Chapter 1: The Fall

"Where am I?," I said to the void.

As far as the eye could see, there was darkness. I was running in the pitch black. Huffing. Puffing. Glimpsing The Unblinking Eye slithering towards me. Its slender tendrils clung to my arms, cradling, roping round the torso and thighs. The tendrils crept up the wall of my mind, reaching for the garden of wisdom housed in the head. I shook. Screaming. Squirming. I was a live octopus chewed by the hungry passengers.

Boom. A cannon of light razed the wall. Thorny roses in tatters, splinters crashing into the trees, roots flinging in the air, dust suffusing the darkness. Branches crumbled, rattling fragments of wisdom to gusts of wind. The bringer of death lunged, hunting me, gouging pockets of information from my brain. Leaves withered. Wood rotted. The green corroded to black. Molten liquid spewed from the wounds of a tree at the core of the garden; it darkened, tainted by the dearth of hope, gushing out of my mind, filling up the darkness outside the walls. Like a reptile, I crawled, wading against the liquid. Breath wheezing out the nostrils, rasping in my chest, heartbeat thumping the strings that hugged the pale skin. Snap. Crushed my bones, the twig of broken ribs punctured the lungs, tearing the muscles to strands, ravelling the tendons, and squeezing out the blood. The slither of hope sprinted away from me. Pain walloped. Consciousness lost.

Sticky. Moist but not wet. Like chocolate fondue fresh off the stove. My skin burned, organs seared, my arm stretched out above the gushing liquid, yarning to grasp hope. The liquid engulfed me, pulling me to the depths of drowning, body dipping to the floor. Sinking. Bubbles of thoughts floated to the surface. My family. Friends. Identity.

Gasp. My breath squeezed. Throat pinched. Windpipe crushed. "Gaah," I squeaked, one hand grasping my gullet, another writhing to clench the bubbles. Pop. A handful popped under the tight clasp of my hand. My feet quiver. Silence.

Sinking.

'How long since death?'

Sinking.

I feathered to the ground. Gently. My body hit. I was plastered. Darkness. The Unblinking Eye. Behind me. Crunch. The teethed pupil crushed my skull, grinding it to powder. The glaciers of my mind leaked the meltwater of the soul, pooling on the soil-laden ground, the slush rippling like blood from the body. Slurp. Tittering. It drowned itself in the cooling breeze of the meltwater. Bang. It slammed my body. A sliver of the soul, a drop, bolted out, unbeknownst to the creature, infusing itself into the soil. Escaping. Sinking.

'How long…death,' my soul muttered, wafting down the topsoil, skirting the roots thirsting my fragrance, drifting to the groundwater of souls. An oceanic place crammed with souls, spirits, demons, monsters, and ravens. Creatures known not to any—some made of dust, or of fire, or metal. All intermingling. Huddling to the coast. Unconscious, or perhaps consciousness subdued to the subconscious by the lazy tides and the weary tribes of Guardians hawking the sea. I was a spicule amongst the planets of beings flowing through the waves of the groundwater.

Luck. Fate. Or, The Guide of Heavens. I should have merged with the waves lapping the shores of reincarnation. Destiny seeks demise. I tossed and turned, barely gliding from one gorge of providence to another, floating down the River of Eternity, heading to the Southern Gates of Yama.

"Thou Shalt Not Pass!" Thundered the Guardian of the Gates.

The Unblinking Eye was summoned, then a spell was cast. Its pupil widened, seething, as the white iris waned, a crimson color circled the eye. A hound dog on the hunt. It rushed, rattling the sea of souls to part from him. Chomp. Teeth sinking deep. I awoke.

"Aaaargh!" I grunted, and screeched and kicked the being. A tooth flung to the void. But, the tendrils broke me to two. Each hurling down, spiralling out of control. We fell. Fast. River of Eternity flashed past—souls flailing round, the swirling of the puckered faces, the hums of death and birth nauseating my head. Smashing against the lump of spirits, we slipped, split, our screams stammering, skidding against the mush of spirits, several of my sodden souls flattened, bursting out their essence. Rare few remained intact, flopping about, scattered.

"RRAAAUUUGGHHH," The Eye rasped a guttural noise through the pupil.

"Shit," we said at once.

