The Journey

Prologue

 

 

"Who does not know that kings and rulers sprang from men who were ignorant of God, who assumed because of blind greed and intolerable presumption to make themselves masters of other men, their equals, by means of pride, violence, bad faith, murder, and almost every other kind of crime? Surely the devil drove them on."

-          Pope Gregory VII

 

 

Truer words have not been spoken; we look upon Kings and Queens, our monarchy for faith and security but often our eyes fall upon empty souls; all too often we look toward the wrong people for the guidance we need and our eyes fall short of their true selves. They say the fires of hell are billions of times more scolding to those with good in their souls and a billion times more thrilling to those who are truly evil. I have learnt recently that Kings are forged from the very blackest of hells flame, their breath sucked from the lungs of the devil himself. For me that day, the day of my own revelation I could feel the heat burning down upon me from above, touching the edges of my sanity with its scorching fingertips; my heart had grown wise and as it had I began to become more and more vulnerable to the scorching heat, the bright, white heat. You’re probably thinking, ‘who the hell is this guy’ well I can tell you one thing; my job in the kingdom, it’s a simple job. Easy to do, I am the security. I never doubted my King and never had the thought of betraying him crossed my mind but late one night when the darkness had enveloped the world I heard the whispering of plotting voices, it drifted down the corridor toward my ears. The princes had gathered in the king’s chamber and for once, in all of history, they were not plotting against one another but along with each other. They were planning a hostile takeover and when I say hostile I mean bloody and ruthless, every opportunity would be taken and every path used to get what they wanted. Laughter filled the walls as their scheming continued and when it hit my ears something inside me changed; a conscience was born or uncovered and for the first time since my own birth I could not fight the uncontrollable need to do right, my thirst for wrong doing and my lust for sinful play fled from my body in a single breath, I needed to do something.

I know now that it is not true that the devil walks beside those who do evil, or shakes their hands, hands them their hat and sends them out into the world, those who are truly evil do not need the devil to breath into them the infection, they are born with it festering inside of them, the devil simply watches on as though enthralled with-in his daily soap operas and he chortles and snorts at their attempts to over throw good. So now I wonder if the world would know, would you notice if the he was truly walking beside you, if the devil tapped you on the shoulder and complemented your shoes would you recognise him?

     Evil has always had the upper hand in the waking world and every once in a while the world needs saving and I don’t mean the world needs saving from any form of natural disaster or nuclear attack, it does not need rescuing from the perils of global warming or other man made atrocities; it needs rescuing from the age old threat posed by the unknown, unseen supernatural that lies just low enough beneath the surface of sanity not to be noticed by those who have a firm grip on their mental stability. For the most nobody notices, nobody sees what is happening around them, the destruction caused by the ashes or the light cast by the burning embers that are usually tasked with rectifying what has been done, cleaning up after the ashes but there are a few with the sight, those who are suffering from a break in their mental clarity, those who look at the world in a different way; children, the deaf, the blind and often some who have come face to face with death himself and returned to the living world and then there are those with-in the bloodlines.

     Since man walked upon the earth with freewill, free though and free movement evil has also walked and so had good. In the beginning it was nothing, people were oblivious but they were neutral until evil began to breathe the darkness into their souls, turning them black and rotten and since this had been then there had always been a need for the bloodlines. As per usual the bloodlines are passed down to each generation however the children who carry the abilities and knowledge passed down through the centuries may never need make use of it; they are for lack of a better word sleeper cells. They only come-in ‘use’ of they are needed and very often this does not occur, as an example I might use a more well known bloodline, Pandora. Most people will know the Greek myth of Pandora’s box and as per usual this had been cast as a myth, a story offering a moral and just like all the others that lurk just out of sight, it had become a simple story that to you has no truth but Pandora was a real person. She was given a box to guard, a box filled with all the sorrow in the world, all the hate and plagues, the anger and dread all of those things that make you feel blue or cause you to feel hate or cast judgement upon others they lived in the box. Imprisoned there for the sake of human beings however as you know Pandora’s curiosity got the better of her and she opened the box unleashing all of the pain and darkness it held inside. Even though she was never able to trap the evil back in the box Pandora did the job that had been passed down in her bloodline, she helped spread the only thing left in the bottom of the dark box, hope and with hope people were able to rise above the bad, they fought through the depression that had wrapped its fingers around them because the belief that things can get better, the hope for a brighter day is always stronger.

