((with appologies to those who don't wish to go on, there is mature themed material in this post. I do realize that it is very long as well, but in all honesty I couldn't figure out where to break it.))
Brimstone hung in the air, its nearly visible veil gagging the group the appeared through the portal. Kruger had led the way through it; he had begun moving before the incantation was complete. That pressure had returned to him. It had begun some little while before, a pushing at the skin of his forehead. It didn't hurt exactly, it was more an annoyance. It felt as though every vessel in his face was gorging itself with blood, and feeding it into his eyes. The only time he felt relief anymore was when he was doing something.
Action alleviated the feeling, so when the portal had begun to form Kruger didn't wait for someone to tell him it was safe. The thought that he had waited too long already pulsed in that feeling with every heartbeat. There were four in the group; Kruger observed them coming through the gateway after him. Jack and a few others had stayed on the other side to keep anything from escaping this plane. First through after Kruger had been Uriel, he was wary and gave a disapproving look to Kruger. Kruger didn't care; the man wasn't fully vested in this trip. He was glad to have the angel along, and his strange looking friend that followed him into the void, however their loyalty was as yet untested. The final figure through though was known to Kruger. He and Sledge had a long standing, and secret friendship. Kruger knew he could count on the assassin's blades in a fight.
They stood upon the rooftop of a very tall building. It rose more stories into the sky than either man had ever been without being on a mountain top. The landscape about them was sparsely littered with similar such spires. Uriel had called them dark obelisks to pain and torture. The group looked around; Jack had promised he could get them to within ten feet of Wisper. It was the assassin that had the answer.
"Perhaps she is on the floor beneath us?" Sledge said in a calculating voice that made Kruger's hands flinch toward the hammers at his belt. The tall man pointed in the direction of a doorway leading down. "Be sure to mark our position here, it may help when we go down."
Kruger looked at the rooftop. They were nearly at the center of the thing, and it was massive. The distance to the sides was enough for a dragon to get a running take off. "If she is this high in the tower, then we need to get to her as quickly as possible." It was Uriel who voiced his concerns. Kruger narrowed his eyes and looked at the angel as if accusing him of holding something back. "It is good that we don't have to come up from the ground though." The angel seemed nonplussed as he spoke, but he was all eyes for Kruger.
Kruger shook his head at the angel, that pressure had returned to him and action was what he needed. He led the way toward the doorway the others picking up positions right and left of him. Instinctively they had formed a fighting wedge; pity none of them was carrying shields. Kruger had thrown on a buckler, but the rest had opted for speed over defense. This was supposed to be a rescue, not a fight to the death.
The door was locked, poor design worked in their favor though. The hinges were on the outside of the door. It took no time at all to remove the pins and head down the stairway beyond. Kruger thought that the design made sense from a standpoint of you can get in, but we won't let you back out stand point. After all, who in their right mind breaks into hell"
The stairway was steep, and only fell a single flight before the doorway to the next floor could be accessed. This door was not locked from the stairwell, however a quick check of the inside handle proved that Kruger's theory was correct. Had they let this door close, they would have been locked on this floor. There had been a suggestion of propping the door, but props can come loose or be removed. There is no help for a door removed from hinges.
They four slipped in through the now open doorway, the door that would have locked them away turned onto its side and leaning against the wall. The hallway beyond was empty, quiet, and not at all what they expected to find. It was completely devoid of color. White walls over white floors shined unnaturally under fluorescent bulbs.
"Which way Sledge?" Kruger asked knowing the man's sense of direction. Sledge looked down the hallway, first left and then right. He looked once over his shoulder as though marking the very spot they had entered this place. He turned left down the hallway, and started walking. "A maze I think, Krug. We should take steps." He trailed fingertips of his left hand along the wall. The others followed in silence. Even their footsteps were dulled to their ears.
Sledge took another left at an intersection that would have been missed had he not been touching the wall that vanished away. The wall across from them looked unbroken, but Kruger believed that were he to attempt to walk through that wall it would be another illusion. The wall turned back upon itself and the four of them were walking back the way they had come. This hallway though was much shorter. It ended at a solid wall that sent them back to the right. Once they got beyond the opening, the building began to change. This hallway was lined on both sides with doorways; a glance in the windows gave a view of unspeakable acts of torment. The windows they looked in revealed mostly souls that had done something in the world to deserve this fate. Wisper however was whole and alive. She never should have been sent here.
