pirates. Our duty was of such importance that it couldn’t be delayed. Every day that we lost, merchant vessels were being attacked and sunk by those barbarians! Being the officer with the longest service, I became commander of the shrunken fleet until we’d find the Nauarchus again. In this state we slept, not knowing what events would happen the next morning.

The last rays of the sun hit the roof, and then it disappeared. Tacitus put the letter down. What an amazing journey his friend had made! He would surely add this to his Historiae. Tacitus decided to take a break, so he ate some food and then went asleep. The next morning he would continue reading about the events on the Mare Superum.

***

The next morning, when it was still cool, Tacitus walked to his atrium and sat there in the shadow of a tree. A slave brought him some bread and wine, and after he’d eaten he thought about Marcus’ letter. Eager to know how his adventures had ended he took it, and started reading the last part.

When I woke up we were at full sea again, and to my great joy I realized that I wasn’t ill anymore! Finally, I could eat some things on board of the ‘Hercules’. Soon I left my room and walked to the deck, in order to ask Titus if he’d join me for breakfast.

The captain looked happy, saying: ‘Hail, Marcus. There is a good wind, that’ll blow us to the other side of this sea quickly! I hope that you’re a little better than the last days? You can’t fight pirates without food in your stomach.’

‘Sure, Titus, I was just wondering if you’d like to eat a little together. That is, if you can leave your post here.’ He didn’t wait for an answer, knowing that his friend would never skip a meal. He ordered a sailor to prepare some bread and meat for them, and some minutes later they sat down. ‘Against what type of pirates will we be fighting?’ he asked.

‘These pirates fight in swift ships, called Liburnians,’ Titus answered. ‘Most of them are manned by about sixty pirates, so we’d have overwhelming numbers. I don’t expect there to be with more than three ships, for our navy has already destroyed many of those filthy barbarians. The only thing is that they outmatch us in speed, so we’ll have to come up with something original in order to defeat them.’

After they’d eaten, Marcus sat down for a while at the bow of the ‘Hercules’. He had to think of a way to defeat those ships. Once they’d boarded one, it would be easy for them to kill their foes with the superior weapons they’d got. The only point was that their ships were swifter, and could shot them all from a distance!

For hours he sat there, and then two gulls flew over the ship. They saw a hawk. One tried to attack it, and get the fish it had in its mouth. Of course, it didn’t succeed in getting the fish from the much larger bird. Fascinated, Marcus looked at this action above his head. Then, suddenly, the second gull came down on the hawk. For a moment, the large predator was surprised, and dropped the fish, which was caught up by the other gull. They landed on the deck, and ate the fish. Through cooperation they’d succeeded in reaching their goal. Marcus smiled. Finally, he’d got an idea. Alone his ships wouldn’t be able to catch a single pirate, but through smart cooperation they might manage!

‘Marcus,’ Titus shouted, ‘in a few hours we’ll reach the area in which the Illyrians have been spot. Hold your men ready for attack, I’ll sign the other ships to stay close together! Did you see those gulls? They are a good sign! Neptune must have sent them to show that he’ll help us, for they are his children.’

All men gathered, while Marcus explained the plan. Under the deck, optio Lucius would hide with the legionaries, and the main part of the sailors. At Marcus’ sign they’d come forward and engage the enemy. Publius and his men would do the first action. They’d shoot the Liburnans with burning stones and missiles. After that, they’d make use of the moment to ram them.

It seemed all clear, and when we prepared for the oncoming battle a great excitement took hold of all of us. It seemed like a relief when sails appeared at the horizon. They drew near quickly. When the men in the mast cried that it were our enemies and that they’d got two ships, I grew restless. This would be my moment. Now I’d have to proof my worth in battle! Thankfully, we outnumbered them by one ship, so once we’d got them it would be easy to take them out. The problem was how to do that! It was a good thing that I had thought about this. Hopefully, we’d be able to use the tactic and by that destroy the enemy! It was good that we’d seen the gulls. It comforted the men that the Gods would be with us in the coming battle…

‘Aaah…!’ a man sank down before his feet, with an arrow through his throat. The Illyrians were coming close. Still they stayed far enough away from the Romans so that these were unable to ram them. Missiles went to and fro, while men tried to find cover.

‘Attack speed!’ a heavy voice from the belly of the ship shouted, and the rowers started to pull the oars at an incredible speed. The ship cut through the waves, and foam was thrown up against Publius and his artillerists. Every few seconds, a large snap could be heard when ballista’s were fired. After having shot, the men sought protection behind the iron shields that had been put in front of them while they reloaded the weapon. At the enemy ship, men could be seen falling down on the deck, hit by their missiles.

But they wouldn’t win the battle like this. Before his eyes, Marcus could see his plans unfold in the right direction. The two enemy ships were in between the ‘Hercules’ and the two other ships. This was the moment to unleash the terrible attack that he’d prepared! While Lucius and his men checked their equipment one last time, on the command deck Titus shouted the last instructions to the men on the deck: ‘Light the fire!’ his raw voice sounded. At the same time, ‘Fire ammo!’ was shouted between the artillerists, and the first flaming stones and oil-bags were unleashed to find their way to the enemy. These hadn’t expected this, and soon small fires were burning all over the Liburnians, finding their way through dry wood and pieces of rope. For a moment, they laid there lame, as if they were hit by lightning. This was the moment to pick the ripe fruit from the sea! Titus shouted a few orders, and then the ship started vibrating from the great acceleration.

Under deck, the rowers where working at their highest speed, after their leader had shouted the ‘Ramming speed’ command. Sweat was streaming down over their bodies, as they moved at the rhythm of the beats. Then, one stopped moving, and another one. They died because of a heart attack. Soon they would have to stop, because no one had the condition to keep rowing at this speed for minutes!

They had almost reached the enemy that they were aiming for, and now the Illyrians had seen the danger they were in. They tried to row away, while some that were burning like hell because the cooking oil sprang overboard. It was too late. With a great clash and an terrible shock the ram of the ‘Hercules’ ate itself a way into its smaller opponent, and at the same moment a bridge with a large iron point fell down on the enemy deck. ‘For Rome and victory!’ the legionaries shouted, when they streamed over the bridge at the enemy deck. Marcus jumped aboard, and was immediately attacked by two large warriors. He took his gladius, and for a moment stood still while the barbarian hew at him with all his force. At the last moment he sprang aside, and hit the man at his head. A large wound appeared, and blood ran all over his face. In a last severe strike, he managed to scratch Marcus’ arm, after which he was hit in his heart.

Although freed of his first enemy, Marcus still wasn’t safe. With his sword buried in the large man, he couldn’t defend himself against the other pirate that stormed towards him. Just when he was about to be hit, Lucius jumped over to the Liburnian, and slew him from behind. ‘Thanks, man! This was almost my last fight,’ Marcus screamed to his second. Lucius looked back with a grim face. ‘Take your sword sir. Let’s hit a few of these pigs before they’re all away.’

With these words, they ran into the fight. Around them they heard the cries of battle, while the men fought on. It was clear that this would be a Roman victory! The few Illyrians that were left grouped around the mast, and one by one they were taken out by the Romans. In the meanwhile, the ‘Apollo’ and the ‘Augustus’, two smaller ships of the fleet, had managed to enter the second Liburnian, and were making good progress in capturing it.

Then suddenly, when they thought that all was over after defeating the last pirates, men from the belly of the ship started shouting: ‘Fire! She’s on Fire!’ For a moment Marcus was pinned to the ground. Fire! It would mean that their own ship, rammed into the Liburnian, would also burn to the waterline. This would sink both ships, and when they didn’t act quickly many men that had survived the onslaught of the battle could still die…

Quickly he shouted orders. A group of men with axes started cutting the Liburnian into pieces where it was fastened to the ‘Hercules’, while others tried to extinguish the fires with some water. It didn’t work. Because of the oil-bags, the fire drove on top of the water, and already the lower parts of the ship were so hot that they couldn’t go there. It was a hell. Soon they couldn’t stand on the deck anymore, or they’d burn their feet. Luckily, they managed to free their own ship and sprang on to it. When they were finally separated, the Liburnian started to sink, with fell fires at its deck. The wounded Illyrians cried as they were cooked in the boiling water, before the ship took them with it to the bottom of the sea.

The others had been luckier. The second Liburnian had been captured, but was sunk because they had too few men to keep it. The ships grouped together, and after that Marcus made up the stats. They had lost sixty men in total, but defeated the Illyrians. Now the trade routes would be safe again, although it was heavily paid for by Roman blood. ‘Men of Rome,’ Marcus cried, ‘Today we have lost many comrades. Today we have suffered, in all dangers of these seas. But today, we are victorious! You have fought bravely, and will certainly be remembered for what you’ve done with me. Go now, and be proud!’ Cheers went up, and soon all were busy repairing the ships. All were tired after the action, and longing for home.

***

After we’d defeated the barbarians, we could finally leave the sea. After three days of sailing we ran out of food, but happily we reached our home port that afternoon. The men rested, our wounds were cared for, and after some time I came to fully understand the great deeds we had accomplished. I know that these will be made eternal when you make account of them in your Historiae, and that’s the reason why I made this detailed account and sent it to you with the highest urgency. I know that you’ll do the right thing with it. My noble friend, these are the actions that took place at the Mare Superum.
VALE MARCUS (greetings of your friend Marcus)

Tacitus put the letter down. For hours he sat there, thinking about all he’d read. Then, a gull landed at the roof, at his side. For a moment it watched him, and then it flew away, in the direction of the blue depths of the sea. This was a sign of Neptune! Tacitus stood up, walked to his study and started writing. ‘The events at the Mare Superum, victoriously fulfilled by Marcus Aurelius’, the title said. The sun went down, and its last golden rays fell at the mirror of the sea. A place of death and fertility, of gods and brave deeds, but above all the place that would forever keep an important place in the heart of a Roman officer.

