Ariadne and the Flaming Torch : The Quest

Book 1 : The Quest

Chapter 7
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"Please help me", her voice called to me. "It’s so cold here. And I'm so lonely. The darkness, it's too much. Please help me.", the voice of the little girl begged, her broken whisper a silent lamentation of pain.

I looked around. I was standing in pitch black - the darkness was impenetrable and sent a chill down my spine. I couldn't even see my own hand in front of my face. I snapped my fingers, waiting for the familiar fire to glow and spread its warmth everywhere.

My hand lit up with an eerie light and I shivered. The blue flames lowly licking their way up my palm did little help in bringing warmth to the desolate and bleak blackness around me; instead it seemed to enhance it. The miserable blue flame looked haunted; ghosts of the past flickered to life and it seemed as if the flame was echoing their pain with a thousand silenced whispers until the very world seemed like a burial ground.

Lost hopes, broken dreams, veils of guilt, shadowed deception, pure wrath and agonizing misery; the violent and ugly emotions rang in every corner of the barren land as the darkness of evil seeped into my mind, poisoning my hope and killing my dreams.

I felt the foreboding sense of danger seep deep into my bones when a little girl ran past me, her laughs echoing all around the vast space of nothing. Her laughter seemed to bring with it a sense of warmth and comfort and I followed her, unable to resist the temptation of a chance of freedom from this cell of sense deprivation.

Her pale blue cotton dress floated around her knees while her dark hair trailed behind her as she ran full speed to an unknown destination. Where would she go in a place as black as the very night created by Goddess Nyx?

Her laughter seemed to change the bleak outlook of the bland darkness illuminated in misery by my flame; colors seemed to bleed into the darkness, coating it with a cheerful disposition. Soon, the view was completely different from what it had been a few seconds ago - a beautiful and interrupted sky with the morning sun shining brightly and proudly greeted us. Wet, soft, green grass appeared beneath my feet and I sighed; this was lot like my forest.

A cool breeze danced across the now lush clearing, laughing as she seemed to bring to the open field. I ran after the girl; by the Gods, she was fast! I barely kept up. I pushed myself into a sprint and soon caught up with her, grabbing hold of her elbow and jarring her into a forceful stop.
She screamed like a banshee and fought violently against me. The colors seemed to go bland again until they were almost non-existent and still she thrashed against me. Seeing that she was somehow connected to this place and its surroundings, I let go of her and she stopped screaming.

Immediately the colors reappeared. She began humming a soft tune; it was tone I knew well - my mother had sung the same lullaby to me whenever I had had trouble sleeping. I felt an over-whelming urge to hug this child, to comfort her, so she sung along with her.

The girl, no older than ten, looked up at me with her innocent green crystals and I felt myself melting; I had always had a soft spot for children with green eyes - perhaps it was the fact that they reminded me of my momma with their grass green orbs and faces filled to the brim with life and innocence, but I liked them. So it was natural that as I gazed at the innocence of this child, her happiness, I felt myself warming to her.

I knew I had contradicting personalities and I was broken but right now I didn't care. I looked down at the little girl with loving eyes and I felt an ache for the pain behind her child-like eyes. How had she died?

Surely this was a burial ground; it was the medium at which lost souls wandered. They had no purpose to be here, they were lost; their souls wandered the darkness never quite fitting in. They neither wanted to move on nor did they want to stay in the corporeal world. So they simply resided here, in the eternal darkness, wallowing in their self pity and loneliness while sorrow engulfed them and ate away at their cores.

I bent down at the knees and looked the girl in the yes. I saw relief there mixed with fear; the lost ones did not have the ability to adapt. They were simply stuck at the same stage they had been at when they had died - usually emotions of horror, fear and pain - and change of any sort scared them out of their minds - if they had any.

I caressed the girl's cheek and felt her pain as the salty drop of sorrow leaked freely from her eyes and flowed down her porcelain skin. The child was truly stunning - healthy porcelain skin, small, full pink lips, a small nose, a round set face with adorable dimples in her fleshy pink cheeks.

"Why are you here?", I whispered to her. I was curious. Children were not usually present in the Middleworld; they did not dwell on the past and normally went to the Upperworld without any trouble.

"I'm waiting for my mommy.", whispered she and I felt surprise and fear at the fact that her voice sounded similar. It was the same screech of pain that had summoned me to this place in the first place - great, now I was acting as Mediator. Just peachy!