     It neither started nor does it end with Pandora, this began at the beginning of time, it began with the first human beings; Adam and Lilith. The is an age old misconception that Eve was Adams first wife, that he who created all is infallible; Lilith was born as Adams first wife and like many women of the world she was strong, she was independent and she was far from happy being told how to do things. She left him. This lead Lilith into evil, though ultimately this began one of the most important bloodlines for though the evil over came her she was able to fight her way back to the light unfortunately, as with any ‘rags to riches’ story there was a down side for the light that broke into the darkness that had swallowed Lilith up touched the withered, venomous soul of another and it showed him the way, a way to rule to break the human world down and to take over and so the bloodline was created.

     It is now that he will strike and so it is now that she will awaken, she will begin to see the things that hide with-in the time between one second and another, the things that conceal them in the space between one breath and another. They will try to stop her and for centuries there have been no embers in the waking world to help guide those of bloodlines only ashes remain and they will do whatever they can to turn her. So it seems that it has fallen upon my weak shoulders to aid her in her fight to save the world, I could not find a reason for this or even begin to fathom how I could help but I will do my best, more than that I will push myself to limits that I have never before reached, limits my mind cannot fathom to help her, to guard her and most importantly to guide her.    

I

     She was running, running faster than she knew she could handle her calves ached and threatened to burst, her heart hammered her chest screaming for rest and her lungs burned, sweat had soaked her silk top and her hair hung in tangled clumps but what was she running from? There was nothing around her, hidden in the darkness of the night, nothing prowled in the shadows and hunted her or maybe it did Cerberus could feel his own heart pounding, his own legs aching, his heart too pounded against the wall of his chest and his lungs screamed was he also running from whatever she was, or maybe he was running after it trying to save her from whatever it was. She dodged traffic and slipped down side streets but still he could hear the pounding, growling of something behind them, them? It was chasing them both. He sped up forcing through the pain, his whole body shaking and pulsing desperate to reach her and as he felt the distance between them shorten he began to reach out but then she fell, she tripped or stumbled in her heels and she fell; her stomach hit the bonnet of a black car as she doubled over the vehicle, he watched as the contents of the small handbag she had been carrying escaped their confines and scatter across the shiny bonnet and clattered to the floor. He had been farther away from her than he has first believed for as he watched he could just make out her grabbing something, it looked like she was writing and then a second later her body was dragged from the bonnet screaming, people passed by but did nothing as though they could neither see nor hear the evil that was occurring. He sped up again however no matter how fast he ran he drew no close to the struggling girl that was not until her body had stopped struggling and she now lay lifeless in the street forgotten by those around her.

“HEELLOO!” he yelled “PLEASE HELP ME!” he screamed at them but they ignore him also, he slumped to the floor, he did not need to check for a pulse, he could hear that her pounding heart had stopped, the blood had stopped rushing through her veins and that she had stopped breathing and he shed a single salty tear for her before he remembered what he had seen a few seconds before; she had been writing something on the bonnet of the black car.

     He stood and moved away from her cooling flesh to view the jet black water like bonnet of the BMW, it was no longer perfectly clean and shiny though it did retain some of its shine it was now adorned with bright red lipstick, he bent and read the words,

 

Whoever reads this please believe me when i say that true evil has dragged itself up from the depth of hell and walks the street, do not trust anyone especially the man with three faces, a war is coming and we will not triumph. He who sees through six eyes has tracked me down and i am now out of tim...

 

He knew who the words were referring to but he did not want to believe it not until he caught a glimpse of himself in the shiny black bonnet of the car, his noticed his eyes first they burned with a blackness so deep that he almost lost himself, his mouth was twisted into a wicked grin, growling and hungry and when he finally looked down to view his finger tips he knew that the blood upon them would be hers. He had not been chased by a monster nor was he chasing one, he was the monster.

