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WHERE THE DEAD SPEAK: The ninth dominion...

t, now it must be given back, for it says so…in the book…you know.”

It nodded his shrouded head slightly; sarcastically.

It firmly placed his covered upper limb over both their backs, almost hugging them, pulling them closer to it.

Neither Kabe nor Omar could make out its features clearly, nor could they differentiate a scent from this strange being either.

They did however feel some human connection to it.

Their vion blurred once more, they could only see a muffled figure now…They felt a little uneasy, a daunting stare of a thousand eyes on both of them, all at once.Both Kabe and Omar snapped awake from their shared dream.

They opened their eyes into their new, stark reality and the extinction of light around them.

The lightning had grown less random, hisng every few minutes.

“I just had the strangest dream.” Omar said to Kabe tting upright in the blackness, hugging his legs and burying his head atop his knees.

He stared at the eerie glimmer outlining both his feet.

“Me too.”

Kabe returned, standing up he palmed his shirt pocket for his cigarettes, by habit, remembering he had stuffed it full of an assortment of Diem Hain’s maps, writings, poems and drawings.

The folded pages were wet but intact.

He quickly felt the des of both of his dampened blue jean front pockets.

He could feel the smashed outline of his cigarettes.

“Thank God!”

He said, pulling the box out.

There was only one left.

He massaged his de and back pockets again for a lighter, he didn’t have one.

“Omar let me see Henry’s de pack real quick, here, I’m right here bud.”

Kabe tapped Omar’s shoulder.

“Here.” Omar handed it over.

Kabe in a fit of nicotine addiction rustled his hand throughout the pack, blindly feeling for the shape of a lighter.

“Yes!”

He said.

“Thank you Henry.”

Inde the void of darkness, he lit his last cigarette, inhaling harder than he ever had.

Every brief moment Omar could see the floating cherry light up showing red hints of Kabe’s face. “We have to keep moving.”

Kabe spoke while exhaling his smoke.

He coughed.

“There has to be a way out of this place.”

“I didn’t feel any pain back there Kabe.”

Omar stood up stretching, cradling his fresh wounds.

He was slowly bleeding from his injured ribcage.

“When we died, I didn’t feel any pain.

I bleed now and I feel nothing”

“We didn’t fuckin die, Omar!”

Kabe implored pinching Omar’s right shoulder.

“See. Feel that.”

Omar pushed Kabe’s clamped fingers away from his flesh.“Stop it!”

Pressure began to pound behind Omar’s eyes, he’d grown irritable.

“Let’s go…Let’s just fuckin go.

Where?

I have no fuckin clue, let just walk.”

He shrugged his hands in the air.

“We have to stay cool Omar, I am just as frustrated right now, let’s stay close and continue to move forward.”

Kabe reached towards Omar.

“Yeah, well you’re not the one with a dead brother, I am!”

He pulled himself away, walking a few feet ahead of Kabe.

“That thing back there, if it didn’t get us it most certainly got Henry.”

“We don’t know that Omar.

I saw Henry run from the room, he was gone, well before we jumped into whatever this is.”

Kabe half zipped the de pack, he tried to zip it all the way, as he tugged on it a few times, a pencil had protruded from the pack and he couldn’t close it completely.

“Here,” Kabe handed it to Omar.

“We may need this, who knows, it already came in handy once.”

Omar snatched it free from Kabe’s hands.

In a fit of anger Kabe snapped at Omar.

“Your fuckin brother’s wonderful idea, to explore the sewer tunnels is what got us here in the first place!”

The place echoed his screech.

“You gave him the map Kabe.

You did!”

Omar ricocheted back.“Wait!

Stop,” Kabe grabbed Omar’s elbow.

Omar swiftly pulled it away.

“Look!”

Kabe demanded.

“Don’t you see it?”

Off in the distance was a faint light.

“It’s the end of this fuckin tunnel.”

Omar said in excitement.

“Come on.”

As quick as their argument started it had immediately stopped, Omar winced his headache away best he could.

They both began to run towards the tiny, glinting light in the distance. “The Dominion was entered,” the sentinel spoke bowing his head.

“It’s happened…just like you said,” The guard was nervous, stuttering, his words were hard to finish.

“Th..Th...The high moon has failed to rise…and...an...and the North moon is red, mastery…red as crimson I say.”

The colossal individual, shadowed in the far corner of the immense hall, within his fortress walls, festooned with a velvet cape stood and turned where only his red malevolent eyes bolted past the shroud of darkness.