"What's your name?", I asked her.
"Mimi.", she replied with a scared glint in her grass eyes. I patted her head and the expression of fear in her face became stronger. "But your mommy's not here.", I told her gently. I tried to make it less painful for her, I really did but I guess it didn't work because just then the fear overtook her eyes and her entire body convulsed.

Her earth shattering scream of terrible pain set my soul on fire and suddenly the scenery changed. She dropped to floor as she writhed in pain and I simply stared as the events of the past started unfolding in front of my eyes.

Mimi walked about around her school in her school uniform - a plaid dress, with white socks and black ballet flats. She looked alive with happiness and jumped and skipped over the puddles on the ground caused by the recent rain. She jumped in the puddles causing slashes of water to land on her shoes and dress and it muddied her appearance.

I watched as she walked to the park, nearly running as the swings loomed closer and closer towards her. She jumped onto the closest swing - a red one - and stated to gently swing herself. Her laughter rang through the park as she got higher and higher with every push.

Suddenly a man appeared beside her and I felt that same sense of foreboding terror freeze my veins. However it wasn't justified for the old man just patted her head and gave her a chocolate. She smiled at him and laughed, thanking him. I kept watching.

Soon, it began to get dark and she got off the swings and started brushing her dress off. She picked up her discarded bag and hitched it up on her shoulder as she began to skip home, her previous enthusiasm slipping through.

She walked towards and ice-cream shop and stopped there for a second, contemplating whether or not she should buy one. In the end her decision really didn't matter for a young man went in and bought her a strawberry ice-cream. She thanked him as well and began walking home, delightfully licking her ice-cream.
I felt a pricking feeling on the back of my neck when Mimi's screaming intensified. I hurriedly looked back at my surroundings to see her stop before a cream colored house with blue trimmings and modern French accents. She reached up to reach the calling bell but a hand stopped her.

She looked up and saw the face of an old man looking back at her sinisterly. She tried to scream but the man stuffed a piece of clothe into her mouth. She tried to fight him off but he dragged her to an alley right beside their home. He bound her wrists to an old rusted pipe that stood out against the building and pressed the cloth more securely into her mouth.

I watched, horrified, as he ripped her dress off her shoulders causing another bout of muffled screams from her and a shrill scream of pain to come from the mouth of the Mimi lying on the floor next to me.

Tears flowed freely from my eyes as I watched that vile, disgusting man rape Mimi again and again until she became nothing but a barely conscious heap of the girl she was before. I watched as he brought out a knife from his back pocket and ran her through with it.

I heard her scream her mother's name and watched as the life slowly drained from her. The last words she heard were, "But your momma's not here."

Gasping for breath with tears running down my face I turned to the girl and hugged her as she sobbed into my arms and cried out for her momma. I rubbed her back and patted her, telling her lies about how it would all turn out well. I was being cruel to the girl; she had faced so much, all she didn't need was another lie in her way that would just get her hopes up and then crush them like a bug that was not meant to survive.

But her memories didn't cut off. By the River Styx, she was still alive. I watched, my eyes wide with terror, as the old man picked her up and callously threw her into an old plastic garbage bag he found somewhere in the alley - the alley so close to her mom's house. She was so close to her momma.

I felt anger fill my very core as I saw him slip a finger inside her lifeless form before he moaned. I watched as he lifted up her skirt and licked up all the blood that flowed from the fresh wound in between her legs and I felt my anger pique.

Blazing flames of red hot fury shot from me, coloring the vast piece of empty darkness with an amber glow. I wanted him to burn. I wanted the furies to tear him apart and I wanted to watch as Cerberus ate him pitiful head. And I wanted to watch as he became born again only to have to go through the same thing again and again until his body was no more than a heap of flesh and rotten flesh and blackened heart.
For the first time in my life, I felt some pity and appreciation for Hades. He gave these bastards what they deserved but he also had to face the terror of mankind's biggest mistakes every single day. No wonder he'd gone mad. I would've gone mad too. In fact, I think I would have brought the Apocalypse down on man a hundred years ago!

Such vile natures and such disgusting crimes they committed! I sometimes feel sorry that my own momma was a human being. She didn't deserve to be classified as such a vile and disgusting species, she deserved more.
I watched as the man - even the old cannot be trusted - hitched up the garbage bag containing her body with effort and took a few steps before he gave up and just dragged it back to the park where he had met Mimi. I watched, my anger growing by the second, fueling the violent fire I was causing, as he opened the bag and dragged Mimi's long dead carcass to a hydrangea bush. I watched as he contaminated the blossoming purple flowers with Mimi's defiled body. I watched, my hatred growing, as I held the child sobbing and screeching for her mother in my arms, as her body decayed there.