 

     Cerberus jolted awake and somewhere out in the world above the darkness someone else jolted awake, he had not meant to wander into her dreams but know he knew that she knew he was coming for her though his intentions were not to kill her or even harm her, he had chosen the side of good but her minds had not sense that when he had invaded her dreams and now his job was going to be harder, in her dreams he was the man who saw through six eyes, the man with three faces chasing and eventually killing her but in reality he was one single soul and he would be her only hope, in the war that was coming. He knew it was time to act; resting on his laurels was not the best of ideas and so he began his journey. He was about to take a journey that many millions of people have only read, digested and pondered the reality, symbolism and nature of, this body of writing is know as Dante’s Inferno, where-by a young man the name sake of the story spends the entire prose trying to find his way out of hell with the help of a ghostly friend. What those who have read and spent hours debating do not realise is that the journey taken by the pilgrim Dante is very much a real one and Cerberus was himself about to embark upon it however he would be offered no help.               

     The rings ran around the centre of hell, much like Saturn’s rings encircled it; hell was the planetary body with-in them. Cerberus had ventured through the circles only once when he himself had first entered hell, it had been nearly brand new and sparkling, very few souls inhabited each circle and the journey though it had been dangerous it had been easy however many thousands of years had passed and the circles were brimming, hell was over flowing with sinful souls; Cerberus knew that it would be much harder to leave. As he stood stationary at the entrance leading to the Ninth circle Cerberus wondered how he was going to navigate his was through, the souls were housed in the circles for a reason, Dante Alighieri had it almost right, as though he himself had fought his way through but Cerberus doubted that it was hard to break in let alone back out again.

      He stared out across the ninth circle, the great giants seemed the size of humans from where he stood as they looked down upon the icy rounds below; the traitorous were housed within the rings of the ninth circle, Cerberus was not sure what he was going to encounter from souls encased in ice never the less he took his first step onto frozen lake of Cocytus. He knew the first round would be easily moved through; the Betrayers were fully encased within the ice of the ring of Judecca, their bodies twisted and distorted into unimaginable positions and as Cerberus moved quickly and quietly through the ring he noticed faces he had seen all of those years ago. Though the souls of the ring did not pose a threat to him Cerberus found himself slipping on the ice, neither his canine paws nor his human feet could get a grip on the ice.

     When he reached the other side Cerberus turned and looked back at the gates of hell, the gates he had once guarded with pride and honour, he shivered deeply; his soul was something he still needed to get used to. The souls of those who had betrayed people whose trust had been given to them were laid supine, their faces the only thing not covered by the thick ice of the lake; Cerberus carefully moved between the exposed faces though they had done wrong he still did not want to plant his feet down upon them, his new soul was working over time. He made not a single wrong move until nearing the end, he became a little over zealous and slipped his body falling with a thud to the floor, one of his hands fell, slapping an elderly woman in the face, she bit into his finger,

“mother of …!” he yelled, he sunk his thumb into one of her eyes it released a thick squelching noise and oozed yellow and red for the souls of those trapped in hell were given a solid state as to inflict more pain upon them. She spat out his finger with a raging howl and he stood quickly scrambling away from her, “b***h” he muttered behind himself. As he moved through the coveted rings Cerberus though over all he knew of hell and the souls who were residing there and for many of those who had been brought down their souls had been snatched before their last breath was taken and often this meant that their bodies were now inhabited by demons, demons who now walked the earth in human guise.

     When she was a small child she used to have dreams like this, like the one she had just stumbled upon; in fact she used to have this exact dream though it had changed ever so slightly. When she had been a child the dream had often involved her mother however now, as she had in life, Lilly’s mother had vanished from her dreams. When she woke up in the dream she knew exactly what was happening and what was going to happen though unlike most lucid dreams she was not a dreamer who was in control and so being aware of every event and not having the power over them drove her crazy.

     It always started the same way, with a tornado, one that could easily rival Dorothy’s in a heartbeat and Lilly was not tucked safely away in a quaint little house. The wind gathered slowly around her and as it grew and whipped at her hair it pulled up leaves, dirt and what rubbish had been discarded by uncaring people, wrapping it into its arms; Lilly tried to duck as a coke can flew through the air, she knew it was coming but she had no control and the can still hit her on the back of the head spraying left over brown liquid over her hair and back and causing a headache to stir in the depths of her mind. Her feet began to tilt from side to side though the whirling wind did not fully lift her from the ground and pull her protesting into the air instead it simply grew and grew until she could not see a thing around her, it was moving at such a speed that a murky dirt filled fog had grown. When she had woken in the dream Lilly had been in a room noir; a room that was completely empty and that had been plunged into darkness, a darkness Lilly was sure didn’t exist in the waking world. Suddenly the wind began to give and fall and as it did Lilly realised that her surroundings had changed, she had been moved without even being lifted an inch from the ground however she was not aware just how much her surroundings had changed until the wind had fallen fully.

