Artemis visits his own personal hell…

R E V E L A T I O N

He never thought he could experience pain like this and live. It was like fire, but more… It was like torture, but worse…It was like dying, but ceaseless. Artemis had no idea what was happening. And that scared him more than anything. One minute he was looking at Holly, the next he was burning alive, and moving. Downward it seemed, although nothing could be certain in his disorientated state. This must be hell, he thought. But he hadn’t died. Had he? He couldn’t remember. Maybe something happened that he didn’t know about. An explosion perhaps. Or he was shot. That was it, Holly had shot him. She had her gun out. It was pointing at him. But that didn’t sound quite right. They were on peaceful terms now. Why would she shoot him?

His mind was running in circles, throwing up ideas but not being able to do anything with them because of the pain. He found he was actually praying for death. At least that would end the suffering. Unless he was already dead. Then it wouldn’t matter. He couldn’t think, couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. The burning seemed to last for eternity, and he didn’t think he’d be able to stand it any longer when, to his surprise and relief, it suddenly stopped. Artemis found himself cool and motionless. Release had come. He lay there unmoving, just appreciating the absence of pain. He could breathe. He could move, if with difficulty. But more importantly, he could think. It took him a long while to notice anything. The first thing he was aware of was that he was lying on something hard. Cold stone that was starting to freeze his skin through the back of his suit. The second thing he noticed was that it was dark. Lightless, in fact. Or he had gone blind. These two details were the only things to register in Artemis’s mind before he blacked out.

He regained consciousness slowly. It was still dark and cold. He couldn’t tell if he was injured or not. He slowly tested out his extremities. He could still feel his fingers and toes, so that was good. Not moving anything else, he turned his head to the right. Nothing. He looked to the left. Nothing. He started to turn away when something caught his attention. He didn’t really see anything, but he thought he heard something move in the distance. He knew he should have been wary of this unknown thing but his mind was still reeling.

He attempted to speak. “Who’s there?” he called out. At least that’s what he tried to do. What really came out was more of a hoarse wheeze. His throat was as dry as sand. He couldn’t swallow, and he felt extremely dehydrated. It felt good to just lie there in the darkness.

Then he heard it. Heard it for real, not just the passing impression of sound he heard before. It was a footstep, but it sounded strange. It was almost like coals sizzling. Artemis heard it coming closer, but was too stiff to move. As it approached, he recognized its gait as bipedal. Another useless fact.

Whatever it was, it stopped close to Artemis, but not close enough for him to determine what it was. Memories of trolls hunting him down filled his mind. But if it was a troll, he’d be dead by now. Suddenly a blinding white light filled the area. Artemis cried out and turned away. It was so intense, it burned his eyes even with them closed.

For several minutes nothing happened. Artemis finally risked opening his eyes a fraction. The light was still as bright was it before, but was now a dull red color, like a dying fire. As his eyes slowly adapted, he looked around. He was in large stone chamber, really more of a cave, roughly a hundred meters long. There was no visible exit. Not that he would have been able to escape in his condition.

He turned his head slowly, steeling himself to get a look at the thing nearby. It was standing about two meters away, and nothing could have prepared Artemis for what he saw.

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For a whole thirty seconds, no one moved. They all just stared at the place Artemis had been standing. There was nothing to indicant he had ever been there. Not even a scorch mark.

It was Juliet who reacted first. “Oh God, oh God, oh God, oh God, oh God…” she repeated in a monotonous voice.

Butler was next. He ran to the spot Artemis had vanished from and looked around wildly, as if he thought Artemis would suddenly appear and yell, “Surprise!”

Mulch let loose a long string of dwarfish curses, few of them understandable to the others.

Holly stood there, unmoving, silent, and wide-eyed. He was gone. Disappeared. Vanished. Lost. She had seen the flames, heard his cry of surprise, but couldn’t quite believe what happened. Artemis, gone. Her former adversary, her reluctant ally, her unscrupulous friend. Gone.

The numbing fog that filled Holly’s mind was suddenly swept away by a tide of anger. No one messed with Artemis except her. No one harmed him without her permission. And no one, no one, caught her off guard. The officer in her took over, and she watched distantly as she flipped open her communicator and called Foaly. He would know what to do. If you couldn’t get Artemis, Foaly was the next best choice. She explained the situation, not really hearing herself. She ignored Juliet’s stifled sobbing, Butler’s futile search, and Mulch’s swearing. She dealt with the circumstances as Root would have told her to: professionally. That’s what she did. It didn’t matter that Foaly understand what she was talking about, or that she herself didn’t know what actually happened. All that mattered was that she didn’t let herself give in to her grief. Because if she did, she knew she would be admitting Artemis was dead.