In third place we have Trey, with his humorous tale entitled 'Mughal Mountain'!

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Mughal Mountain, PT. I
Once upon a time, there was a battle hardened mercenary by the name of Julius Barca. Carthaginian by birth, he had experienced racial discrimination as in the auxilia for the armies of Rome during the 3rd Punic War. So after that he got ticked off and left the army. But then he heard they were going to execute him for desertion so he went east. Wandering through the Saharan desert, he ran into a one eyed Sufi mystic by the name of Aziz.
What Aziz looks like:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

He has one eye and dark brown skin. He wears half broken glasses. He has a scraggly beard that is infested with lice and wears an orange beany and looks somewhat like a transient. In other words kind of like Rum.

Julius accosted him, saying:
"You old fool! Why are you in the desert like this!? And what are those things on your face!"
Aziz responded with kindness:
"My son, I see the sadness in your eyes. You should not weep. This desert is very dry and you will lose moisture. You must learn from the camel because I have never seen a camel cry and they can live for a long time in the desert"
Julius was flabbergasted:
"You wise fool, you benevolent man, I humbly ask of thee penitence for my transgressions. I have been cast out from those who were my friends because of the color of my skin. I got kind of sad because of it"
Aziz, in his wisdom encouraged him:
"My son, seek out the land of battle hardened warriors, who accept all those who can fight, no matter their race, religion, creed, or gender. It is called Mughal Mountain"

Julius was encouraged, and set of for this wondrous place (But before he left he smoked Hookah with the mystic and passed out in his tent, but the mystic didn't pass out). Along the way, he visited wondrous sites such as the Pyramids, the Nile, and he even read books at the Library of Alexandria! After being educated from this fount of wisdom, he was now more than a warrior, but a scholar too! So now he could plan battles and tactics.

After awhile he found himself in the mountains of what is now Afghanistan. He wondered what hardy men could live in such a place, when he spotted some of the locals off in the distance committing some of the most unnatural acts he had ever seen:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Two men wearing well worn turbans and finely groomed beards and having flowing robes and dirty sandals were climbing up a rock, as if they were mountain goats. They appeared to be slapping each other's rear ends with an RPG while laughing and dancing as if in celebration. Such a thing was unheard of where Julius was from. "We only sacrifice children, we don't do this shiz" Julius said, trying to absorb what he saw. Clearly he was having trouble recovering from such a traumatic event. But he was strong so he moved on.

"If only I had a Hind to strafe these unbelievers" he thought to himself.

After that he continued down into the Northern reaches of الهند aka India. Because he was a polyglot he learned languages really fast, and asked the locals where Mughal Mountain was.
"Do not ascend to that accursed place, many dangers are present there. Warriors from the four corners of the earth have been cast out like lepers of this village"

Julius was not afraid, he was a warrior of fine pedigree! His will was strong! He had no lack of courage! He must have justice! He climbed up the mountain where he met the village elder.
Village elder:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

The village elder looked not unlike a Roman, however he had longer hair and a 5 o'clock shadow. He was rather short, and dressed in the armor of the Rice Eaters. He also was a crazy mofo into pyramid schemes, but Julius hated economics in school so he couldn't be bothered with such things.

"Oh wise leader!" Julius cried out,
"how do I become like one of you?!"
The village elder slowing replied,
"You must defeat a warrior of great regard. And not use medicine. And you must also deposit money into our bank account of increasing increments over a period of time"
"God Damn!" Julius replied,
"You truly ask much of me, but to whom much is given, much is required"
So he departed from the mountain in search of an honorable opponent.
Coming back into the village, he spotted a warrior of great regard.
Warrior of Great Regard:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

This warrior will be described at a later date.

He trembled in fear at the sight of his insurmountable mustache. He moved on, seeking one who he could defenestrate from behind.
END OF PART I
To be continued...

[Legio]

However, those are not all the medals to be given out today! Justinian, with his monumental work 'Heartbeats in the Deep', has won the Librarian's Choice Award!

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

The Heartbeat in the Deep



That day the bombs fell.

The city was torn limb from limb, cell from cell. All was chaos and fire, the roars of the bombs drowning out the screams of the people below. The bombs fell on skyscrapers and streets, blasting through the foundations of mighty steel and glass monuments to the ingenuity of man. They collapsed in a maelstrom of dust and flame. Shrapnel from millions of shattered windows shrieked through the air, slicing through the fleeing mass of humanity that choked the streets below. The bombs fell on cars and buses, homes and churches, vaporizing every man, woman, and child. Molten metal dripped from the skeletons of buildings, boiling in the streets below. Every living thing was burning; nothing was left but ash and blood. What was there to do but run?

So I ran. I ran through torn up and blasted streets, littered with the rubble of eviscerated buildings and the broken bodies of the people within; I ran past burning schools and collapsed hospitals, perfect rings of carnage surrounding epicenters of flame; I ran past places I knew, restaurants I had eaten in the day before, the coffee shop I went to every morning. I recognized nothing; I had no time to feel pain, empathy, or loss. There was only me; if anyone else was left alive, I wasn’t looking. All I could hear was my own heartbeat and the rushing of blood in my ears, and it seemed as though each beat of my racing heart was accentuated by the blast of a bomb. The sounds drew closer and closer. How was I to outrun an inferno?

I could not give up. I sucked in air clogged with smoke and the fumes of burning flesh and kept on running. I was crying, but it was from the wind in my face. For what felt like hours, all I could see was grey smoke and rubble, burning buildings – but then, suddenly, I saw a flash of green between the flames. I ran towards it, each stride harder and harder as exhaustion threatened to overcome adrenaline. Somewhere in my mind I recognized that it had to be the park. Even though I knew nowhere was safe from the bombs, the somehow undisturbed green of the park offered some semblance of hope.

Suddenly I was running on grass and the air seemed clearer; the smell of destruction and death no longer filled my lungs. I could hear the bombs in the distance, but here it seemed quieter, safer. I sank to my knees in the grass and sucked in a deep breath. I could not recognize where I was. Not too far from me I saw what looked like a cave, a pit of darkness set in the side of a hill. Was it a crater? It could not have been there before.

A bomb detonated on the street behind me, blasting my back with heat and glass, and another boom filled my ears. I bolted back to my feet and ran towards the darkness. Cool air whispered out from the tunnel, blowing across my face. The fire could not reach me in there. I tripped at the opening, tumbling face-first into the darkness and rolling like a ragdoll down, and down, and down, until at last I stopped and all was silent.

My own labored breathing was the only sound down in the darkness. It took many long deep breaths before my terror began to subside, before I felt safe from the bombs. Eventually I pulled myself up from my stomach and sat there. I knew if I sat and waited too long, the realizations would set in. That everyone I knew was dead. That my world was destroyed. I couldn’t face that. Instead I focused on the darkness that enveloped me, trying to see something, anything – but the pitch black was impenetrable. My heartbeat started to rise again, thumping in my ears. What if I was inches away from falling into the bowels of the Earth? What if there was no way to get back up?

What if I wasn’t alone?

I tried to fight the sudden grip of fear in my lungs. I took deep breaths again. “You just survived a ****ing bombing, you can handle this,” I said, and I was startled by my own voice. Cracked, rasping. I sounded like an old man. A thought flashed through my head, and I fumbled through my pockets, searching, searching – I felt it, an oddly comforting lump in my pocket. My lighter. “Smoking will kill you, they said,” I murmured to myself, laughing nervously. It echoed. I pushed the lid up and flicked once, twice. Finally it lit, blindingly bright compared to the darkness.

I blinked hard until my eyes adjusted, focusing first on the lighter’s flame, then beyond. All I could see around me was dirt; I was in some kind of tunnel that stretched out beyond what I could see in the dim light, sloping downwards. Behind me was a steep rise; I must have fallen harder than I realized. I noticed that my pants felt wet, and I wondered miserably if I had pissed myself when the bombs fell, touching the fabric to be sure; but when I brought my fingers to the light, they were red. The sight of my own blood shocked me for a moment, but I took a deep breath. Now was not the time to be a pussy. I’ll be fine, I thought. I’ll be fine.

I rose to my feet, grateful for the ceiling above my head, and reached back to touch the steep slope behind me. For a moment I tried to pull myself up, but it was impossible; the dirt came away in my hands and I fell back to my feet. “You can either sit here or do something,” I said, the sound of my own voice more comforting than deafening silence. I took a deep breath and walked carefully forward, bent over so that the lighter illuminated the ground. I went like this for a while, hoping that the ground would begin to slope upwards again; but it kept going down. I looked behind me and couldn’t see where I had began.

“Why are you here?”

I shouted and dropped the lighter, plunging the tunnel back into darkness and my heart into my throat. I clawed out for it and tripped, falling heavily onto the hard ground, deaf to anything but the blood rushing in my ears. “Who are you?” I asked, my voice sounding frail and scared, echoing loudly in the confined space.

“I don’t remember,” came the voice again; it was feminine, yet entirely alien to my ears. It had some echo, some strange undercurrent that raised the hairs on the back of my neck and made my teeth grind. There was a pause, and I could not find the courage to speak.

“Why are you here?” the voice repeated, and I rose to my knees, fumbling in the darkness for the lighter.