Sound started to filter through to the quartet. Mostly they heard the crying moans of the tortured, and the delighted laughter of the one doing the torture. One sound in particular caught Kruger's ears, it was a scream, and he knew at once it was her. It wrenched at his heart to hear it, because the voice screamed for him. The pressure in his head became unbearable, the screams of daddy and no punched a hole into his heart. The hammers he had made were faster than the rest could blink. He charged forward towards the sound of the voice. He was running so fast that he nearly passed the doorway he wanted. He saw her through the tiny window, laying on the bed. Her battered little face screamed again as the villainous figure behind her was taking her again.
Kruger reached for a handle that was not there. He could see no way of unlatching this door; he swung the hammers at the metal framed window shattering it inward and screamed at the man. "NO"GET OFF HER?" The figure acted as though he didn't hear the blacksmith's shouts. Kruger's hands shook with adrenalin; those hardened points began to go to work on the door. Every time the hammers hit the door and created a small hole, there was a sucking pop. He had heard this sound before; it had come from a death blow to an opponent long ago, when Kruger had driven a similar point through the top of the man's skull.
The others were racing to catch up to Kruger, he saw them coming but all he could do was rain blows against the barrier that was before him. Hammer falls could have been called in cadence, as the duo named purgatory went to work on that door. Kruger's kept repeating the same five words in his labor. "I'm gonna effing kill ya."
Uriel reached him first. Seeing what was wrong he grabbed hold of the broken window. Kruger couldn't hear the angel's thoughts. He didn't know that Uriel had prayed his thoughts to the word about its will being done. All Kruger knew was that the door came away in the angel's hands and that he had free access to the monster in front of him.
The removal of the doorway was enough to get the assailants attention. Kruger had mere moments to register the shock on the man's face before hell wielded by a right hand was driven into the man's chest. The gasp from the hallway was enough to make him truly see the man before him. The face he looked upon was his own. The hammers fell from his grasp; he looked to the battered form on the bed before him, and let out a wail. The girl on the bed was no longer Wisper, but Joy. Sledge had come in and started to undo the girl's bonds. Kruger removed his tunic, the whip scars across his bare back serving to indicate which Kruger was real. He offered it to Joy, who needed some help to put it on. She looked terrified, and ashamed that she had done something wrong. She gave the men a paranoid look.
The Kruger on the floor began to move. Kruger picked himself up, and dropped him onto the bed that Joy had occupied. He held it down, for that was how he must think of the thing before him. "Give her a knife Sledge." He said with a voice so calm that he scared himself. He drew satisfaction from the look on his doppelganger's face as he realized what Kruger had in mind.
Sledge could only shake his head in horror. He produced a knife sharp enough to do whatever was about to be done, and stepped from the room. Torture, no matter how deserved was not what he wanted to witness this night. The girl looked at the blade, and the man on the bed. Kruger saw the darkest look he had ever seen cross Joy's normally smiling face. Py"ro was the last to exit the room, as pieces of the would be Kruger began to litter the floor. Kruger supposed there were some truths that weren't meant for him to behold. The screams that emanated from the room gave Kruger great satisfaction as he watched the impassioned Joy go to work dissecting her abuser.
When the screams stopped, and the only movement left was that of neural pathways firing in death, Kruger rounded the table. He knelt before Joy, who looked down on him with eyes that were unseeing. He lowered his head as she raised that knife and readied to work on him. The silence of the room had apparently brought the others back to the doorway. Kruger heard them start to come to his aide, and held a hand up to them. "I'm so very sorry." He said quietly.
He was rewarded by the knife dropping next to him. "Daddy?" Her small voice came from vocal cords raw with screaming. Kruger looked up to see that it wasn't Joy at all in that space, but Wisper. The horror of seeing her that way was too much. The pressure that had been driving him for so long burst, and those green eyes welled with uncontrollable tears. "Daddy' Where were you?" She asked it first, then screamed it at him accusingly.
Kruger felt that scream in his heart and bent forward against the pain. He sobbed openly on the floor before her saying over and over "Searching for you?.