I watched as the man cheerfully went on his own merry way, whistling on his way out. I watched as months flew by and as the purple hydrangea flowers slowly dyed to red from Mimi's long forgotten blood.

She had been stuck here since, refusing to let go until she told her mom what she had meant to tell her. I held her in my arms as she shouted curses at the man and blubbered pathetically to me. I soothed her head and sung to her mother's lullaby. She slowly began to calm down and as I looked down at her, I saw only a dead and defeated soul not the lively, joyous girl she had once been.

Her face had hollowed out and bottomless black pits had replaced her beautifully deceptive eyes. Her mouth had grown blue and cracked, there were scars on her face and the bones of her ribs showed through at the exact place the man had gutted her. Her once beautiful nose was now only a ghost of what it had once been. She was a ghost, only the shadow of the beautiful, bounding girl I had seen.

"Please, help me, Ari. It's so dark in here and I'm so lonely." she whispered.

"How did you know my name was Ari? Or rather Ariadne?", I asked her, that prolonging sense of danger once again settling deep into my bones. I watched terrified as she transformed. Razor sharp teeth oozing venom and blood replaced her perfectly straight ones. Her feet were replaced with razor sharp talons which floated in the air and her gaunt face looked more lifeless than before. Her arms outstretched and hanging lifelessly at the wrists, the Yurei charged at me, lunging for my throat.

I whirled and barely dodged her clawed feet which were aimed at my ribs. I ducked down and she flew right over me, slamming into the opposite wall of the proverbial coffin and snapping her neck with a sickening crack. She slowly got up, her neck hanging haphazardly before she snapped it back into place and lunged at me once more. I summoned a flame and slammed my palm into her neck before roughly gripping it and giving her a rough shake. She screamed and screeched and thrashed and writhed before she finally calmed down a bit.

She looked at me with hate filled eyes before she spat at me. I glared at her as I wiped the disgusting black saliva off of my face. Her breath reeked of death.

"Listen to me, Mimi!", I hissed out at her. "I'm the only person who can free you. You know that, I know that. Now the question here is, do you want me to? Because it sure as hell doesn't seem like you do."

She continued looking at me, her bottomless pits for eyes looking terrifying in the matching pitch black darkness of the gloomy room we were trapped in. Her mouth opened and screeches shattered the silence of the practically dead room. Saliva flew out of her mouth and where it touched my skin, it burned like acid. I released my grip on her neck and she immediately wrenched herself out as I held my hand in pain. God that hurt! I hissed in a sharp breath.

Okay, the bitch wants to play with fire? I'll give her fire. The familiar stinging sensation of fire crawling up my arm greeted me and I felt my entire being flare with anger. I snarled and hurled the flame at her, watching as she shrunk back and screamed in pain as the fire got closer and closer to her. Stupid Yurei, can't even take a bit of light; they've lived in misery and guilt for far too long if they feel pain at the very sight of warmth.

She dropped onto the floor before quickly scrambling away to a dark corner. I snapped my fingers and the flame disappeared only to reappear in my hand. The moment of relief she had experienced had gone as quickly as it had come and the expression on her face was now flat and scared.

She whimpered and crawled over to a corner of the box-like jail we were in and hugged herself, slowly rocking back and forth and singing her mother's lullaby again. As I looked at the creature before me, I felt a deep sense of pity towards her and I gently edged forward even though the stinging in my arms was imploring me to do the opposite; my anger wanted me to march right up to her and grab hold of her and finish her off, but I resisted. How violent I can be sometimes!

"Mimi, do you want me to help you?", I asked. She didn't speak. Okay, let's try a different approach. "Mimi, why did you call me here?"

She didn't talk. I sighed and turned around. I knew I was dreaming, so that meant that I could also wake up. Like Soman said, I am most open to the Otherworld when I am asleep. What was the point in wasting my time when the supposed soul who called me here didn't want my help? I sighed and struggled to gain back my consciousness and to enter the real world - the world of the living.

I slowly gained equilibrium and my body started to fade. Just as I was at the peak of my concentration, a startled voice interrupted my journey.