“I was running, and came down here,” I said after a moment, breathing heavily. The initial shock of her voice was beginning to fade; I took a deep breath, my fingers brushing against something cool and metal on the ground and closing around it.

“Running from what?” she asked.

“The bombing – you didn’t ****ing hear the bombing?” The top of the lighter kept slipping in my fingers; finally it popped open and I pushed down, the tunnel illuminated again, light falling on a slight frame and a pale face–

She let loose an ear-splitting shriek, a fist flashing out and knocking the lighter from my hand before I could see the rest of her, and I was blind again. I grabbed for it again.

“No!” She cried. “He will see you.”

Something in her voice made me fall silent, peering into the darkness. I saw flashes and spots left over from the light of the flame; or maybe the outline of a person. I reached out a hand uncertainly, brushing against something, and I felt her jerk back in surprise. “I’m sorry,” I said, panic rising in my throat again. “I’m just ... I’m lost and I don’t know where I am. I need the light, I have to be able to see...”

“Do you? Do you have to?” The bitterness in her voice surprised me, and silence fell over us both again.

“Who is going to see me?” I finally said.

“I have forgotten everything but Him, so I do not know … how to describe Him to someone like you,” she said, sounding troubled. “But you don’t want Him to see you. Be patient and I will remember the words. Trust me.”

“Obviously I don’t have a ****ing choice,” I said, voice rising again. “Just explain where I am!”

“It is easier to show than to tell,” she said after a moment. I felt her hand brush against me and then slip into my hand. “Follow me. Quietly.”

I felt her hand move away, tugging me slightly, and I took an uncertain step after her, blind in the deep darkness. One small part of me was more afraid of this murky unknown than the bombs above. I followed the faint sound of her footsteps, each taking us deeper and deeper into darkness. The blood rushed in my ears.

Slowly, so slowly I almost didn’t notice, the complete blindness was tempered by an ethereal light that tinged the darkness faint red. It flickered like a candle, rhythmically pulsing darker, brighter, darker, brighter. It illuminated vague shapes in front of me: the woman who led me, our hands, our footsteps.

“Where is the light coming from?” I asked.

“Shh,” she hissed, holding up a hand in front of my face. I was glad I could see it. “Listen.”

At first I could hear nothing but our breathing; but slowly I could make out a sound underneath it, a heavy rumbling that hung in my head like a bad dream. Thump-thump, it boomed, the ground shaking with each beat. We took a few steps forward and it grew louder and louder, booming and crashing like some primeval drum beating in the bowels of the earth, over and over and over again. It rolled like rhythmic thunder, the light throbbing to match each beat. The hairs rose on the back of my neck. “It’s a heartbeat,” I whispered.

“Yes. It is His heartbeat.”

“What do you mean – who is ‘He’?”

“Listen,” she said, taking a step closer to me. “He is a Demon, and this is His hell. He rules it all, from the maggots wriggling in the dirt to the souls who are trapped here forever.” She pointed to herself. “Everything here is inexorably tied to Him. We are His slaves, condemned eternally to His service by fate, by blood.” My eyes widened, but she held a finger up to my lips. “There are many more than I. We each came down here like you, running away from something, lured into the darkness. But it is a trap.

“Every century, the Demon pulls another soul into His hell. Each soul has one chance to kill Him, and only one chance. Failure is damnation. As His heartbeat continues, so does our slavery; when it ends, if it ends, our souls are released.”

“Bull****,” I finally gasped.

“Hmm.” Her head tilted to the side, but her face was obscured by shadows. “It could be. I could be lying to you, toying with you. But you are here, are you not? What else is there to believe?”

“If you’re His … slave, why are you helping me?”

“It is my duty,” she said after a moment. “A duty I take gladly, for each new soul is a chance, a slight chance to be free. I guide those who have fallen into this trap; I give them what assistance I am allowed; and I hope that they are smart enough to free us all.” She paused, and took a step closer to me. “For years beyond counting, I have been disappointed. Over, and over, and over again. Perhaps you, at last, are the one who will free us all. Or you will be just another disappointment, another century of hopelessness.”

Her words slowly sank in. My disbelief eroded with each heavy beat in the ground below. My heart grew heavier, my shoulders slumped under the weight of inevitability: what she was saying was true. I could feel it. “I can’t run away, can I,” I said numbly, my voice quiet.

“Of course not. It wouldn’t be much of a trap if you could just walk out.” She laughed. I didn’t think it was very funny. “Do not despair,” she said, her voice softening. “It is not an impossible task. Many have tried and all failed, but that does not mean you can‘t succeed. It isn’t hopeless. If it was, it wouldn’t be much of a game.”

I looked up slowly. “A game?”

She laughed again, bitterly. “Yes. A game. Or perhaps a show. This --” she gestured around to the tunnel illuminated by the red light, “it is all for amusement. Not only for His amusement, but for the others. I have never seen one of them, but sometimes … when a new soul fails … you can hear them laughing.”

I swallowed hard and fought back the fear in my throat again.

“But it is a game, a show,” she continued, “and like any good game, it has rules, it has a winner, a loser. It’s fair. If it wasn’t, the audience wouldn’t care.”

Almost as if she could feel my fear, she reached out and took my hand again. Her fingers were as cold as ice. “If you are not confident, you have no chance,” she said bluntly. “Whether you fail or succeed, it is the greatest test you will ever face. You were chosen by fate to do this; it is your destiny, one way or another.”

I took a deep breath and nodded. “What do I do?”

She laughed and pulled my hand, taking me further down. The light grew brighter until I could see all around me, clearly make out black hair that spilled almost to dirt. In the light, I could make out another person, and I started.

“It is one of us; he will not hurt you. Slaves we may be, but the Demon cannot make us attack a new soul – it would ruin the game.” She gestured towards him. “We cannot remember our true names, only the names the Demon gives us. Call him whatever you wish. Of course, he can’t answer you,” she said, and then turned around, brushing back her hair. Finally I could see her face under the light. I recoiled, bile rising in my throat.

Her face was pale as ivory and stained with blood. There were two gaping scars where her eyes should have been, criss-crossed by thick black threads up and down her eyelids. With each pulse of the demonic heart, the thread shimmered. “If your eyes displease Him, He sews them shut. If your ears affront Him, He sews them shut.” She gestured to the other figure. “If your mouth offends Him, He sews it shut.”

I covered my mouth, revolted. “I’m so sorry…”

“Why? It’s not as if you did this to us. Right?”

“I … what--”

She laughed again. “You humans are so amusing.” Out of the corner of my eye I saw the other stare at her, then quickly look away, as if he knew that I saw him.

“Aren’t you one too?”

“Too long ago to remember,” she said, shaking her head. “Or to matter. Come, I’ll explain the rest,” she said impatiently. She started walking and I followed her, deeper into the abyss. “The rules of the game are simple. You will ask Him three questions, and He must answer without lying. You will be given a knife that can pierce His flesh, and a torch born from His own soul. He cannot kill you before you ask all of your questions, or until you attack Him yourself. Be warned: everything I say is true, but designed to trick you. You are not supposed to win. Not without being very clever.” She paused and looked straight at me with her empty eyes. “Nothing is as it seems. You understand?”

“Yes.”

“Are you ready?”

“What?! No!”

“That’s too bad, because we’re here.”

I took another step and the tunnel widened out into a cavernous room. It was so bright it hurt my eyes; flames burned across the walls, coursing through the cavern like blood through veins. The thunder of His heartbeat echoed through the chamber; with each beat, the flames burned brighter. At the center of the flame, a pulsing mass of burning flesh twitched rhythmically to the heartbeat. It was a swollen black heart, pumping flame with each beat; twisted around it was a corpulent pile of flesh and bone, a face, legs, a mockery of a human.

“What’s this?” A voice like thunder rolled across the cavern, followed by faint echoes, a hiss and a roar in one. My teeth grated. “Has it really been a century again?”

I turned, reaching out for my guide, but she was no longer by my side. She stood across the room with a host of pale-faced, emaciated figures, each with eyes or ears or mouths sewn shut.

“Come here,” the voice boomed, and my feet shuffled me forward closer and closer to the heart.

Two burning eyes regarded me from some twisted skull above the heart. A jaw opened, a booming laugh and tendrils of smoke escaping it. “It’s about time.” One of the figures scurried up behind me and dropped a shimmering knife and a torch on the ground, then ran back. “Come and kill me,” the voice mocked.

I reached down slowly, took a deep breath, and picked up the knife and the torch. I walked towards him, swallowing hard and staring directly into the smoldering eyes. They regarded me curiously.

“You have three questions before you join the damned.” The demon pointed a withered arm towards the deathly silent spectators. “Take your time. I have little else to amuse me for the next century.” He drew in a deep breath and a wheel of flame encircled his withered arm, coursing through the bone and sinew. Instantly it grew, fiery claws bursting from underneath fingernails, flame oozing from his black skin.

I took a deep breath. “What is the capability of these things I‘ve been given?”

“Don’t you know?” He tossed his head, breathing smoke. “Your knife can cut only a small part of my flesh. The flame is mine, and will only make me stronger.”

His eyes watched me, quietly. I took another deep breath. “How do I kill you?”

The demon laughed again, a booming laugh that prickled my spire. “You are not so clever as you think. They have all asked this,” he said, a hand gesturing to the figures. “As you can see, they didn’t like the answer.” He laughed again, the crowd shuddering with each grating sound. “I will give you the answer I gave them: the only thing that can harm me is the flesh of my flesh, the blood of my blood.” I swore I saw a smile, fire dripping from the corner of his mouth.

“I know that you can’t kill me until I ask the final question.”