            

      “You should be here” Cerberus heard as he stumbled through the souls of Cania, they whispered rotted words into his ears and he realised what the growing pain in his chest was his heart aching, his soul was screaming at him, his conscience berating him. He remembered what he had done to become what he had been; Cerberus had not always been as he was, he was one of the first, the first to step foot upon the earth, to breath, to walk and he had been an evil man. His soul had fled before he had taken his first breath and he had sunk into the worst kind of darkness there was; his final act had been to murder his whole family, his mother, brothers and his father. When his life had been taken for his sins he had been intended for one of the circles but when the kings eyes had lain upon him he saw something resembling promise; from then Cerberus had become the guard of the great gates keeping the blackest of souls who could not find a place in one of the circles, in the heart of hell. He began to run quickly from the souls from his past though in his haste he slipped once more and was sent sliding into the cliff leading that lead up to his way out.

     The jagged cliff was not tall thought parts lay covered in icy patches, Cerberus plotted a path before he began his ascent; the rock, even the parts where the ice did not lay, was freezing beneath his finger tips, he felt the burn against his finger tips and he gripped the face of the small cliff. Though he had plotted a pathway his hands fell upon black ice, he felt his right hand slip and was unable to right himself with his left hand before he slipped down part of the cliff that he had already climbed. He cursed as he began to re-climb the cliff face. Moments later he pulled himself over the top of the cliff and looked out over the vast landscape that lay before him, a land pitted with pockets of stone that held the souls to be tortured for their living sins. Across each pit was a thick stone bridge though as Cerberus looked on he saw that many of the bridges had begun to crumble.  As he began his journey across the rotting pits of human remains they called out to him, begging for some form of release though this only made Cerberus move faster across the bridges.

 

     As the wind finally started to clear and quieten she could hear the chirp and tweet of birds and somewhere high in the tree tops a nightingale sang a sweet morning melody. She could smell the thick scent of dirt and grass, of evergreens and fresh summer air. She could make out the figures of the trees and feel the soft caress of the warm breeze on her bare arms; she was in woodland. Lilly twirled around taking in everything, in the distance she could just make out a figure and instantly she knew who was moving at speed toward her. Though she did not know exactly who or what it was she knew them in the sense that she had had meetings with him or it before. With-in a breath it had reached her though this did not come as a shock for it happened every she had this dream; It was now stood face to face with her so close that she could feel the beat of its heart. It’s skin was pale though not a sickly or sallow pale, it had a soft spring green shimmer just beneath and its eyes were cast in a sparkling emerald. It only stood at her height but Lilly got the feeling that it could, if it chose to, rise much taller or shrink even smaller and that it was simply being accommodating to make her feel at ease. They did not speak but only stared intensely into each other’s eyes, she knew the words that were coming next off by heart however this time they did not come. Instead of the short speech he would give her something else happened that in the five years that she had been having the dream had never happened before.

     The thing that had usually been so docile and so neutral grabbed her by the arms with a grip so tight that shivers of pain ran down her body, she tried to pull away as the skin on her arms turned to white and then a deep, sharp red but her attempts were futile as the nails seemed to extend and sharpen sinking deep into the flesh of her arms, She could feel the warmth of the trickle of blood as it traced down her skin, over her forearms and across her palm falling in crimson droplets onto the forest floor. She found that she could not utter a single word of protest or shock, not even the mumble of a beg nor the squeak of a scream. Suddenly and without warning the thing shoved her backward with such force that Lilly flew through the air before she began to fall; it felt like she fell forever until she met the molten core of the earth.

