The sun-like ball terrifies me. It’s not just the heat. Being here is wrong. I feel like I’m breaking a sacred law by looking at this wild globe of wondrous fire.
“We’ve broken more laws than you could imagine by bringing you here,” Art says. “But we cannot always be prisoners of the laws we live by. Sometimes we have to transcend them.”
We press closer to the orb. We’re almost upon it. My mouth is dry. My skin feels like it’s burning. My eyes seem to be roasting in their sockets. I want to turn and get as far away from here as possible. But before I can beg Art to stop, we hit the outer rim and are swallowed by a billion licks of ravenous flame.
It takes several minutes to cut through the outer ring. I’ve fought demons made of fire, so a realm of flames is nothing new. But this fire is hotter than any I’ve experienced. It roars about us like a living, furious sea. But Art holds firm and guides me through the billowing walls of the furnace.
Finally we break through the flames and enter a realm of bewitching marvels. It’s a vast, oval, grey space, illuminated by constant bolts of lightning. There’s debris everywhere, asteroids, pebbles, and dust swirling around. The lightning regularly splits rocks and splinters them, but the pieces join with other shards to form new, larger rocks, which in turn are split again.
The space is dominated by a series of enormous square panels. Half are black, half white. The panels revolve slowly around the sphere, never meeting. Anything that hits the panels—lightning forks, rocks, flickers of flame—is absorbed, then spat out moments later.
Balls of multicolored light—Old Creatures—float around the black panels. Hundreds of demons cluster around the white squares. My insides tense when I spot the Demonata, but Art speaks quickly to calm me.
“They Will Not Harm Us,” he says. “This Place Is Sacred To Both Sides. We Do Not Kill Here.”
; “You could have warned me earlier,” I growl, then frown. “What happened to your voice? It’s deeper than before, and echoey.”
“We Are All Speaking To You Now,” Art says stiffly. “We Do Not Experience Individuality When We Are Together.”
I glance around at the various balls of light. They were pulsing in unison as Art spoke. It’s too confusing to think of them all speaking at the same time, so I focus on Art and pretend I’m talking to a single entity.
“What’s the story?” I ask, shivering as a bolt of lightning strikes the film of light around me and is deflected. “Why are we here? What are the big secrets?”
“The Panels Are The Key,” Art says. “You Remember The Chessboard We Saw On The Earlier World?”
“Yes, but what does…” I stop and cast an eye over the panels again, doing a quick count. There are thirty-two black squares and an equal number of white.
“The Original Universe Was Shaped Like A Chessboard,” Art explains. “There Were Sixty-Four Zones, Half Black, Half White. Each Zone Was Limitless In Size. Time Did Not Exist. The Universe Had Existed And Would Exist Forever. It Was The Same For Us And The Demonata.”
“I don’t understand,” I interrupt. “Everything has to begin somewhere.”
“Only If Time Exists,” Art corrects me.
“How can time not exist?” I huff.
“Time As You Know It Began With The Big Bang.”
“I told you I don’t know what that means.”
“Peace,” Art calms me. “We Will Come To That. First, Accept That This Was The State Of The Universe. Sixty-Four Zones, Equal In All Respects, Black Separated From White By A Force We Called The Kah-Gash.”
I focus intently when he mentions the Kah-Gash, ignoring the things I don’t understand. I can try to make sense of the bewildering bits later.
“Demons Existed In The White Zones,” Art continues. “Vile, Violent Monsters, Who Could Reproduce. We Inhabited The Black Zones, And Were Sterile. That Did Not Trouble Us. Since There Was No Time, We Were Immortal. Death Did Exist—We Could Be Killed—But It Rarely Bothered Us. We Roamed The Endless Depths Of Our Zones, Peaceful And Content.
“Demons And Old Creatures Were Never Meant To Mix. The Kah-Gash Kept Us Separate.”
I spot a disturbance among a group of demons clustered around one of the white panels. Until a few seconds ago, they swarmed around the panel like ants, but now they part, forming two neat ranks. One of the beasts glides between the others, angles for the panel, then brushes against it and is absorbed. I wait for it to emerge but nothing happens.
“The Demon Is Dead,” Art says. “It Was Ancient, One Of Those Who Existed In The Original Universe. No Living Creature Can Touch The Panels And Survive. Most Of The Original Demonata And Old Creatures Choose To Perish Here When It Is Their Time.”
“One down, just a few trillion to go,” I chuckle humorlessly. Then I pause. “Is that why the other demons are here, to bid farewell to the dead one?”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t think demons worked that way. Those I’ve known don’t care about any of the others.”