“Regrettably.” I saw another grin, black teeth outlined by embers. The claws scratched along the ground again. I looked at those black talons, at the flame that coursed around them, flame that coursed over black skin that shimmered to the beat of his heart. In that moment, a strange hope glimmered in me. I knew I what to do.

I looked into the Demon’s eyes and smiled.

I turned and ran towards the crowd of spectators. I grabbed one of the figures, pulling him closer to me and raising the knife quickly, hellfire shining down its blade. His eyes flashed between its point and me, lips trying to move but held shut by the thread. Thick, black thread that shimmered with every thundering beat of the Demon’s heart.

The knife flashed quickly against one stitch, slicing cleanly through it. The figure’s eyes widened and I saw in them a reflection of flame. Quickly, I fell to the ground, rolling.

The flaming claws flashed through the air where I had just stood, leaving behind a trail of smoke and ash. “I don’t have to kill you,” the Demon snarled, flashing the claws out at me again. I ducked out of the way, slipping behind the figure and holding him in front of me, quickly slicing through the threads until I could pull one free, a long, black coil that burned my skin.

The claws flashed at me again and I couldn’t get out of the way fast enough, the torch flying from my hands. I fell hard, face-first into the ground, but I still had the knife and the coil of thread clutched in my hands. I rolled out of the way of His claws, staring into His eyes again.

“Well done,” the Demon bellowed, laughing. “But do you think you can kill me with one tiny little piece of me? You think a thread can fell a Demon?”

“No,” I said. The claws flashed towards me again and this time I rolled out of the way, slamming the knife down into the ground and pinning the flaming arm into the dirt. Instantly, more flame coursed around it, strengthening the arm and slowly forcing the dagger out of it as his flesh grew.

I ran to where the torch lay, still burning. I thrust my fist into the flame, wrapped in the thread. The fire coursed through my veins and devoured my skin, but the thread grew instantly. It fed off the fire, growing thicker and thicker in my hand, bursting into a black spire coursing with flame.

“Flesh of your flesh,” I said, laughing, the pain forgotten as the thread grew stronger. The claws flashed at me again, but this time I lifted the spine; they crashed together with a horrendous shriek and crack of bone, and one claw fell to the ground. The Demon shrieked and recoiled, bellowing something in a language that burned in my ears.

I ran towards Him, the spine clutched between both of my hands. “My last question, Demon,” I roared. “Are you afraid?”

The spine sank deep into the black heart. The Demon roared, bleeding fire, enveloping me, boiling my skin away -- but when the flame touched the spine it grew, splitting the heart in two.

An ear-splitting shriek escaped the Demon as the fire within faded. The cavern was enveloped in brilliant blood red flame, which pulsed with one last thundering heartbeat and then went out. I collapsed to the ground as the heart withered to ash, receding into the sunken chest of a broken beast that might have once been a man.

“Thank you,” a voice whispered from the ashes. Then all was silent.

The threads blinding, muting and silencing the crowd dissolved and slipped away. A chorus of gratitude filled my ears as each tortured soul was released. One by one they crumbled into dust and withered away, until all were gone. All but one.

My guide walked up to me and laughed. She was stunningly beautiful, long black hair cascading around a perfect face, full lips curved into a wonderful smile. She had eyes now, brilliant blue eyes that bathed the entire cavern in soft light. I had never seen a more beautiful sight in all my life.

“Well that certainly was amusing!” she said, clapping her hands together joyfully, the words spilling out of her mouth like music. “I didn’t expect you to get that far! They‘re usually so very disappointing, but you…”

“W… what? Why didn’t you disappear with the rest of them?” I asked, groaning in pain from the burns that covered my body. She laid a cold hand against my shoulder, and the pain all over me numbed and faded, calm filling my aching bones.

“Why would I have? They’ve all been dead for a long, long time. Only their souls have been trapped here by the Demon, tortured for millenia. You have finally released them from their bonds, released their souls to heaven or hell or wherever they’re supposed to be.” She smiled, her eyes so bright I could see nothing else. “You really ought to be proud. No one‘s done it in two thousand years, you know. I‘ve lost a lot of bets.”

“I don’t understand,” I coughed, staring into her eyes.

She shook her head and sighed. “It really is a shame,” she said, patting me on the head. “You did so well. Ah, well, it‘s not like you‘re the first one.” She bent down and kissed me on the lips, and a tingling warmth spread from my lips throughout my entire body. Then she stood and walked away.

“No! Where are you going!?” I screamed, reaching after her. “Don’t leave me!” My eyes widened as the tips of my fingers began to peel and crack, the skin fading away to ash gray and then to black, my bones crumpling as crippling pain erupted from my chest. I screamed, clawing at my ribs, as the warmth from her kiss turned to flame beneath my skin. A sound began to fill my ears, a sound that reverberated in the cavern around me from deep beneath my chest, a familiar sound...

She turned and blew me a kiss. “The show must go on!”

My chest burst into flames and then split open, my burning heart shattering my ribcage, my body withering around it as it twitched and grew and pumped fire through my veins. A cacophony of shrieking laughs filled my ears.

Then the only sound was the constant beating of my heart. The Heartbeat in the Deep



That day the bombs fell.

The city was torn limb from limb, cell from cell. All was chaos and fire, the roars of the bombs drowning out the screams of the people below. The bombs fell on skyscrapers and streets, blasting through the foundations of mighty steel and glass monuments to the ingenuity of man. They collapsed in a maelstrom of dust and flame. Shrapnel from millions of shattered windows shrieked through the air, slicing through the fleeing mass of humanity that choked the streets below. The bombs fell on cars and buses, homes and churches, vaporizing every man, woman, and child. Molten metal dripped from the skeletons of buildings, boiling in the streets below. Every living thing was burning; nothing was left but ash and blood. What was there to do but run?

So I ran. I ran through torn up and blasted streets, littered with the rubble of eviscerated buildings and the broken bodies of the people within; I ran past burning schools and collapsed hospitals, perfect rings of carnage surrounding epicenters of flame; I ran past places I knew, restaurants I had eaten in the day before, the coffee shop I went to every morning. I recognized nothing; I had no time to feel pain, empathy, or loss. There was only me; if anyone else was left alive, I wasn’t looking. All I could hear was my own heartbeat and the rushing of blood in my ears, and it seemed as though each beat of my racing heart was accentuated by the blast of a bomb. The sounds drew closer and closer. How was I to outrun an inferno?

I could not give up. I sucked in air clogged with smoke and the fumes of burning flesh and kept on running. I was crying, but it was from the wind in my face. For what felt like hours, all I could see was grey smoke and rubble, burning buildings – but then, suddenly, I saw a flash of green between the flames. I ran towards it, each stride harder and harder as exhaustion threatened to overcome adrenaline. Somewhere in my mind I recognized that it had to be the park. Even though I knew nowhere was safe from the bombs, the somehow undisturbed green of the park offered some semblance of hope.

Suddenly I was running on grass and the air seemed clearer; the smell of destruction and death no longer filled my lungs. I could hear the bombs in the distance, but here it seemed quieter, safer. I sank to my knees in the grass and sucked in a deep breath. I could not recognize where I was. Not too far from me I saw what looked like a cave, a pit of darkness set in the side of a hill. Was it a crater? It could not have been there before.

A bomb detonated on the street behind me, blasting my back with heat and glass, and another boom filled my ears. I bolted back to my feet and ran towards the darkness. Cool air whispered out from the tunnel, blowing across my face. The fire could not reach me in there. I tripped at the opening, tumbling face-first into the darkness and rolling like a ragdoll down, and down, and down, until at last I stopped and all was silent.

My own labored breathing was the only sound down in the darkness. It took many long deep breaths before my terror began to subside, before I felt safe from the bombs. Eventually I pulled myself up from my stomach and sat there. I knew if I sat and waited too long, the realizations would set in. That everyone I knew was dead. That my world was destroyed. I couldn’t face that. Instead I focused on the darkness that enveloped me, trying to see something, anything – but the pitch black was impenetrable. My heartbeat started to rise again, thumping in my ears. What if I was inches away from falling into the bowels of the Earth? What if there was no way to get back up?

What if I wasn’t alone?

I tried to fight the sudden grip of fear in my lungs. I took deep breaths again. “You just survived a ****ing bombing, you can handle this,” I said, and I was startled by my own voice. Cracked, rasping. I sounded like an old man. A thought flashed through my head, and I fumbled through my pockets, searching, searching – I felt it, an oddly comforting lump in my pocket. My lighter. “Smoking will kill you, they said,” I murmured to myself, laughing nervously. It echoed. I pushed the lid up and flicked once, twice. Finally it lit, blindingly bright compared to the darkness.

I blinked hard until my eyes adjusted, focusing first on the lighter’s flame, then beyond. All I could see around me was dirt; I was in some kind of tunnel that stretched out beyond what I could see in the dim light, sloping downwards. Behind me was a steep rise; I must have fallen harder than I realized. I noticed that my pants felt wet, and I wondered miserably if I had pissed myself when the bombs fell, touching the fabric to be sure; but when I brought my fingers to the light, they were red. The sight of my own blood shocked me for a moment, but I took a deep breath. Now was not the time to be a pussy. I’ll be fine, I thought. I’ll be fine.

I rose to my feet, grateful for the ceiling above my head, and reached back to touch the steep slope behind me. For a moment I tried to pull myself up, but it was impossible; the dirt came away in my hands and I fell back to my feet. “You can either sit here or do something,” I said, the sound of my own voice more comforting than deafening silence. I took a deep breath and walked carefully forward, bent over so that the lighter illuminated the ground. I went like this for a while, hoping that the ground would begin to slope upwards again; but it kept going down. I looked behind me and couldn’t see where I had began.