She knelt in front of him now, and laid he head upon his knees. He stroked her hair as she cried, it kept changing colors as the girl in front of him would be Wisper, then Joy. It seemed she couldn't hold her form to one or the other. Kruger crooned to her, he whispered encouragement to her, and told her none of what happened was her fault. Exhaustion must have caught up to her, for she stopped eventually. Kruger looked to the trio who had witnessed the events here.
"Take her back to the portal, make her safe again!" He commanded them. They began to protest, until he forestalled them. "Four entered, only four can leave."
Py"ro shook his head sadly. "Krugey, you intended this all along."
Kruger's confirming nod brought shocked looks from the other two. "You knew all along and said nothing." He accused Py"ro
"Nobody bothered to ask, and I didn't feel like talking." Py"ro's smile was bittersweet. "I will see you on the other side Krugey."
Kruger didn't know when the alien creature had started calling him that which he called himself, but somehow it seemed right when he said it. Kruger leaned forward as the three picked up Joy/Wisper, and grabbed up his hammers. "What are you going to do Kruger?" Uriel asked, he had taken the full weight of Joy, and was content to be led by Sledge back to the portal.
"I'll come back to the stairwell with you, but we will need to move quickly because of the fire." The others looked confused until Kruger leaned in to the table, and drew flint across steel. The spark that flashed shouldn't have been enough to start a fire, but Kruger had spoken to the spark, begged its help. It complied happily; it performed the duties for which it was born. Kruger thought he heard it repeat what he had told it. Everything burns.
Kruger followed them to the gateway, sticking around just a little longer with his friends. Already smoke was billowing up through the doorway. The pop of the gate way was heard as the three men and the woman passed through it. Kruger smiled knowing that the girls were safe. He honestly couldn't think of them as being one person now. There was only one thing he had left to do that he hadn't told the others about. The fire had claimed the doorway now. He had known that it would, had asked it to cover their escape. Kruger ran to the side of the building and leaped into open air. The ground rose up to meet him and".
Kruger sat bolt upright from the couch which he had fallen asleep on. In the dream he had been falling. Why could he never remember the rest of it"
He was clammy with sweat, and the coals in the forge offered almost no light. "Is someone there?" He asked the darkness, that familiar pressure had built up behind his eyes again.
Brimstone hung in the air, its nearly visible veil gagging the group the appeared through the portal. Kruger had led the way through it; he had begun moving before the incantation was complete. That pressure had returned to him. It had begun some little while before, a pushing at the skin of his forehead. It didn't hurt exactly, it was more an annoyance. It felt as though every vessel in his face was gorging itself with blood, and feeding it into his eyes. The only time he felt relief anymore was when he was doing something.
Action alleviated the feeling, so when the portal had begun to form Kruger didn't wait for someone to tell him it was safe. The thought that he had waited too long already pulsed in that feeling with every heartbeat. There were four in the group; Kruger observed them coming through the gateway after him. Jack and a few others had stayed on the other side to keep anything from escaping this plane. First through after Kruger had been Uriel, he was wary and gave a disapproving look to Kruger. Kruger didn't care; the man wasn't fully vested in this trip. He was glad to have the angel along, and his strange looking friend that followed him into the void, however their loyalty was as yet untested. The final figure through though was known to Kruger. He and Sledge had a long standing, and secret friendship. Kruger knew he could count on the assassin's blades in a fight.
They stood upon the rooftop of a very tall building. It rose more stories into the sky than either man had ever been without being on a mountain top. The landscape about them was sparsely littered with similar such spires. Uriel had called them dark obelisks to pain and torture. The group looked around; Jack had promised he could get them to within ten feet of Wisper. It was the assassin that had the answer.
"Perhaps she is on the floor beneath us?" Sledge said in a calculating voice that made Kruger's hands flinch toward the hammers at his belt. The tall man pointed in the direction of a doorway leading down. "Be sure to mark our position here, it may help when we go down."
Kruger looked at the rooftop. They were nearly at the center of the thing, and it was massive. The distance to the sides was enough for a dragon to get a running take off. "If she is this high in the tower, then we need to get to her as quickly as possible." It was Uriel who voiced his concerns. Kruger narrowed his eyes and looked at the angel as if accusing him of holding something back. "It is good that we don't have to come up from the ground though." The angel seemed nonplussed as he spoke, but he was all eyes for Kruger.