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Artemis himself was wishing he was dead. That would have made more sense to him. Because the thing standing in front of him certainly didn’t. It was made of fire. Artemis blinked several times to make sure he was seeing this correctly. The thing was humanoid in shape, but instead of skin or hide, in was covered what looked like cooling lava. That was what made the light. Cracks appeared in the lava and glowed brightly before closing up again. Flames licked the top of its head, making it look like it had some sort of punk hairstyle. It had no facial features to speak of, except for two large white-hot openings in the lava-skin, like the eyes on alien masks. Artemis supposed that they actually acted like a type of eye, for the thing was clearly looking at him as intently as he was looking at it.

It took a step closer, and now Artemis noticed the heat radiating off it. He coughed and tried to speak again. “Who are you?” he asked croakily.

It stared down at him so long that he wondered if it understood him. But a line split open in its head, right where a mouth would have been, and said in a voice that seemed to hold the roar of a wildfire and the soft crackling of burning wood, “I am of the earth.”

While this didn’t really answer his question, it did provide some information. The creature was intelligent, and it understood English. He noticed that the creature even spoke with a Dublin accent. Artemis felt confident enough to struggle into an upright position. If it meant him harm, surely it would have done so by now. While sitting up, he noticed with relief that his suit was still intact, without so much as a loose thread. The creature watched him, but made no move towards him. Finally Artemis looked up at it and asked again, “Who are you?”

“I have no name. Neither do any of my brethren. We have no need of them,” it said.

“But what do others call you?” Artemis asked, frustrated. Then the significance of what it said sunk in. There were others like it. He was prevented from dwelling further on this when the creature spoke again.

“What others?”

“Fairies, the People, what do they call you? Surely they know what you are.”

“What are fairies?”

This day started out so normal, he thought. “You haven’t seen any fairies down here?” When it didn’t respond, he continued. “Where are we? Close to Haven?”

The creature paused before saying slowly, “We are under the large hollow that is full of noise. Is that ‘Haven’?”

So they were miles and miles under the surface, farther down even than Haven. Absently he wondered why the heat and pressure hadn’t already killed him. An anomaly in the mantle, maybe. It didn’t really matter in the long run. Looking at the creature again, he decided the best way to figure out what was going on was to get it talking.

He sat crossed-legged and started off, “How do you know my language?”

“When I grabbed you, I absorbed your tongue.”

Artemis formed his next question while trying to forget that particular image. “So, you brought me here? Why? And how?”

“You were stronger than the others. The smaller ones went dark when I tried to transport them. You kept burning.”

Artemis paused. The creature only understood concepts that related to fire, not something abstract like life and death. So, if fires had to burn to stay ‘alive,’ then they would die if they went out. Artemis tried to untangle the creature’s statement using this knowledge. It seemed content to wait.

The smaller ones went dark…that must refer to the dead fairies outside the ports. Transport…the creature had tried to bring them down here like it did with Artemis, but they couldn’t handle the stress. You kept burning…he survived where others didn’t.

“Why did you bring me here?” he repeated. The creature only answered one question at a time.

“I wanted to learn. When I woke up, my brethren were silent. No one could teach me about the life of the sun. I had heard many stories about the sun-life.”

“Sun-life. You mean life on the surface?”

“Yes,” it said almost eagerly, “None of our number has seen the sun, but we know it to hold the whole earth under its sway.”

Asking direct questions would take too long, so Artemis said simply, “Tell me about your brethren. I want to learn, too.”

What the creature did next Artemis could only describe as sit, but in reality its legs seemed to melt under it, lowering it gently to the ground. It was quite a sight to see.

“My brethren and I live in the liquid earth. We live off its heat and have no need to seek out further means of nourishment. I am the smallest of our number, but even so I had to leave most of my mass behind. We have been silent for a thousand turns of the sun, and will probably remain so for thousands of turns to come. But I was awakened by a strange shift in the earth above me. I felt the earth move. A great amount of it moved downward towards us. It was several turns ago, but it has taken me this long to get contact with the surface.” It paused as if for breath. This was probably the most talkative it had been in its whole life.