“Why are you here?”

I shouted and dropped the lighter, plunging the tunnel back into darkness and my heart into my throat. I clawed out for it and tripped, falling heavily onto the hard ground, deaf to anything but the blood rushing in my ears. “Who are you?” I asked, my voice sounding frail and scared, echoing loudly in the confined space.

“I don’t remember,” came the voice again; it was feminine, yet entirely alien to my ears. It had some echo, some strange undercurrent that raised the hairs on the back of my neck and made my teeth grind. There was a pause, and I could not find the courage to speak.

“Why are you here?” the voice repeated, and I rose to my knees, fumbling in the darkness for the lighter.

“I was running, and came down here,” I said after a moment, breathing heavily. The initial shock of her voice was beginning to fade; I took a deep breath, my fingers brushing against something cool and metal on the ground and closing around it.

“Running from what?” she asked.

“The bombing – you didn’t ****ing hear the bombing?” The top of the lighter kept slipping in my fingers; finally it popped open and I pushed down, the tunnel illuminated again, light falling on a slight frame and a pale face–

She let loose an ear-splitting shriek, a fist flashing out and knocking the lighter from my hand before I could see the rest of her, and I was blind again. I grabbed for it again.

“No!” She cried. “He will see you.”

Something in her voice made me fall silent, peering into the darkness. I saw flashes and spots left over from the light of the flame; or maybe the outline of a person. I reached out a hand uncertainly, brushing against something, and I felt her jerk back in surprise. “I’m sorry,” I said, panic rising in my throat again. “I’m just ... I’m lost and I don’t know where I am. I need the light, I have to be able to see...”

“Do you? Do you have to?” The bitterness in her voice surprised me, and silence fell over us both again.

“Who is going to see me?” I finally said.

“I have forgotten everything but Him, so I do not know … how to describe Him to someone like you,” she said, sounding troubled. “But you don’t want Him to see you. Be patient and I will remember the words. Trust me.”

“Obviously I don’t have a ****ing choice,” I said, voice rising again. “Just explain where I am!”

“It is easier to show than to tell,” she said after a moment. I felt her hand brush against me and then slip into my hand. “Follow me. Quietly.”

I felt her hand move away, tugging me slightly, and I took an uncertain step after her, blind in the deep darkness. One small part of me was more afraid of this murky unknown than the bombs above. I followed the faint sound of her footsteps, each taking us deeper and deeper into darkness. The blood rushed in my ears.

Slowly, so slowly I almost didn’t notice, the complete blindness was tempered by an ethereal light that tinged the darkness faint red. It flickered like a candle, rhythmically pulsing darker, brighter, darker, brighter. It illuminated vague shapes in front of me: the woman who led me, our hands, our footsteps.

“Where is the light coming from?” I asked.

“Shh,” she hissed, holding up a hand in front of my face. I was glad I could see it. “Listen.”

At first I could hear nothing but our breathing; but slowly I could make out a sound underneath it, a heavy rumbling that hung in my head like a bad dream. Thump-thump, it boomed, the ground shaking with each beat. We took a few steps forward and it grew louder and louder, booming and crashing like some primeval drum beating in the bowels of the earth, over and over and over again. It rolled like rhythmic thunder, the light throbbing to match each beat. The hairs rose on the back of my neck. “It’s a heartbeat,” I whispered.

“Yes. It is His heartbeat.”

“What do you mean – who is ‘He’?”

“Listen,” she said, taking a step closer to me. “He is a Demon, and this is His hell. He rules it all, from the maggots wriggling in the dirt to the souls who are trapped here forever.” She pointed to herself. “Everything here is inexorably tied to Him. We are His slaves, condemned eternally to His service by fate, by blood.” My eyes widened, but she held a finger up to my lips. “There are many more than I. We each came down here like you, running away from something, lured into the darkness. But it is a trap.

“Every century, the Demon pulls another soul into His hell. Each soul has one chance to kill Him, and only one chance. Failure is damnation. As His heartbeat continues, so does our slavery; when it ends, if it ends, our souls are released.”

“Bull****,” I finally gasped.

“Hmm.” Her head tilted to the side, but her face was obscured by shadows. “It could be. I could be lying to you, toying with you. But you are here, are you not? What else is there to believe?”

“If you’re His … slave, why are you helping me?”

“It is my duty,” she said after a moment. “A duty I take gladly, for each new soul is a chance, a slight chance to be free. I guide those who have fallen into this trap; I give them what assistance I am allowed; and I hope that they are smart enough to free us all.” She paused, and took a step closer to me. “For years beyond counting, I have been disappointed. Over, and over, and over again. Perhaps you, at last, are the one who will free us all. Or you will be just another disappointment, another century of hopelessness.”

Her words slowly sank in. My disbelief eroded with each heavy beat in the ground below. My heart grew heavier, my shoulders slumped under the weight of inevitability: what she was saying was true. I could feel it. “I can’t run away, can I,” I said numbly, my voice quiet.

“Of course not. It wouldn’t be much of a trap if you could just walk out.” She laughed. I didn’t think it was very funny. “Do not despair,” she said, her voice softening. “It is not an impossible task. Many have tried and all failed, but that does not mean you can‘t succeed. It isn’t hopeless. If it was, it wouldn’t be much of a game.”

I looked up slowly. “A game?”

She laughed again, bitterly. “Yes. A game. Or perhaps a show. This --” she gestured around to the tunnel illuminated by the red light, “it is all for amusement. Not only for His amusement, but for the others. I have never seen one of them, but sometimes … when a new soul fails … you can hear them laughing.”

I swallowed hard and fought back the fear in my throat again.

“But it is a game, a show,” she continued, “and like any good game, it has rules, it has a winner, a loser. It’s fair. If it wasn’t, the audience wouldn’t care.”

Almost as if she could feel my fear, she reached out and took my hand again. Her fingers were as cold as ice. “If you are not confident, you have no chance,” she said bluntly. “Whether you fail or succeed, it is the greatest test you will ever face. You were chosen by fate to do this; it is your destiny, one way or another.”

I took a deep breath and nodded. “What do I do?”

She laughed and pulled my hand, taking me further down. The light grew brighter until I could see all around me, clearly make out black hair that spilled almost to dirt. In the light, I could make out another person, and I started.

“It is one of us; he will not hurt you. Slaves we may be, but the Demon cannot make us attack a new soul – it would ruin the game.” She gestured towards him. “We cannot remember our true names, only the names the Demon gives us. Call him whatever you wish. Of course, he can’t answer you,” she said, and then turned around, brushing back her hair. Finally I could see her face under the light. I recoiled, bile rising in my throat.

Her face was pale as ivory and stained with blood. There were two gaping scars where her eyes should have been, criss-crossed by thick black threads up and down her eyelids. With each pulse of the demonic heart, the thread shimmered. “If your eyes displease Him, He sews them shut. If your ears affront Him, He sews them shut.” She gestured to the other figure. “If your mouth offends Him, He sews it shut.”

I covered my mouth, revolted. “I’m so sorry…”

“Why? It’s not as if you did this to us. Right?”

“I … what--”

She laughed again. “You humans are so amusing.” Out of the corner of my eye I saw the other stare at her, then quickly look away, as if he knew that I saw him.

“Aren’t you one too?”

“Too long ago to remember,” she said, shaking her head. “Or to matter. Come, I’ll explain the rest,” she said impatiently. She started walking and I followed her, deeper into the abyss. “The rules of the game are simple. You will ask Him three questions, and He must answer without lying. You will be given a knife that can pierce His flesh, and a torch born from His own soul. He cannot kill you before you ask all of your questions, or until you attack Him yourself. Be warned: everything I say is true, but designed to trick you. You are not supposed to win. Not without being very clever.” She paused and looked straight at me with her empty eyes. “Nothing is as it seems. You understand?”

“Yes.”

“Are you ready?”

“What?! No!”

“That’s too bad, because we’re here.”

I took another step and the tunnel widened out into a cavernous room. It was so bright it hurt my eyes; flames burned across the walls, coursing through the cavern like blood through veins. The thunder of His heartbeat echoed through the chamber; with each beat, the flames burned brighter. At the center of the flame, a pulsing mass of burning flesh twitched rhythmically to the heartbeat. It was a swollen black heart, pumping flame with each beat; twisted around it was a corpulent pile of flesh and bone, a face, legs, a mockery of a human.

“What’s this?” A voice like thunder rolled across the cavern, followed by faint echoes, a hiss and a roar in one. My teeth grated. “Has it really been a century again?”

I turned, reaching out for my guide, but she was no longer by my side. She stood across the room with a host of pale-faced, emaciated figures, each with eyes or ears or mouths sewn shut.

“Come here,” the voice boomed, and my feet shuffled me forward closer and closer to the heart.

Two burning eyes regarded me from some twisted skull above the heart. A jaw opened, a booming laugh and tendrils of smoke escaping it. “It’s about time.” One of the figures scurried up behind me and dropped a shimmering knife and a torch on the ground, then ran back. “Come and kill me,” the voice mocked.

I reached down slowly, took a deep breath, and picked up the knife and the torch. I walked towards him, swallowing hard and staring directly into the smoldering eyes. They regarded me curiously.

“You have three questions before you join the damned.” The demon pointed a withered arm towards the deathly silent spectators. “Take your time. I have little else to amuse me for the next century.” He drew in a deep breath and a wheel of flame encircled his withered arm, coursing through the bone and sinew. Instantly it grew, fiery claws bursting from underneath fingernails, flame oozing from his black skin.