Kruger shook his head at the angel, that pressure had returned to him and action was what he needed. He led the way toward the doorway the others picking up positions right and left of him. Instinctively they had formed a fighting wedge; pity none of them was carrying shields. Kruger had thrown on a buckler, but the rest had opted for speed over defense. This was supposed to be a rescue, not a fight to the death.
The door was locked, poor design worked in their favor though. The hinges were on the outside of the door. It took no time at all to remove the pins and head down the stairway beyond. Kruger thought that the design made sense from a standpoint of you can get in, but we won't let you back out stand point. After all, who in their right mind breaks into hell"
The stairway was steep, and only fell a single flight before the doorway to the next floor could be accessed. This door was not locked from the stairwell, however a quick check of the inside handle proved that Kruger's theory was correct. Had they let this door close, they would have been locked on this floor. There had been a suggestion of propping the door, but props can come loose or be removed. There is no help for a door removed from hinges.
They four slipped in through the now open doorway, the door that would have locked them away turned onto its side and leaning against the wall. The hallway beyond was empty, quiet, and not at all what they expected to find. It was completely devoid of color. White walls over white floors shined unnaturally under fluorescent bulbs.
"Which way Sledge?" Kruger asked knowing the man's sense of direction. Sledge looked down the hallway, first left and then right. He looked once over his shoulder as though marking the very spot they had entered this place. He turned left down the hallway, and started walking. "A maze I think, Krug. We should take steps." He trailed fingertips of his left hand along the wall. The others followed in silence. Even their footsteps were dulled to their ears.
Sledge took another left at an intersection that would have been missed had he not been touching the wall that vanished away. The wall across from them looked unbroken, but Kruger believed that were he to attempt to walk through that wall it would be another illusion. The wall turned back upon itself and the four of them were walking back the way they had come. This hallway though was much shorter. It ended at a solid wall that sent them back to the right. Once they got beyond the opening, the building began to change. This hallway was lined on both sides with doorways; a glance in the windows gave a view of unspeakable acts of torment. The windows they looked in revealed mostly souls that had done something in the world to deserve this fate. Wisper however was whole and alive. She never should have been sent here.
Sound started to filter through to the quartet. Mostly they heard the crying moans of the tortured, and the delighted laughter of the one doing the torture. One sound in particular caught Kruger's ears, it was a scream, and he knew at once it was her. It wrenched at his heart to hear it, because the voice screamed for him. The pressure in his head became unbearable, the screams of daddy and no punched a hole into his heart. The hammers he had made were faster than the rest could blink. He charged forward towards the sound of the voice. He was running so fast that he nearly passed the doorway he wanted. He saw her through the tiny window, laying on the bed. Her battered little face screamed again as the villainous figure behind her was taking her again.
Kruger reached for a handle that was not there. He could see no way of unlatching this door; he swung the hammers at the metal framed window shattering it inward and screamed at the man. "NO"GET OFF HER?" The figure acted as though he didn't hear the blacksmith's shouts. Kruger's hands shook with adrenalin; those hardened points began to go to work on the door. Every time the hammers hit the door and created a small hole, there was a sucking pop. He had heard this sound before; it had come from a death blow to an opponent long ago, when Kruger had driven a similar point through the top of the man's skull.
The others were racing to catch up to Kruger, he saw them coming but all he could do was rain blows against the barrier that was before him. Hammer falls could have been called in cadence, as the duo named purgatory went to work on that door. Kruger's kept repeating the same five words in his labor. "I'm gonna effing kill ya."
Uriel reached him first. Seeing what was wrong he grabbed hold of the broken window. Kruger couldn't hear the angel's thoughts. He didn't know that Uriel had prayed his thoughts to the word about its will being done. All Kruger knew was that the door came away in the angel's hands and that he had free access to the monster in front of him.
The removal of the doorway was enough to get the assailants attention. Kruger had mere moments to register the shock on the man's face before hell wielded by a right hand was driven into the man's chest. The gasp from the hallway was enough to make him truly see the man before him. The face he looked upon was his own. The hammers fell from his grasp; he looked to the battered form on the bed before him, and let out a wail. The girl on the bed was no longer Wisper, but Joy. Sledge had come in and started to undo the girl's bonds. Kruger removed his tunic, the whip scars across his bare back serving to indicate which Kruger was real. He offered it to Joy, who needed some help to put it on. She looked terrified, and ashamed that she had done something wrong. She gave the men a paranoid look.