A beam of light gathered around the edges of the eye, irradiating the sea of souls. We gaped at it, peering, stiffened by the brilliance. Blink. It whipped the ray at us. A nasty one, bright red and glowering. We barrelled to one side, gnashing at the bitterness of life, the brightness guttering the spirits, boiling the rest of our souls to clouds of puff till only two remained.

Evaporated, exasperated, parts of us lost forever, we plunged to the deepest, darkest crevices. Seeking comfort in the cold. There we saw, at the end of the river, at the deepest part where no soul seemed to exist, a glass of ice and rock, stretching to infinity, separating the here and there, the now and then. The bedrock of universes on the other side. Life on the other whilst death was here. We touched the smooth surface, rubbing fingers across the frosting.

"Urgh," our mindsouls, ere driven to insanity, were impregnated with flashes of the future.

A sword. A gun. A world. Families under threat. Doom and destruction. The Eye. I tore my fingers from the glass, reeling from the shock, glimpsing my partner. We were gleaming souls with joyous faces. We can survive. Twisting, facing the beast, both of us planting feet on the rock face, hunkering down. I took one last deep breath.

"Charge," I cried, dashing to one of the sides while he shifted to the other side of the creature, thinking 'now or never', rushing like raging bulls. A sword. A gun. 'Imagine a weapon,' said the vision. A soulsword I became, a soulgun he became. He shot bullets of himself that wilted him one shot at a time. One caved the cornea, the second shattered the lens, embedding itself in the vitreous humor, and the rest perforated the retina. It squealed, fluttering gobbets of tears, oozing the crimson juice from the crater in the cornea.

"Hey ugling, my lovely pet, come to papa," I mocked, thrusting the sclera with a grin. I became a mosquito buzzing near the thing, stabbing and sucking blood that corroded the steel of the soulsword. It streamed splashes of red as vessels popped from the sheer anger of the beast.

"The bigger you are, the better my aim, bastard," I screamed.

The tendrils swatted me. I lanced to the ice. Before I could muse over the problem I faced, its tongue flicked out of the mouth, licking yellow teeth, caressing the upper incisors, pressing, cracking one from the gum, clutching it. Then. Slinging. The horns of the teeth spiked at me, goring my belly. Like a bust balloon of water, the essence spewed out, vaporizing to gulps of smoke from the oppression of this darned place. Senses dulled. I started to fade.

'I was a madman hunting the predator.' It waited to cull us together, away from the other souls to not harm its duty. Hence, it chased to the land of no souls. The Eye glinted with excitement as its pupil crescented. The teeth smeared the wet tongue with putrid acid. Spit. I was needled. The ash-white spit glued me to the ice. Preventing any movements. The acid scorched, rusting the steel. Stuck. Disintegrating. My hands squeezed, glancing at my partner, seizures quivering the body. "Survive," I whimpered.

Shiver. Visions of the past. Inundated. Me. History. 'Was it mine?'

"I'll avenge you, brother of the same soul," he said, galloping to the creature. A rain of bullets blazed to the crater. But, it spun. Wind. A torrent of wind swept the bullets aside. Then, the tendrils lashed at him, whipping him to me. Tangled. Trapped in the saliva. Stuck to me. Dread blighted our faces. The Unblinking tongued the lip of the pupil. Slinking. It curled the crater. Madness clouded the eyes. It peeked around, seeing no one. A smirk.

Floundering. Bodies jerking. Yanking the spit off, shaking to move, pushing against the horns. No. No. Hopeless. My steel weak bombarded by the past. His barrel stapled by the froth of the acid. "Perhaps, the visions were false," I whispered to him.

He veered to me, saying "we had a good run, brother. If another life exists for us, I will josh you with my cup."

It rushed. Surely, hurling abuse with its screeching voice. Smash. Our voices plucked. The horns of tooth sliced the ice, breaking the barrier, siring the annihilation of boundaries. It bent, trying to stop, to slow the descent to life. To cease the ripple that shattered the mirage of death.

We saw it. An eyeful of universes cooling and heating and colliding. The goo of the cosmos merging and severing with each other. The swirling of a trillion galaxies boxed by the expanding rim of space and time.

"YOU DAMNED HALF-WIT," a roar echoed through the River of Eternity. Terror bulked the creatures of the sea. The Unblinking Eye gazing the stars, consciousness entering the subconscious, it shut the eye, drifting to deep sleep. We. Dipped to the dream. Sailing the cosmos. A new life. So close to the bedrock of the future. Perhaps, a bitter fate hereafter.