Blood and Beasts

Chapter 56

The wall at the bottom of the staircase shimmered like black glass, reflecting the darkness, but through the archway and into the cavern beyond there was ribbons of white twisting among the darkness. The first step through the archway told them it wasn't glass, but ice. Rachel clenched her teeth, moaning out as she stepped into the cavern, and Jack did the same as he followed close behind.

There were stalactites and stalagmites reaching around the cave, growing at unnatural angles. It all seemed to be made of ice, not pure like a sculpture, but cracking, layers and levels stitched together, a web in the darkness. It didn't feel endless though as every other inch of Hell had been. Jack felt the walls of ice at the edges of the cave, not even that far away, a barrier between them and...if Jack had to guess based on the subtle ripples, water?

When he was younger, Jack had been warned by his mom not to touch dry ice, but when the opportunity came around he had been unable to resist his own curiosity. He had poked it for a second and simply found it really cold, so he attempted to rest his finger on it for a bit longer. After a few seconds he regretted his stupidity, feeling intense burning in his finger, a searing that lasted far longer than any brush of cold. Jack had been fortunate to avoid frostbite, vowing to avoid such foolishness in the future.

The first steps into the cave brought those memories screaming back, the frost stabbing ruthlessly into their feet as they held their chests tight against the unbearable chill tightening all around them. Rachel was shaking so uncontrollably, Jack thought her bones might snap. Similarly grotesque, as she pulled her foot up to take another step, the layer of skin on the bottom of her foot stuck to the ground as it peeled off her foot. Rachel screamed out, wild and desperate at the sensation. She tripped onto the ice, reaching down to her foot. The bloody layer at the bottom had already frozen over. She twisted on the ground in agony as new areas of her body touched the ungodly cold surface. The skin on her palm peeled off as she tried to steady herself. A strip from her hip to her knee tore free next as she struggled to escape the cold surface.

Moving forward to grab Rachel and pull her to her feet, Jack went crashing down with a painful rip. The bottoms of his feet had pulled free, frozen in place as he watched Rachel struggle. Crawling on his hands and knees he inched closer to Rachel. His palms and knees peeled as he moved, but he kept moving, as each new layer came loose. Rachel collapsed on her side into the ice, moaning, arms clenched in a feeble attempt to hide from the cold, eyes shut tight.

"We have to keep moving," Jack said, his voice cracking. "We're so close."

"I can't do it." She looked so frail, defeated. Jack's eyes darted up to the wall of ice on their right side. Had he seen something moving through it? There were spears of ice darting out between them and the wall, same on the left, but straight ahead the path was clear. That's where they needed to go.

"Its only...forty feet ahead," Jack judged. "The water is the end of it, I can feel it. Please..." She opened her eyes and looked at him. "I need you with me, I can't do it alone," he said, feeling this deep in his gut.

There was still fire left in her, he saw it in her eyes. She wasn't willing to stop now either. Her arms flexed, pressing down on the icy floor. Screaming as she moved, her face ripped free first, her right cheek coming off with a squirt of blood that froze in midair. Her forearms were ripped to pieces as she steadied herself, tearing her right nipple off, as well as a good portion of her side. Her body was a horrifying patchwork of frosted over wounds, but she was moving, and Jack realized he need to keep struggling along too.

Large amounts of skin were lost on the ice as they crawled forward, and when that was gone, the muscle underneath started peeling free. Each slip was torture as new body parts touched the ice and brought about new levels of pain. This as with every part of Hell pushed his mind to the limits of what he could imagine pain was. It was inhuman pain. There was nothing left in Jack's mind.  Only pain, and this all consuming desperation. This was it. Only a few feet more. A bit further and they could escape. It would finally end.

Their bodies endured, somehow moving when there was barely muscle left on their arms to move with. They crawled the final feet along their bellies, the tips of their fingers (only bones now) grasping ahead for something to grip onto and pull them forward. They left a grisly trail of frozen skin and guts behind them, losing an inch of themselves every inch they moved forward.

Jack saw the wall of ice, right in front of them, close enough to touch. He pushed himself into a seated position, everything below his neck a mangled mess. What muscles were left underneath the lost skin shone with newly formed ice crystals. Bones pocked through, his ribcage flashed white, and what guts and organs he had left now sat frozen in his lap.

Jack saw a similar sight as Rachel seated herself. Her face was more damaged, the initial tear on her cheek splitting further down. Both her breasts were gone, as was most of the fat around her middle. But as they sat, their bodies started to heal.

None of that mattered now though because they were here. What they were supposed to do now, Jack realized dishearteningly he had no clue.

Behind the ice wall, Jack then saw something floating through. He barely glimpsed it before it was gone. He leaned in close to the ice, almost daring to press his face right too it, and he saw it again in the darkness. It looked from a distance like a long white string. With a quick wriggle it was gone again.

"Hello?" Jack called out uncertainly. He twisted his aching body around to look at the walls on their sides. To his left the white figure darting up from the bottom of the wall, disappearing at the top, closer now. Shooting his gaze over to his right he felt it again, now moving slower, even closer, from the top of the ice until it was hidden from view at the bottom again. Jack hadn't seen the things head, but he'd seen its tail, for that's what it had been, a long white tail, scaled like a snake.

"Jack, we shouldn't be here, this was a mistake," Rachel mourned, though she made no attempt to escape. It was too late for that. Jack's gaze turned back in front of them, as the figure came floating up through the liquid on the other side of the ice. It was human, in shape, tall and very thin, with pure ivory white skin. It had no genitals, only a smooth vacancy over the area, and Jack could not say whether it had a specific gender. What he saw instantly though was that this creature had the most beautiful face he had ever seen, handsome and daunting, flawless and shining, with long flowing pure white hair that cascaded around its mystical form. The eyes that looked upon them were too bright too look at directly, seeming to be made of pure light.

"Jack and Rachel," it said, though its mouth did not move. "Adam and Eve. In a new Garden of Eden. I have been so eager to meet you." The voice was soft, but with a deep hissing echo.

"We were told to come here," Jack mumbled out as his body shook in the cold. "We need to escape this place." The figure smiled an eerie smile, and the beauty left its face, as the corners of its mouth twisted up far too high and lines of blood danced across the light of its eyes. "Please!" Jack cried. "Can you help us?"

"Perhaps I can," the creature said as it floated up and out of sight.

"Who are you?" Jack whispered softly. As in response, the thing in the water darted around the sidewalls again, though Jack no longer saw a human, but the long white body of the snake.

"I am the serpent in the garden. I am the one they called beautiful above all others, and the one they called traitor." Jack looked over at Rachel, who had tears falling from her eyes, freezing to her face.

"Don't you see Jack," she said turning to him. "It was never Cara's voice leading you here. It was his all along." She struggled to form the next words, terror seizing her throat. "Its him. It's Lucifer."