In the resulting quiet, Artemis speculated on what could have caused the shift. What could move a large enough mass of earth to be felt at the core? He smiled humourlessly when he thought if it. “Opal,” he murmured. Her million-ton bullet of rock caused this. Even now, the results of her actions could be seen. She had a lot to answer for.

The creature was speaking again. “I wanted someone to tell me what happened. I was curious. About the earth shift. About the surface. About the sun. I was able to contact the creatures of sunlight through flames. The smaller ones had openings in the earth that went to the surface. I brought them there so I could transport them easier.”

Artemis nodded as it all fitted together. The creature had apparently entranced him as he stared into his fireplace at home. The epiphany he had concerning the dead fairies wasn’t a stroke of genius at all, it was only the creature’s siren song. It convinced him to go the fairy port so it could bring him down here, wherever here was, and nearly killed him in the process. Suddenly he wondered what happened to the others. Holly and Butler, Juliet and Mulch. Did they think he was dead? Were they alright? How would he get back to them?

“Why can’t you go up to the surface yourself? Why bring me down to you?” he asked.

“Those of us who tried in the past to see the sun have never returned. Some say they have found paradise, others say they went dark without the earth’s heat. I didn’t want to put myself in jeopardy. I have limited access to the liquid heat even here.”

So, the creature wasn’t only intelligent, it had common sense.

“What are going to do with me after you have your questions answered?”

The creature paused. It obviously hadn’t thought of that. Artemis might have to stay down here until his air ran out or he died of thirst. It was not an attractive prospect.

Leaving the creature to think it over, he stood up, wincing with pain as his joints protested. He wasn’t as young he used to be. But I’m only thirty! he thought. It wasn’t that old. He wasn’t like Juliet, taking on every physical challenge out there. He had a desk job, for crying out loud! He was suddenly annoyed at his whole lifestyle. He wasn’t a businessman; he was a criminal, albeit one with principles. The whole world saw him wrong. What was it some critic had called him? A “tanned, uber-successful, cheap-romance-novel man.” The ‘tan’ was the result of endless lunch meetings on restaurant patios. Success? Why shouldn’t he be successful? He had actually worked hard for it. And romance? He hadn’t had a real relationship in ages. Not that he tried very hard.

He walked around the cave, working out the stiffness. He was right; there was no exit. It was just an air bubble in the solid mantle. He was on the side opposite the creature, who was still sitting, when he remembered his communicator. Holly had given him a new one to replace the one he had, and it was still in his jacket pocket. Although, ‘given’ was a loose term. In reality he had lifted one from Holly’s bag of supplies, which had been conveniently left unguarded. He planned to pirate the technology from the old one, perhaps use it in a new search-and-rescue broadcasting system they were working on. The borrowed communicator was more powerful than the old, substituting a view screen for a stronger transmitter. Maybe, just maybe…

He flipped it open. There was just the faintest of signals, but it was a signal nonetheless. Hope welled up in him, but he tried to control his reactions. It might not even work. Artemis was not one given to optimism, choosing reliable facts over false hope, but he felt he was due for a miracle.

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Holly was standing outside the port, watching as the eastern sky lightened. The cool night air helped her stay clear-headed. She was just thinking about how they could go about tracking Artemis, perhaps through magical means, when her communicator buzzed. She opened it, expecting Foaly, but instead got a short shot of static. It seemed as through someone was speaking, but she couldn’t make out the words. She was just about to close it when she heard her name. “Holly.” Then it cut out. Her communicator automatically recorded incoming calls, so she able to play it back. It was only eight seconds long but it was enough. She listened carefully.

“Holly…-temis…fire crea…cave…ven.” Artemis. He had called her. Relief flooded Holly. He was alive. Relief was quickly replaced by alarm. How to find him? He mentioned a cave. That could be anywhere. He also said something about fire. Fire creature? But that didn’t make any sense. Quickly she relied the message to Foaly, telling him to clean it up as much as he could. The spark was back in her eyes. She was determined to bring Artemis back, even if it was just to make sure he never caused trouble for her again.

Well, well, well. Should Holly rescue him or not? By the way, if you are having trouble picturing the fire creature, imagine the Balrog from the Lord of the Rings movies, but without the whip and bad-ass attitude. Thanks to all the reviewers who made it this far, the ones who supported me, threatened me, and lectured me.