With thunderous tones it bellowed.

“None of them will make it through Limbus.”

Slowly smiling, its eyes grew dark.

“For, they will never get past its keeper.” Approaching swiftly, sweating heavily and gasping each well-earned breath they noticed that the one distant light had grown much bigger and had multiplied into two arched doorways.

The reigning terror of their past few hours had seemed infinite to them both.

Kabe’s energy sunk into a shear frenzy of relief, exhaustion brought on by a cold sweat, and chills grew over his body caung him to have small bursting shivers.

The back of his neck all the way down into his hips began to twinge.

He was beginning to panic.“Hold on, Omar.

I have to stop.”

Kabe stopped to collect himself, as did his dear friend.

“What do you think it is, Kabe?”

They both had stumbled upon the effervescent light of two masve archway openings; the wall next to the first opening was built from what appeared to be huge cubed blocks of limestone with rounded edges.

They were as old as time, incredibly worn down with deep cracks throughout. The warped checkerboard of numerous unfilled squared crevasses, gazed through it into an empty abyss beyond.

The never ending wall structure climbed high up, disappearing into infinity.

The walk up to it was nothing more than a void continuum.There was a faintly shadowed protruon mounted high up against the limestone in- between them, just before the second doorway, which was quite a distance away and conderably smaller than the first one; it gave off a cerulean exuberance, several large, granite columns on either de led up to four, elongated, white and gold marble steps ascending up into its serene aura.

Its wall connected to the limestone bricks, but was not of the same material.

It had a crystal clear barrier reflecting a strong auburn, gray skyline with relient blue tones.

A magnificent ght indeed, but not a view a person could stay long to enjoy.

They were closer.

Too close.Omar pointed towards the lit outline of the protruding mantle juxtaposed the two overzed doorways.

They stopped dead in their tracks.

They both noticed the two eyes atop it shining directly at them.

The radiance of the glowing eyes only slightly exposed what it was.

Oh my God

Kabe absorbed.

His mind’s eye in a quick glimpse saw himself holding that necklace, the one both he and Omar had discovered, the one in his back pocket right at that very moment.

The necklace decorated with the golden gargoyle with embossed emerald eyes on the front.

He blinked the observation away.

“Dear Lord…It’s a gargoyle!”Through the eyes of the monstrous beholder, before them both, was misfortune and rage as it blinked, then vanished.

Whatever it was, Omar was still unsure.

Its fearless emerald eyes, in an instant were gone.

The giant, with a flying leap, jumped down from its layer.

They both instinctively sensed a quick rustle, a subtle vibration underneath their feet.

It happened in a flash.

It was inescapable.

He feared it would come sooner or later; his face was drowned with the mellifluous splash of his friend’s blood upon him, completely covering his body.

His friend fell limp, headless to the empty floor below.

It had been ripped clean from his body.

He was dead as fast as he was alive.The gargoyle beast in a blazing whirlwind just missed with his second swipe of certain death; just brushing the young bloodied man’s right shoulder.

With wild fury it swung again, misng him.

The gust of wind alone from the mighty guardian was enough to nearly knock him to the ground.

He staggered slightly, getting the strap from the fanny pack entwined around his ankle.

His hearts cold thuds, were firm within his soul. It gored its claws deep and hard into the abdomen of the lone survivor, knocking the air from his lungs.

The creature removed its talons as the young man, fell to the glistening protection in-between him and the bottomless chasm below.

Off in close proximity he saw the flourishing blooming radiance surrounding the large puddles of blood from his dead friend.

His lifeless eyes stared back into his own, expresonless.“Dear God, No.”

He cried out gently.

The time for him to weep was nil.

The overpowering grip of the beast squeezed the air from his lungs once again; he felt one of his ribs pop, biting down hard with anguish.

He was bleeding profusely.

Abruptly lifted up above the monster’s head, his belly tensed as he dangled momentarily, and then was slammed hard to the ground.

Had the creature’s own closed fingers not cushioned the man’s fall to the floor surface, it would have killed him, instantly. One of his arms was pinched shut inde the phantom’s grip.

His other hand freely scratched into the darkness, for something anything to hold onto.

His hand brushed up against the oily fiend’s thick skinned coat, across the top of its head, pasng its large pointing ear.

His reaching fingers latched onto a strap, it was the fanny pack, still wrapped tight around his ankle.