I took a deep breath. “What is the capability of these things I‘ve been given?”

“Don’t you know?” He tossed his head, breathing smoke. “Your knife can cut only a small part of my flesh. The flame is mine, and will only make me stronger.”

His eyes watched me, quietly. I took another deep breath. “How do I kill you?”

The demon laughed again, a booming laugh that prickled my spire. “You are not so clever as you think. They have all asked this,” he said, a hand gesturing to the figures. “As you can see, they didn’t like the answer.” He laughed again, the crowd shuddering with each grating sound. “I will give you the answer I gave them: the only thing that can harm me is the flesh of my flesh, the blood of my blood.” I swore I saw a smile, fire dripping from the corner of his mouth.

“I know that you can’t kill me until I ask the final question.”

“Regrettably.” I saw another grin, black teeth outlined by embers. The claws scratched along the ground again. I looked at those black talons, at the flame that coursed around them, flame that coursed over black skin that shimmered to the beat of his heart. In that moment, a strange hope glimmered in me. I knew I what to do.

I looked into the Demon’s eyes and smiled.

I turned and ran towards the crowd of spectators. I grabbed one of the figures, pulling him closer to me and raising the knife quickly, hellfire shining down its blade. His eyes flashed between its point and me, lips trying to move but held shut by the thread. Thick, black thread that shimmered with every thundering beat of the Demon’s heart.

The knife flashed quickly against one stitch, slicing cleanly through it. The figure’s eyes widened and I saw in them a reflection of flame. Quickly, I fell to the ground, rolling.

The flaming claws flashed through the air where I had just stood, leaving behind a trail of smoke and ash. “I don’t have to kill you,” the Demon snarled, flashing the claws out at me again. I ducked out of the way, slipping behind the figure and holding him in front of me, quickly slicing through the threads until I could pull one free, a long, black coil that burned my skin.

The claws flashed at me again and I couldn’t get out of the way fast enough, the torch flying from my hands. I fell hard, face-first into the ground, but I still had the knife and the coil of thread clutched in my hands. I rolled out of the way of His claws, staring into His eyes again.

“Well done,” the Demon bellowed, laughing. “But do you think you can kill me with one tiny little piece of me? You think a thread can fell a Demon?”

“No,” I said. The claws flashed towards me again and this time I rolled out of the way, slamming the knife down into the ground and pinning the flaming arm into the dirt. Instantly, more flame coursed around it, strengthening the arm and slowly forcing the dagger out of it as his flesh grew.

I ran to where the torch lay, still burning. I thrust my fist into the flame, wrapped in the thread. The fire coursed through my veins and devoured my skin, but the thread grew instantly. It fed off the fire, growing thicker and thicker in my hand, bursting into a black spire coursing with flame.

“Flesh of your flesh,” I said, laughing, the pain forgotten as the thread grew stronger. The claws flashed at me again, but this time I lifted the spine; they crashed together with a horrendous shriek and crack of bone, and one claw fell to the ground. The Demon shrieked and recoiled, bellowing something in a language that burned in my ears.

I ran towards Him, the spine clutched between both of my hands. “My last question, Demon,” I roared. “Are you afraid?”

The spine sank deep into the black heart. The Demon roared, bleeding fire, enveloping me, boiling my skin away -- but when the flame touched the spine it grew, splitting the heart in two.

An ear-splitting shriek escaped the Demon as the fire within faded. The cavern was enveloped in brilliant blood red flame, which pulsed with one last thundering heartbeat and then went out. I collapsed to the ground as the heart withered to ash, receding into the sunken chest of a broken beast that might have once been a man.

“Thank you,” a voice whispered from the ashes. Then all was silent.

The threads blinding, muting and silencing the crowd dissolved and slipped away. A chorus of gratitude filled my ears as each tortured soul was released. One by one they crumbled into dust and withered away, until all were gone. All but one.

My guide walked up to me and laughed. She was stunningly beautiful, long black hair cascading around a perfect face, full lips curved into a wonderful smile. She had eyes now, brilliant blue eyes that bathed the entire cavern in soft light. I had never seen a more beautiful sight in all my life.

“Well that certainly was amusing!” she said, clapping her hands together joyfully, the words spilling out of her mouth like music. “I didn’t expect you to get that far! They‘re usually so very disappointing, but you…”

“W… what? Why didn’t you disappear with the rest of them?” I asked, groaning in pain from the burns that covered my body. She laid a cold hand against my shoulder, and the pain all over me numbed and faded, calm filling my aching bones.

“Why would I have? They’ve all been dead for a long, long time. Only their souls have been trapped here by the Demon, tortured for millenia. You have finally released them from their bonds, released their souls to heaven or hell or wherever they’re supposed to be.” She smiled, her eyes so bright I could see nothing else. “You really ought to be proud. No one‘s done it in two thousand years, you know. I‘ve lost a lot of bets.”

“I don’t understand,” I coughed, staring into her eyes.

She shook her head and sighed. “It really is a shame,” she said, patting me on the head. “You did so well. Ah, well, it‘s not like you‘re the first one.” She bent down and kissed me on the lips, and a tingling warmth spread from my lips throughout my entire body. Then she stood and walked away.

“No! Where are you going!?” I screamed, reaching after her. “Don’t leave me!” My eyes widened as the tips of my fingers began to peel and crack, the skin fading away to ash gray and then to black, my bones crumpling as crippling pain erupted from my chest. I screamed, clawing at my ribs, as the warmth from her kiss turned to flame beneath my skin. A sound began to fill my ears, a sound that reverberated in the cavern around me from deep beneath my chest, a familiar sound...

She turned and blew me a kiss. “The show must go on!”

My chest burst into flames and then split open, my burning heart shattering my ribcage, my body withering around it as it twitched and grew and pumped fire through my veins. A cacophony of shrieking laughs filled my ears.

Then the only sound was the constant beating of my heart. The Heartbeat in the Deep



That day the bombs fell.

The city was torn limb from limb, cell from cell. All was chaos and fire, the roars of the bombs drowning out the screams of the people below. The bombs fell on skyscrapers and streets, blasting through the foundations of mighty steel and glass monuments to the ingenuity of man. They collapsed in a maelstrom of dust and flame. Shrapnel from millions of shattered windows shrieked through the air, slicing through the fleeing mass of humanity that choked the streets below. The bombs fell on cars and buses, homes and churches, vaporizing every man, woman, and child. Molten metal dripped from the skeletons of buildings, boiling in the streets below. Every living thing was burning; nothing was left but ash and blood. What was there to do but run?

So I ran. I ran through torn up and blasted streets, littered with the rubble of eviscerated buildings and the broken bodies of the people within; I ran past burning schools and collapsed hospitals, perfect rings of carnage surrounding epicenters of flame; I ran past places I knew, restaurants I had eaten in the day before, the coffee shop I went to every morning. I recognized nothing; I had no time to feel pain, empathy, or loss. There was only me; if anyone else was left alive, I wasn’t looking. All I could hear was my own heartbeat and the rushing of blood in my ears, and it seemed as though each beat of my racing heart was accentuated by the blast of a bomb. The sounds drew closer and closer. How was I to outrun an inferno?

I could not give up. I sucked in air clogged with smoke and the fumes of burning flesh and kept on running. I was crying, but it was from the wind in my face. For what felt like hours, all I could see was grey smoke and rubble, burning buildings – but then, suddenly, I saw a flash of green between the flames. I ran towards it, each stride harder and harder as exhaustion threatened to overcome adrenaline. Somewhere in my mind I recognized that it had to be the park. Even though I knew nowhere was safe from the bombs, the somehow undisturbed green of the park offered some semblance of hope.

Suddenly I was running on grass and the air seemed clearer; the smell of destruction and death no longer filled my lungs. I could hear the bombs in the distance, but here it seemed quieter, safer. I sank to my knees in the grass and sucked in a deep breath. I could not recognize where I was. Not too far from me I saw what looked like a cave, a pit of darkness set in the side of a hill. Was it a crater? It could not have been there before.

A bomb detonated on the street behind me, blasting my back with heat and glass, and another boom filled my ears. I bolted back to my feet and ran towards the darkness. Cool air whispered out from the tunnel, blowing across my face. The fire could not reach me in there. I tripped at the opening, tumbling face-first into the darkness and rolling like a ragdoll down, and down, and down, until at last I stopped and all was silent.

My own labored breathing was the only sound down in the darkness. It took many long deep breaths before my terror began to subside, before I felt safe from the bombs. Eventually I pulled myself up from my stomach and sat there. I knew if I sat and waited too long, the realizations would set in. That everyone I knew was dead. That my world was destroyed. I couldn’t face that. Instead I focused on the darkness that enveloped me, trying to see something, anything – but the pitch black was impenetrable. My heartbeat started to rise again, thumping in my ears. What if I was inches away from falling into the bowels of the Earth? What if there was no way to get back up?

What if I wasn’t alone?

I tried to fight the sudden grip of fear in my lungs. I took deep breaths again. “You just survived a ****ing bombing, you can handle this,” I said, and I was startled by my own voice. Cracked, rasping. I sounded like an old man. A thought flashed through my head, and I fumbled through my pockets, searching, searching – I felt it, an oddly comforting lump in my pocket. My lighter. “Smoking will kill you, they said,” I murmured to myself, laughing nervously. It echoed. I pushed the lid up and flicked once, twice. Finally it lit, blindingly bright compared to the darkness.