     For a moment Lilly was sure that she had passed out, she woke up with her face pressed into the thick, hot smothering dirt which seemed to grow in heat with every second that it was in contact with her skin. She jumped up quickly frantically brushing and rubbing at her face and arms to removed every bit of dirt that she could; when she had finished dancing around like a fool patting at her arms and face Lilly stood still and she looked around. She had fallen to a vast and empty landscape, clusters of burning hot rocks were sporadically placed, and their ragged bodies let off thick steam that filled the sky with a thick blood red smog which seemed to descend the more time passed though she had no concept of the time as she was not wearing a watch and there was no burning ball of light and fire in the sky allowing her to navigate the time of day. She felt uneasy without a source of time, without the ability to navigate her way through the day or night, it was amazing to her how uneasy she felt without such a simple thing. Lilly walked around for a while trying to find something other than devils and dust but nothing changed, the landscape remained continuously dead and empty; she was ready to give up her search and start a new one, one where she spent her time looking for somewhere cool to sit however on her new journey Lilly found something else or rather she ran into something.   

 

     Cerberus breathed a great sigh of relief when he looked back and saw how far he had moved already and without any real hindrance or protest; Cerberus glanced around, there was no day or night in hell the sky simply burned with a thick blood red, orange glow, occasionally bursts of blackness filled the sky but they were gone within seconds; there was no telling of time in the underworld but those who called hell their home rather than their prison simply knew, they had a feeling of the time and Cerberus was beginning to feel the late hour, he considered curling beneath an overhanging slab of stone but he decided against it, he needed to reach the other side and climb from the dark hole he was in. He pushed on holding his nose as he passed by the pits of corrupt politicians immersed in bubbling pitch; the stench of their corruption, their greed and immorality cloyed the air, he edged across the bridge which had begun to disintegrate in parts from the stench and acidity of the liquid below. Hands reached up for him, for leverage, to be pulled from the thick sludge; he pressed himself to one side and then the other to keep far away from each of the grasping hands until he was out of the reach of them and safely on the other side. He paused for a moment, though he had come far he still had a long way to go, he felt as though it would take him years and more life times than he had but he knew the importance of his journey and fought his temptation to turn back and beg forgiveness. Behind him Cerberus could hear the black satirical comedy of the demons guarding the hypocrites, he felt a chuckle rise in his gullet in response to a joke one had just spat out at the souls though his laughter was cut short when he gazed over at what lay ahead of him. It was filled to brimming with false prophets, sorcerers and astrologers, the latter, Cerberus knew, were no longer viewed in a sinful light by the vast majority of the world though any of their souls were grabbed and pulled into hell to be tortured, to have their heads twisted and turned until they viewed the world backward and were forced to plant their feet in the ground in a backward manner, their faces were twisted with confusion and their moans of protest fell on death ears. His soul ached with pity for them for they had truly done no wrong compared to the other souls languishing there; he passed without much hindrance, though he could not look the innocent souls in the eye.

 

     The glass that she had collided with was vast in that it seemed to run from one end of the land to the other though Lilly had not followed it fully from one end to the other but for the time that she had traced the glass looking for a way through it looked to continue on forever either way. Her head pounded and a large throbbing bump had formed on her forehead from where she had slammed into the glass and as she stood to examine her blurred reflection Lilly noticed something else, something that was on the other side, and something that, again, was moving toward her. Soon what she saw stood directly in front of Lilly; he was face to face with her with only an inch of glass separating them; she stared into his dark eyes, eyes that looked like they held midnight in suspension and he started right back into hers for a moment neither of them took a breath nor blinked nor acknowledged each other and then he placed his hand upon the glass. Lilly could trace every tell-tale line engraved into his palm; she found herself mimicking his action and placing her own hand over where his waited, the glass felt surprisingly cool to touch as their hands became reflections of one another and regardless of their differences they seemed to fit together perfectly.

     Their gaze remained locked and Lilly was sure that she knew the man staring through his own watery reflection at her though she was sure that she had never before met him, somehow she knew him. They remained, unmoving and now breathing in unison allowing time to pass them by, Lilly could have stayed there forever though it seemed that he did not have the same feeling; suddenly his eyes left hers, they flickered up allowing him to glance over her shoulder and then they widened in shock or in fear at whatever he was seeing behind her, Lilly began to turn but stopped short when his hand fell from the glass leaving on a fading ghost where it had been, his eyes met hers again and he held her gaze for a few seconds before turning and running; with-in a heartbeat he had vanished and Lilly felt sad for the loss of the stranger she was sure she had met before.