The creature backed its head away squeezing his prey; it opened its cavernous orifice releang a retched snorting hiss, showing its long fanged teeth.

Its eyes, unspeakable, sank deep within its brow.

He dared not to look into them.It sprang forward for dinner.Its thunderous, distresng roar had deafened him.

The empty numbness of his inner ears only sensed the swooping crashes of his own beating heart.

He gasped for air, couching and panting, wheezing phlegm, loosely spitting.

He could breathe again.

The beast had withdrew its grasp and disappeared in the nothingness, somewhere behind him.

Not far off in the distance its snarl and hammering steps were clearly discernible.

The near lifeless survivor held the bloodied broken pencil, within the frozen adrenalin of his grip.

He had in the midst of all the madness, manage to pry the pencil from the de pack and jam it directly into the monsters eye, ceang its deadly attack and surely spoiling its dinner.

Only for a moment though, the cries and vibrating smashes from the giant gargoyle had circled back towards its bringer of pain.

It was once again clong in on him.

Fast.

He threw the pencil down, pushing himself to his feet, lifting his injuries best he could, deafened, bleeding and in agonizing pain.

Stumbling forward towards the welcoming light of the first great doorway, he began limping violently, ignoring his suffering with grunting breaths.

He had hoped it was the closest exit from the god forsaken place.

The random assortment of lightning had now stopped completely.

The slumbering pathway began to increase from shadowed to light.

Out of nowhere, through his many exhaustive steps, his bare feet suddenly, finally, hit a field of soft colorless grass which gave off bright radiant hints of shining green fragments, cast all throughout its meadow.

It was beautiful.

The field edges were swallowed by the emptiness around it, as it led into the entranceway opening.

He completely ignored the other, second doorway further off to the right of him.

Focung in on the one with numerous gigantic golden slabs along its structural door frame, the arched opening was enormous, far above it and barely legible was an engraving that read: האדס.

It was meaningless to him.

When he took his first step just underneath the high door frame above, he distinguished that the layer of the opening gave off a tremendous concentration of beaming light that was reflecting away from him, shining deep into space.

It gave off a magnified view of many distant stars, hundreds of planets, thousands of different solar systems, galaxies and what looked to be a sun, so close, yet still so far away.

This one was different, bigger, and darker, much darker.

Without thought or any hetations he escaped through it.His body was but a mere speck of dust dissolving into the watery light.

Buoyant flashes, gradually dispating; my temple appeared to grasp ever so slightly on an inner vortex, a vivid light, something unknown, however opening.

It was beauty and despair, vibration, the core of companionship that could be seen.

But not seen.

Sensed. But not…

Wherever was the king of cloaks, the king of reaping?

Nowhere.

What about the hands of grandfathers, the seeds of children?

Not here.

Piercing the veils with vibrancies, my unending… way was lost, unnatural, and nevertheless poignant.

Neither voice not heard nor felt; yet somehow known.

The prism of time itself, without time.Darkness once more…

Shrieking pain, sudden jots of agony spewing red as reds ruin.

Cold and brittle, frigid and frail, hazing life fleetingly.

“Son.” came a soft-spoken whisper.

Supple cries from failures and cold fingers abraon, stinging his wounds.

“Son, please,” spoke again.

Now translucent, his inpid fair gleam smeared colorful.

He could now distinguish his Father from the earth rooted many years.

He clung around his son’s body and cried aloud.

His head nestled tightly next to his arms with his eyes keenly implored, staring towards the dark amber skyline. It was his touch, something invigorating, alleviating him free of all pain once suffered.

Where have we gone?

This be not the place of my mortal fate.There were pale foliage’s of roses, a lavish variety all with proming eminence surrounded them… yet… only he. Lasting words from his Father had vanished, leaving a void emptiness of ambiguity.

Mustn’t there be angels here?

Where are the clouds of brighter dreams?

No retort.

He now stood, naked from n, liberated from the bloodied crimson stains, staring towards the sapphire horizon holding no moon, carrying no sun.

His senses vague, his senses not needed to be found; at least not here it appeared.

Was this his particular judgment, may the wrath of divinity exist on the distant plain of this luminous pasture?

**

For this be the place where the dead speak...

***************************************************** Thank you for reading:

LIMBUS The first circle By Michael Mowder, Jr. Written here and there from 1999-2003, TWEAKED 2011 Illustrations & Cover Art w/added effect: By Michael Mowder, Jr.

1999,2011 MORE TO COME...