I blinked hard until my eyes adjusted, focusing first on the lighter’s flame, then beyond. All I could see around me was dirt; I was in some kind of tunnel that stretched out beyond what I could see in the dim light, sloping downwards. Behind me was a steep rise; I must have fallen harder than I realized. I noticed that my pants felt wet, and I wondered miserably if I had pissed myself when the bombs fell, touching the fabric to be sure; but when I brought my fingers to the light, they were red. The sight of my own blood shocked me for a moment, but I took a deep breath. Now was not the time to be a pussy. I’ll be fine, I thought. I’ll be fine.

I rose to my feet, grateful for the ceiling above my head, and reached back to touch the steep slope behind me. For a moment I tried to pull myself up, but it was impossible; the dirt came away in my hands and I fell back to my feet. “You can either sit here or do something,” I said, the sound of my own voice more comforting than deafening silence. I took a deep breath and walked carefully forward, bent over so that the lighter illuminated the ground. I went like this for a while, hoping that the ground would begin to slope upwards again; but it kept going down. I looked behind me and couldn’t see where I had began.

“Why are you here?”

I shouted and dropped the lighter, plunging the tunnel back into darkness and my heart into my throat. I clawed out for it and tripped, falling heavily onto the hard ground, deaf to anything but the blood rushing in my ears. “Who are you?” I asked, my voice sounding frail and scared, echoing loudly in the confined space.

“I don’t remember,” came the voice again; it was feminine, yet entirely alien to my ears. It had some echo, some strange undercurrent that raised the hairs on the back of my neck and made my teeth grind. There was a pause, and I could not find the courage to speak.

“Why are you here?” the voice repeated, and I rose to my knees, fumbling in the darkness for the lighter.

“I was running, and came down here,” I said after a moment, breathing heavily. The initial shock of her voice was beginning to fade; I took a deep breath, my fingers brushing against something cool and metal on the ground and closing around it.

“Running from what?” she asked.

“The bombing – you didn’t ****ing hear the bombing?” The top of the lighter kept slipping in my fingers; finally it popped open and I pushed down, the tunnel illuminated again, light falling on a slight frame and a pale face–

She let loose an ear-splitting shriek, a fist flashing out and knocking the lighter from my hand before I could see the rest of her, and I was blind again. I grabbed for it again.

“No!” She cried. “He will see you.”

Something in her voice made me fall silent, peering into the darkness. I saw flashes and spots left over from the light of the flame; or maybe the outline of a person. I reached out a hand uncertainly, brushing against something, and I felt her jerk back in surprise. “I’m sorry,” I said, panic rising in my throat again. “I’m just ... I’m lost and I don’t know where I am. I need the light, I have to be able to see...”

“Do you? Do you have to?” The bitterness in her voice surprised me, and silence fell over us both again.

“Who is going to see me?” I finally said.

“I have forgotten everything but Him, so I do not know … how to describe Him to someone like you,” she said, sounding troubled. “But you don’t want Him to see you. Be patient and I will remember the words. Trust me.”

“Obviously I don’t have a ****ing choice,” I said, voice rising again. “Just explain where I am!”

“It is easier to show than to tell,” she said after a moment. I felt her hand brush against me and then slip into my hand. “Follow me. Quietly.”

I felt her hand move away, tugging me slightly, and I took an uncertain step after her, blind in the deep darkness. One small part of me was more afraid of this murky unknown than the bombs above. I followed the faint sound of her footsteps, each taking us deeper and deeper into darkness. The blood rushed in my ears.

Slowly, so slowly I almost didn’t notice, the complete blindness was tempered by an ethereal light that tinged the darkness faint red. It flickered like a candle, rhythmically pulsing darker, brighter, darker, brighter. It illuminated vague shapes in front of me: the woman who led me, our hands, our footsteps.

“Where is the light coming from?” I asked.

“Shh,” she hissed, holding up a hand in front of my face. I was glad I could see it. “Listen.”

At first I could hear nothing but our breathing; but slowly I could make out a sound underneath it, a heavy rumbling that hung in my head like a bad dream. Thump-thump, it boomed, the ground shaking with each beat. We took a few steps forward and it grew louder and louder, booming and crashing like some primeval drum beating in the bowels of the earth, over and over and over again. It rolled like rhythmic thunder, the light throbbing to match each beat. The hairs rose on the back of my neck. “It’s a heartbeat,” I whispered.

“Yes. It is His heartbeat.”

“What do you mean – who is ‘He’?”

“Listen,” she said, taking a step closer to me. “He is a Demon, and this is His hell. He rules it all, from the maggots wriggling in the dirt to the souls who are trapped here forever.” She pointed to herself. “Everything here is inexorably tied to Him. We are His slaves, condemned eternally to His service by fate, by blood.” My eyes widened, but she held a finger up to my lips. “There are many more than I. We each came down here like you, running away from something, lured into the darkness. But it is a trap.

“Every century, the Demon pulls another soul into His hell. Each soul has one chance to kill Him, and only one chance. Failure is damnation. As His heartbeat continues, so does our slavery; when it ends, if it ends, our souls are released.”

“Bull****,” I finally gasped.

“Hmm.” Her head tilted to the side, but her face was obscured by shadows. “It could be. I could be lying to you, toying with you. But you are here, are you not? What else is there to believe?”

“If you’re His … slave, why are you helping me?”

“It is my duty,” she said after a moment. “A duty I take gladly, for each new soul is a chance, a slight chance to be free. I guide those who have fallen into this trap; I give them what assistance I am allowed; and I hope that they are smart enough to free us all.” She paused, and took a step closer to me. “For years beyond counting, I have been disappointed. Over, and over, and over again. Perhaps you, at last, are the one who will free us all. Or you will be just another disappointment, another century of hopelessness.”

Her words slowly sank in. My disbelief eroded with each heavy beat in the ground below. My heart grew heavier, my shoulders slumped under the weight of inevitability: what she was saying was true. I could feel it. “I can’t run away, can I,” I said numbly, my voice quiet.

“Of course not. It wouldn’t be much of a trap if you could just walk out.” She laughed. I didn’t think it was very funny. “Do not despair,” she said, her voice softening. “It is not an impossible task. Many have tried and all failed, but that does not mean you can‘t succeed. It isn’t hopeless. If it was, it wouldn’t be much of a game.”

I looked up slowly. “A game?”

She laughed again, bitterly. “Yes. A game. Or perhaps a show. This --” she gestured around to the tunnel illuminated by the red light, “it is all for amusement. Not only for His amusement, but for the others. I have never seen one of them, but sometimes … when a new soul fails … you can hear them laughing.”

I swallowed hard and fought back the fear in my throat again.

“But it is a game, a show,” she continued, “and like any good game, it has rules, it has a winner, a loser. It’s fair. If it wasn’t, the audience wouldn’t care.”

Almost as if she could feel my fear, she reached out and took my hand again. Her fingers were as cold as ice. “If you are not confident, you have no chance,” she said bluntly. “Whether you fail or succeed, it is the greatest test you will ever face. You were chosen by fate to do this; it is your destiny, one way or another.”

I took a deep breath and nodded. “What do I do?”

She laughed and pulled my hand, taking me further down. The light grew brighter until I could see all around me, clearly make out black hair that spilled almost to dirt. In the light, I could make out another person, and I started.

“It is one of us; he will not hurt you. Slaves we may be, but the Demon cannot make us attack a new soul – it would ruin the game.” She gestured towards him. “We cannot remember our true names, only the names the Demon gives us. Call him whatever you wish. Of course, he can’t answer you,” she said, and then turned around, brushing back her hair. Finally I could see her face under the light. I recoiled, bile rising in my throat.

Her face was pale as ivory and stained with blood. There were two gaping scars where her eyes should have been, criss-crossed by thick black threads up and down her eyelids. With each pulse of the demonic heart, the thread shimmered. “If your eyes displease Him, He sews them shut. If your ears affront Him, He sews them shut.” She gestured to the other figure. “If your mouth offends Him, He sews it shut.”

I covered my mouth, revolted. “I’m so sorry…”

“Why? It’s not as if you did this to us. Right?”

“I … what--”

She laughed again. “You humans are so amusing.” Out of the corner of my eye I saw the other stare at her, then quickly look away, as if he knew that I saw him.

“Aren’t you one too?”

“Too long ago to remember,” she said, shaking her head. “Or to matter. Come, I’ll explain the rest,” she said impatiently. She started walking and I followed her, deeper into the abyss. “The rules of the game are simple. You will ask Him three questions, and He must answer without lying. You will be given a knife that can pierce His flesh, and a torch born from His own soul. He cannot kill you before you ask all of your questions, or until you attack Him yourself. Be warned: everything I say is true, but designed to trick you. You are not supposed to win. Not without being very clever.” She paused and looked straight at me with her empty eyes. “Nothing is as it seems. You understand?”

“Yes.”

“Are you ready?”

“What?! No!”

“That’s too bad, because we’re here.”

I took another step and the tunnel widened out into a cavernous room. It was so bright it hurt my eyes; flames burned across the walls, coursing through the cavern like blood through veins. The thunder of His heartbeat echoed through the chamber; with each beat, the flames burned brighter. At the center of the flame, a pulsing mass of burning flesh twitched rhythmically to the heartbeat. It was a swollen black heart, pumping flame with each beat; twisted around it was a corpulent pile of flesh and bone, a face, legs, a mockery of a human.

“What’s this?” A voice like thunder rolled across the cavern, followed by faint echoes, a hiss and a roar in one. My teeth grated. “Has it really been a century again?”