The Kruger on the floor began to move. Kruger picked himself up, and dropped him onto the bed that Joy had occupied. He held it down, for that was how he must think of the thing before him. "Give her a knife Sledge." He said with a voice so calm that he scared himself. He drew satisfaction from the look on his doppelganger's face as he realized what Kruger had in mind.
Sledge could only shake his head in horror. He produced a knife sharp enough to do whatever was about to be done, and stepped from the room. Torture, no matter how deserved was not what he wanted to witness this night. The girl looked at the blade, and the man on the bed. Kruger saw the darkest look he had ever seen cross Joy's normally smiling face. Py"ro was the last to exit the room, as pieces of the would be Kruger began to litter the floor. Kruger supposed there were some truths that weren't meant for him to behold. The screams that emanated from the room gave Kruger great satisfaction as he watched the impassioned Joy go to work dissecting her abuser.
When the screams stopped, and the only movement left was that of neural pathways firing in death, Kruger rounded the table. He knelt before Joy, who looked down on him with eyes that were unseeing. He lowered his head as she raised that knife and readied to work on him. The silence of the room had apparently brought the others back to the doorway. Kruger heard them start to come to his aide, and held a hand up to them. "I'm so very sorry." He said quietly.
He was rewarded by the knife dropping next to him. "Daddy?" Her small voice came from vocal cords raw with screaming. Kruger looked up to see that it wasn't Joy at all in that space, but Wisper. The horror of seeing her that way was too much. The pressure that had been driving him for so long burst, and those green eyes welled with uncontrollable tears. "Daddy' Where were you?" She asked it first, then screamed it at him accusingly.
Kruger felt that scream in his heart and bent forward against the pain. He sobbed openly on the floor before her saying over and over "Searching for you?.
She knelt in front of him now, and laid he head upon his knees. He stroked her hair as she cried, it kept changing colors as the girl in front of him would be Wisper, then Joy. It seemed she couldn't hold her form to one or the other. Kruger crooned to her, he whispered encouragement to her, and told her none of what happened was her fault. Exhaustion must have caught up to her, for she stopped eventually. Kruger looked to the trio who had witnessed the events here.
"Take her back to the portal, make her safe again!" He commanded them. They began to protest, until he forestalled them. "Four entered, only four can leave."
Py"ro shook his head sadly. "Krugey, you intended this all along."
Kruger's confirming nod brought shocked looks from the other two. "You knew all along and said nothing." He accused Py"ro
"Nobody bothered to ask, and I didn't feel like talking." Py"ro's smile was bittersweet. "I will see you on the other side Krugey."
Kruger didn't know when the alien creature had started calling him that which he called himself, but somehow it seemed right when he said it. Kruger leaned forward as the three picked up Joy/Wisper, and grabbed up his hammers. "What are you going to do Kruger?" Uriel asked, he had taken the full weight of Joy, and was content to be led by Sledge back to the portal.
"I'll come back to the stairwell with you, but we will need to move quickly because of the fire." The others looked confused until Kruger leaned in to the table, and drew flint across steel. The spark that flashed shouldn't have been enough to start a fire, but Kruger had spoken to the spark, begged its help. It complied happily; it performed the duties for which it was born. Kruger thought he heard it repeat what he had told it. Everything burns.
Kruger followed them to the gateway, sticking around just a little longer with his friends. Already smoke was billowing up through the doorway. The pop of the gate way was heard as the three men and the woman passed through it. Kruger smiled knowing that the girls were safe. He honestly couldn't think of them as being one person now. There was only one thing he had left to do that he hadn't told the others about. The fire had claimed the doorway now. He had known that it would, had asked it to cover their escape. Kruger ran to the side of the building and leaped into open air. The ground rose up to meet him and".
Kruger sat bolt upright from the couch which he had fallen asleep on. In the dream he had been falling. Why could he never remember the rest of it"
He was clammy with sweat, and the coals in the forge offered almost no light. "Is someone there?" He asked the darkness, that familiar pressure had built up behind his eyes again.