"I didn't summon you here! Hyas did!", Mimi cried out, her voice miles away. I opened my eyes and broke my concentration to stare at her.

Hyas, as in the Greek spirit of seasonal rainfalls, summoned me here? That's ridiculous. HYAS was a daemon - spirit - of seasonal rains, brother of the Hyades, the starry rain nymphs, and a son of the firmament-bearing Titan Atlas. As a young boy he was killed in the wilds by a lion. The gods, afterward, set him amongst the stars as the constellation Aquarius, along with the lion Leo, and his five mourning sisters as the Hyades. Aquarius and Leo do not share the sky at the same time, one setting as the other rises.

So, that being established, why would Hyas summon me, that too to the Middleworld? The Middleworld was the world of the past; it could never adapt with the future and Hyas was a spirit of present and future rain. Hyas and the Middleworld simply did not co-exist. In fact he had cursed Cronos and Aeon to the deepest and darkest pit of Tartarus when they had decided that the Middleworld - a world where only the past existed and lost souls of all varieties found solace and resided in - had to exist for the betterment of mankind.

In ancient Greece, Athens in fact, the charge of the patron Goddess of Wisdom, Athena, had faced a plague. There were many murders causing Vrykolakas, Hayakuus, Yureis, Ikiryos, Onryo, Ubume, Goryo, Funayurei, Zashiki-warashi, Acheris, etc. to flood the towns, disrupting the balance of thaumaturge in the world. There was a natural uproar in the population of the myths and the vengeful sprits joined together with the mindless minotaurs and whatnot to challenge the authority of the Gods.

There was a massive battle, which the gods almost lost, if it had not been for Cronos and Aeon together with the help of Ananke. Cronos and Aeon created the Middleworld where the vengeful spirits would reside and banished them there. The balance of thaumaturge returned and soon all was at peace. The gods did not want this recorded in the archives for they were ashamed of the fact that they had to get help from the Titans - they were vengeful and conceited and hated it when someone offered them help or did something better than them.

Hyas however did not agree with the concept of letting "the spirits go in their own time, at their own pace." He wanted them exorcised but since he was only a sprite and of no real significance to the Gods, his opinion was not taken seriously and was thrown aside. So, Hyas now hated the Middleworld and all the residents in it, since he didn't have the audacity to hate the Titans, lest he should face their wrath.

So the fact that Hyas himself summoned me here was beyond odd but then again when was my life anything but odd? Just then, I felt a shimmering in the air followed by a cold breeze which swirled around the dark room and seemed to make it gloomier still.

I looked around me and saw him at his full glory. His long black hung limp and wet as it stuck to his forehead, his small, child-like body glowing with an inner energy and flowing with water around it. Delicate Greek features with a small sculpted nose; he really was young when he died.

I watched as she stood there, looking magnificent with a curtain of water surrounding him and his very presence seemed to light up the dark hell of a room - I really dislike d this room. My affinity was with fire. It brought warmth and I saw it as a purifier, not destroyer. And now, stuck in this godforsaken dark room that seemed to hang with death and decay, I felt claustrophobic.

It was in the dark that the cruel and vile monsters of the myths came out to play. It was in the dark that all the death and murder took place. Take Mimi for example: if only she had gone home sooner, if only she hadn't stopped at the park to play - the possibilities were endless; she could have done a thousand things to prevent her death. But as it is, The Moirae are tricky and love themselves a good twist of fate and a good murder seeing as they were the daughters of the Goddess Nyx and the siblings of Aether, Hemera, Momus, Moros, Thanatos, Hypnos, Charon, the Oneiroi, the Hesperides, the Keres, Nemesis, Apate, Philotes, Geras and Eris. They were the creators of the dark and their words should be feared. Take the Lamiae who devoured Nyx's chosen, for instance - he died in the most terrible way possible, his soul ripped from him and his body devoured by the Hydra.

I feared the dark and the reign of these creatures - the reign of Goddess Nyx. I feared it and seeing Hyas here wasn't such a pleasant thing to me since he was in some ways related to the dark.

So as I glared at him, he glared at Mimi and sent a torrent of water smashing towards her, causing her to whimper and shake in pain. His mouth twisted into a cruel smile and he turned to me. My anger flared as I watched him torture the already lost soul of Mimi and I bared my teeth at him.

His only reply was a smirk before his child like voice said, "Ariadne, daughter of Persephone, I have a task for you."