     It soon became Lilly’s turn to retreat from the glass wall and at such a speed that her heart did not get the chance to skip a beat in shock or in terror; her retreat had not been one of choice, she would have preferred to remain in the cool shadow of the glass however after he had vanished something else had taken his place. Whatever it was that had caught his attention and set his off running had moved in very close and wrapped itself around Lilly’s waist, Lilly could not see what it was but she knew that whatever it’s origin it was strong as it squeezed her body, making breathing a struggle and causing sharp pains to run up her sides. In a breath it had lifted her from the ground held her for just a flicker of a second and then pulled her back the way that she had walked and it did this at great speed. To Lilly it felt like a great serpent coiled around her body, she could not move to fight if she wanted to nor could she utter a sound of protest all she could do was watch as the world flowed by her in a blur of colours and then gasp in pain as she was yanked upward and away from the molten heart of the earth.

     Lilly Jolted awake, in the matt black darkness of her bedroom she could see nothing around her, her head still burned from the dream and her skin was prickled with tiny droplets of cold sweat, she threw off the covers running her hands over her body searching for any sign of the thing that had pulled her back from the roaring heart of the earth’s core, there was nothing. The bedroom felt stifling, she felt like she had brought back the heated air of her dream and she could not catch her breath, Lilly moved to stand in the cool, false yellow light of the refrigerator, she thought of her dream, it could not have felt more real she remembered every little piece, everything that was but the man whom had so captured her. She knew that he had been there but Lilly could not recall a single detail about him though soon the whole dream had completely slipped her mind as the telephone began to screech drawing her attention.            

 

     He was faced with another treacherous cliff though this time he was to find a way to descent it which proved much easier than it was to ascend the earlier cliff and soon he was dragging himself over the top scraping his stomach on the knot of stone forming a border around the top of the cliff. Next he encountered the violent, the malevolent and the rage filled souls, Cerberus looked across them and grimaced at the souls of those who had committed violence against god and against nature, he could smell the scent of the burning sands and he readied himself for yet another physically gruelling task. Burning flakes fell from the sky above souls and to avoid being burnt Cerberus would have to run across the blazing desert. He braced himself, his feet were already beginning to sweat from the heat reaching out and licking at them, he took three deep breaths and then he ran; he ran as fast as he could. He could feel his feet begging to blister and burn and before he had reached the end of the burning desert his they were scolded and pulsing with pain, the soles raw and bloody. He fell to his knees when he reached the cool of the outer sand beyond the desert and had to bite his lower lip to fight the scream that was pressing against his throat raging to come out, he daren’t look at his feet and instead stood and began to limp his way across the cool blue desert. As he walked he pondered what he was fighting to get to and his heat trembled at the thought of what he might encounter on the surface, he had seen some of the most twisted and evil souls, had watched them march through the gates and he had heard many stories about the surface, about men with no soul, born with pure evil burning where it should have been though he also knew that there were many, many good people and that was what drove him on.

     Unlike Dante’ poem there was no special home for the souls of those who committed suicide, they did not reside in hell because they did not belong in hell; God was a twisted father Cerberus knew that for sure and he also knew that he did not look upon his children the way he should, he did not treat them equally or with the love he had once lavished upon them but he was not a arsehole; Suicides were given their own existence not with-in heaven, nor with-in hell and there’s was not a purgatory instead it was a veil. A veil pulled over their eyes guarding them from the agony and pain that had caused them to take their own lives and to cast their souls into the abyss; they were given a luke-warm happiness one that they had so craved in life, they were finally protected in death as they had not been when they were living. Cerberus had never met a suicide he heard that you could tell just from looking into the eyes of the soul what they were, when they died their souls fell, dragged into hell but were at the last minute scooped up and away and so he had never met one though he had met those trying to masquerade as one in desperation for release; it never worked. He found himself longing for the luke-warm happiness that they had for he had a long journey ahead of him and his body was exhausted.