I turned, reaching out for my guide, but she was no longer by my side. She stood across the room with a host of pale-faced, emaciated figures, each with eyes or ears or mouths sewn shut.

“Come here,” the voice boomed, and my feet shuffled me forward closer and closer to the heart.

Two burning eyes regarded me from some twisted skull above the heart. A jaw opened, a booming laugh and tendrils of smoke escaping it. “It’s about time.” One of the figures scurried up behind me and dropped a shimmering knife and a torch on the ground, then ran back. “Come and kill me,” the voice mocked.

I reached down slowly, took a deep breath, and picked up the knife and the torch. I walked towards him, swallowing hard and staring directly into the smoldering eyes. They regarded me curiously.

“You have three questions before you join the damned.” The demon pointed a withered arm towards the deathly silent spectators. “Take your time. I have little else to amuse me for the next century.” He drew in a deep breath and a wheel of flame encircled his withered arm, coursing through the bone and sinew. Instantly it grew, fiery claws bursting from underneath fingernails, flame oozing from his black skin.

I took a deep breath. “What is the capability of these things I‘ve been given?”

“Don’t you know?” He tossed his head, breathing smoke. “Your knife can cut only a small part of my flesh. The flame is mine, and will only make me stronger.”

His eyes watched me, quietly. I took another deep breath. “How do I kill you?”

The demon laughed again, a booming laugh that prickled my spire. “You are not so clever as you think. They have all asked this,” he said, a hand gesturing to the figures. “As you can see, they didn’t like the answer.” He laughed again, the crowd shuddering with each grating sound. “I will give you the answer I gave them: the only thing that can harm me is the flesh of my flesh, the blood of my blood.” I swore I saw a smile, fire dripping from the corner of his mouth.

“I know that you can’t kill me until I ask the final question.”

“Regrettably.” I saw another grin, black teeth outlined by embers. The claws scratched along the ground again. I looked at those black talons, at the flame that coursed around them, flame that coursed over black skin that shimmered to the beat of his heart. In that moment, a strange hope glimmered in me. I knew I what to do.

I looked into the Demon’s eyes and smiled.

I turned and ran towards the crowd of spectators. I grabbed one of the figures, pulling him closer to me and raising the knife quickly, hellfire shining down its blade. His eyes flashed between its point and me, lips trying to move but held shut by the thread. Thick, black thread that shimmered with every thundering beat of the Demon’s heart.

The knife flashed quickly against one stitch, slicing cleanly through it. The figure’s eyes widened and I saw in them a reflection of flame. Quickly, I fell to the ground, rolling.

The flaming claws flashed through the air where I had just stood, leaving behind a trail of smoke and ash. “I don’t have to kill you,” the Demon snarled, flashing the claws out at me again. I ducked out of the way, slipping behind the figure and holding him in front of me, quickly slicing through the threads until I could pull one free, a long, black coil that burned my skin.

The claws flashed at me again and I couldn’t get out of the way fast enough, the torch flying from my hands. I fell hard, face-first into the ground, but I still had the knife and the coil of thread clutched in my hands. I rolled out of the way of His claws, staring into His eyes again.

“Well done,” the Demon bellowed, laughing. “But do you think you can kill me with one tiny little piece of me? You think a thread can fell a Demon?”

“No,” I said. The claws flashed towards me again and this time I rolled out of the way, slamming the knife down into the ground and pinning the flaming arm into the dirt. Instantly, more flame coursed around it, strengthening the arm and slowly forcing the dagger out of it as his flesh grew.

I ran to where the torch lay, still burning. I thrust my fist into the flame, wrapped in the thread. The fire coursed through my veins and devoured my skin, but the thread grew instantly. It fed off the fire, growing thicker and thicker in my hand, bursting into a black spire coursing with flame.

“Flesh of your flesh,” I said, laughing, the pain forgotten as the thread grew stronger. The claws flashed at me again, but this time I lifted the spine; they crashed together with a horrendous shriek and crack of bone, and one claw fell to the ground. The Demon shrieked and recoiled, bellowing something in a language that burned in my ears.

I ran towards Him, the spine clutched between both of my hands. “My last question, Demon,” I roared. “Are you afraid?”

The spine sank deep into the black heart. The Demon roared, bleeding fire, enveloping me, boiling my skin away -- but when the flame touched the spine it grew, splitting the heart in two.

An ear-splitting shriek escaped the Demon as the fire within faded. The cavern was enveloped in brilliant blood red flame, which pulsed with one last thundering heartbeat and then went out. I collapsed to the ground as the heart withered to ash, receding into the sunken chest of a broken beast that might have once been a man.

“Thank you,” a voice whispered from the ashes. Then all was silent.

The threads blinding, muting and silencing the crowd dissolved and slipped away. A chorus of gratitude filled my ears as each tortured soul was released. One by one they crumbled into dust and withered away, until all were gone. All but one.

My guide walked up to me and laughed. She was stunningly beautiful, long black hair cascading around a perfect face, full lips curved into a wonderful smile. She had eyes now, brilliant blue eyes that bathed the entire cavern in soft light. I had never seen a more beautiful sight in all my life.

“Well that certainly was amusing!” she said, clapping her hands together joyfully, the words spilling out of her mouth like music. “I didn’t expect you to get that far! They‘re usually so very disappointing, but you…”

“W… what? Why didn’t you disappear with the rest of them?” I asked, groaning in pain from the burns that covered my body. She laid a cold hand against my shoulder, and the pain all over me numbed and faded, calm filling my aching bones.

“Why would I have? They’ve all been dead for a long, long time. Only their souls have been trapped here by the Demon, tortured for millenia. You have finally released them from their bonds, released their souls to heaven or hell or wherever they’re supposed to be.” She smiled, her eyes so bright I could see nothing else. “You really ought to be proud. No one‘s done it in two thousand years, you know. I‘ve lost a lot of bets.”

“I don’t understand,” I coughed, staring into her eyes.

She shook her head and sighed. “It really is a shame,” she said, patting me on the head. “You did so well. Ah, well, it‘s not like you‘re the first one.” She bent down and kissed me on the lips, and a tingling warmth spread from my lips throughout my entire body. Then she stood and walked away.

“No! Where are you going!?” I screamed, reaching after her. “Don’t leave me!” My eyes widened as the tips of my fingers began to peel and crack, the skin fading away to ash gray and then to black, my bones crumpling as crippling pain erupted from my chest. I screamed, clawing at my ribs, as the warmth from her kiss turned to flame beneath my skin. A sound began to fill my ears, a sound that reverberated in the cavern around me from deep beneath my chest, a familiar sound...

She turned and blew me a kiss. “The show must go on!”

My chest burst into flames and then split open, my burning heart shattering my ribcage, my body withering around it as it twitched and grew and pumped fire through my veins. A cacophony of shrieking laughs filled my ears.

Then the only sound was the constant beating of my heart.

[.Mitch.]

Very good job to all, nice to see the one I voted for win.

[Solid Snake]

Congrats to all!

[Maurits]

First of all, congrats Kaitsar! I would have voted for you if I wasn't in myself, a well deserved first place!

Secondly, for all that voted for me: thank you! I never would have imagined that my third piece ever written, and then my first time at the competition, would be so successful. I couldn't have won without your support. Thanks a lot.

Thirdly, congrats to all writers who send their marvellous pieces to this competition. You should all be proud of yourselves because of the fact that you did this and participated in this great competition.

Lastly, great to see my identity revealed. It was so hard not to reply at 'the final round' post! As most of you might have seen I am a beginning writer, so I would definitely like some comments on my story. What should I improve, and what style / other things should I hold on to? Please give me your crytics, so that I can improve my skills.

Thanks for reading, voting, and giving me the chance to participate. It was a honour to be here.

[M D]

Well done to all involved, especially Kaitsar

[Jom]

Congratulations everyone there were some really high quality stories here.

Special congratulations to Kaitsar and also to Justinian for pulling off another Jewish conspiracy.

[LuckyLewis]

Congratulations to the winners and those who took part! Some very high quality work, I enjoyed all of them.

[rez]

Congrats fellas!

Particularly Justy, that was spectacular.

[Justinian]

Congrats fellas!

Particularly Justy, that was spectacular.

Thanks man I'm curious to see which one was yours?

[zznɟ ǝɥʇ]

أحب تري وقسمه

also it makes me really happy to know it wasn't serious because I only voted for it because of the Phoenician Islamic world.

[Guy]

Well done to Kaitsar, Maurits, Trey and Justinian! All of the entries were brilliant and massive well done to you all.

There's always a next time.

[rez]

Take a guess bro :p

Its the ancient Persian one in the first batch.

[DukeCanada]

Bravo to you all! Well done!

Ill have to get in on this competition next time around.

Again bravo and +rep!

[Prodigal]

Thank you to everyone that voted for me and congratulations to all that won!

[♔Oggie♔]

Congratulations to the winners. It's good to see that so many people agreed with me that Armageddon was the best. It proves my taste is right. All else I can say is well done to all the memvers who joined. There were some beginners who's first time this was (including me) and some people who obviously wrote longer. There's deffinitly talent in some people.
I hope to see you all in the next contest

[Saint Nicholas]

Competition had a much better turn out this time around. Well done to all the winners! Someone make Trey post here so I can rep him.

[Jom]

Competition had a much better turn out this time around. Well done to all the winners! Someone make Trey post here so I can rep him.

The guy has had his rep disabled for ages anyway so there's not much point

[zznɟ ǝɥʇ]

Stop being lazy and search for him if you want to, if not, don't bother posting

[♔Old Dragoon♔]

Congrats to all the winners, well done!