     Next he needed to gain passage across a river, however this river was not of water and mud but it was blood and bone and it ran around like a moat around a castle, vast and great and pulsing with life. Along the shore were scattered coffins of worthless wood, painted black and blue, they were to be his passage. With-in the misshapen coffins lay the bones of those who had sinned, Cerberus chose one at random, he pried the lid free and tossed it to one side before taking a look at the skeleton with-in. it was that of a man, around his neck hung a silver chain with a thick brass key these were the souls of those who had committed violence against property and people, he pulled the sticky bones from their encasing and lay them on the edge of the river, soon they were swallowed up as though they had never existed and screams of agony escaped from the soul as it was submerged. These souls had been over looked and to gain passage one had to pay therefore releasing a soul and sending it to the fate that it had thus far escaped gained passage. A small row boat began to gently, silently make its way across the river toward him and he waited patiently until it knocked against the coffins scattering the embankment and then he climbed in and began to row his way through the thick fluid. It felt like he was rowing through gelatine and soon his arms began to ache, to feel like they were going to explode and the pain quickly over took that of his burnt feet. Cerberus rowed with his back toward his destination, he drew his arms back with as much force as he could, he felt droplets of the fluid fly back and hit him on his neck and shoulders, he felt it trickle down his skin, it tickled as it ran down between his shoulder blades. He rowed harder and faster until he felt his boat knock against his destination and he let the ores fall and sink into the viscous fluid; he would not need them again for he did not intend to return.

     Finally he rose from the blackness of the lower part of hell. The Light that filled the burning sky above and saturated the air with a thick heat making it hard to breathe had at first deluded him in to believing that he had finally reached the surface though he was still far from it. A river ran through this portion of hell, the river Styx and with-in the boiling water was a great mass of souls all fighting for a way out, those who had not the strength or the spirit lay and gurgling beneath the water, not fighting to break the surface. Cerberus looked toward their destination, it was a way out but none of them would ever make it and neither would he and so Cerberus did not even attempt to consider it. He would be taking the back way out and the final part of his journey would be the hardest but it was also the part Cerberus was the least worried about.

     With-in hell there were many beings of evil, monsters and souls of the dammed and creatures that even the most gruesome of minds could not dream up but there was also the princes; the princes were not next in line for the throne as their title might suggest though they liked to brag that they were. They were the spawn of the dark lord but then so were many, many others; no the princes were not a set of evil that scared him because Cerberus knew that there was no way the news he had fled would have reached them, it would not have reverberated this far up yet and so all he needed to do was to pander to their more prominent traits for they were the carriers of the seven sins. First up was greed, he stood tall watching over the souls who had done wrong, Cerberus could never truly understand why they were given the job of guards over the souls that they had themselves corrupted but they were and greed in particular always wore a smug look upon his face,

“Excuse me!” Cerberus called as he walked toward greed who turned slowly to look at him

“What do you want flea bag?” greed yelled back, they didn’t like him, Cerberus didn’t know why but they had always hated him,

“Is this yours?” he called back holding up a shining bauble

“Um...” Greed pondered for a moment his eyes glinting when he saw the ruby necklace which Cerberus had taken from the neck of one of the skeletons around the lake, he was lucky that the underworld was so materialistic, they often dragged the bones of sinners down to rid them of their worldly possessions, if had they been buried with any, “yes, yes it is..Where did you...did you find anything else, it’s all mine you see” he said with hunger on his breath, greed was always the first to crawl over the bones and pick them clean,

“Sure there’s a whole pile back there, you must have dropped it” Cerberus said lying through his sharp teeth,

“Really?” greed questioned

“Yes” Cerberus answered him “if you want I can stand watch while you go and look” Cerberus said, he had seen Greed’s eyes shift from the souls to the near distance,

“Um, I don’t know, um, okay sure” greed said the decision taking less than a second to make and he moved quickly toward where Cerberus had pointed. As soon as he had vanished Cerberus broke the vow he had made and left the souls he had promised to watch. 

     His second prince came in the form of Gluttony who punished those who had been gluttonous beyond their limits. As Cerberus approached, the great size of gluttony became real; he was a great mountain of a man, vast and air guzzling, Cerberus sidled up beside him as he sat watching the sinful souls in his charge occasionally plucking one up and guzzling it down.

“hi” he said flashing a grin at Gluttony, Cerberus knew his real name but he chose not to speak it, nor to call him by his more well known alias because it was also well known that he got offended by it,

“What?!” he grumbled turning his great head ever so slightly, “oh Dog what are you doing up this way, I don’t think I’ve seen you up here for centuries, decades” he said, his voice was thick, his words slowed by the heavy pace of his breathing

“just taking a stroll, here grabbed you this on the way out, um, up” Cerberus said, he slipped but corrected himself without notice as he opened his hand showing gluttony what he was holding,

“Ohhh a snack” he said grinning as he held out his hand to receive what Cerberus had brought, it was a soul he had scooped up from within the waters of the Styx, one of the flounders who had all but given up apparently they tasted the best,

“Enjoy big guy” Cerberus said, patting him on the back and handing him the soul, he began to walk away,

“Hay wait a minute!” Gluttony yelled after him, Cerberus stopped dead, his heart hammered against his chest; he turned slowly “thank you” Gluttony added softly as he began to stuff the soul in to his vast mouth.

“You’re welcome” Cerberus said quietly and moved quickly on his way leaving gluttony to his meal.

     Lust was his final adversary and since lust was only consumed with the sin, the sinful and their lustful acts and so it was time for Cerberus to take a turn as an actor. He moved toward lust though the short journey was not easy; strong and angry winds blew forcing him backward, he fought hard against it until he reached the well dressed, lithe man,

“Hay” he exclaimed with a grin across his face

“Hello, what is it brings you this way?” Lust asked in his usual desire filled voice,

“Well I just met this, well, I was just on my way to see her if you get my meaning” Cerberus said his eyes mimicking those of someone under the spell of lust,

“huh, yes well do carry on” Lust replied his eyes sparkling with the hope of new sins “and good luck” he added as Cerberus set off fighting against the winds once more, he was astonished at how easily he had passed lust, how easily he had deceived each prince. Now he only had once stage to go, he had to get through Limbo.

     Again Limbo had been described wrongly by many people, Limbo was for those who had become lost, those who did not fit into the normal sinful categories, those who did neither believe or not, they were not tormented or tortured by any demon or prince but by themselves and their eternal search for reality and often they built themselves a reality form their own memories and they lived in their own torment. Cerberus needed to get through purgatory without getting dragged into one of those realities which, he had heard, was not an easy thing to do. He stepped into the unknown and carefully moved between the souls, if he even slightly caught one of them he risked being ensnared in their created worlds and never getting out. He could see the way out, the way into the world with which his new soul had become obsessed with saving and that was what he concentrated on; the world he had never walked upon before, the woman he was going to help, the human race though he had only ever seen them after their deaths and he feared what a murder or a rapist would be like in their human form he also needed to meet those who never passed through the gates, those who were truly good inside, he had a need to know why a soul was important.

     He walked on and just when his way out was only feet away when his hand brushed the finger tips of a woman; Cerberus held his breath, he waited for limbo to vanish and the twisted world of the woman to replace it but it did not, Limbo remained and the woman simply stared through him, her eyes blank as though he was not even there, behind her eyes there was nothingness, they were dead. He moved on quickly in fear of getting lost in her dead eyes and he ran from Limbo with fear in his soul. Cerberus turned to glance once more at the woman with nothing in her heart, no soul, nothing, he watched her move amongst the others, her fingers grazed each; she was trying to steal someone else’s mind, their dreamt up reality. He shivered, it was then that he realised just how much the woman scared him and it was then that he began his final climb out of hell.

     The thick roots of a great tree reached into hell from the surface, this was his way out, Cerberus dragged himself up, one hand above the other, above the other finding the odd foot hold to propel himself further. His heart beat as though it was going to burst from his chest, his hands bled and his body was soaked with sweat, he fought to take in breath but continued on, until the roots vanished into earth and then he began to dig. His finger nails clogged with dirt and his body caked with mud as he dug his way out of hell, spurring himself on with the thought of the world above and the woman who needed him, though she did not yet know it. He pushed on, scooping dirt from in from of him and letting it fall behind, his hands seemed to move at a pace unbeknownst to him, flinging dirt out behind him until finally he broke the surface, his fist felt the heat of the sun’s rays upon it, he sunk his fingers into the damp grass and dragged his body the remainder of the way from the ground, from hell. Now he stood, stretching his aching muscles, sighing at the soothing feeling of the damp morning dew covered grass on his burnt feet, it was morning and the sun had just begun to heat up in the clear blue sky. Cerberus took in a deep breath, he was in a park, a great oak tree towered behind him, the leaves sparkled in the diluted sunlight, he shielded his eyes as he watched a black bird fly through the air; now all he needed was clothing and then he needed to find the woman with whom he would save the world.