Haven: Book Seven of "The Liminality"

Chapter 28 - Back to Root

Since those gals atop the cairn vanished, there has been absolutely no sign of them. Not a ripple in the air. Nothing to indicate they will be returning anytime soon. Grehl, the one and only great and mighty Summoner of Sheol, apparently doesn't know how to hold open a door.

So here we are, just sitting around staring at a big pile of rocks. The absence of a portal does not dissuade any of Grehl's followers. They watch and wait with an eagerness that suggests they expect her to pop back through a seam any second now.

As for me, I'm getting antsy thinking about what might be going on back in Root. I don't have time for this shit.

"They ain't coming back. Not anytime soon."

"Nonsense, says Mifuti."

"They're stuck," I say. "Maybe worse. The Argents got to them."

"Patience," says Mifuti. "Perhaps they are taking some time to explore."

"Maybe they're involved in negotiations," says Gwen.

"With who? The Powers-That-Be? I don't think so."

"Relax," says Mifuti. "They come when they come."

That stinky wind just never stops winging across these wastes. I can already feel my skin thickening into the callous that all the long-timers display on their faces. I need to get out of this shit hole as soon as possible.

"If we don't see them by tomorrow, someone should notify the clan bosses," says one of our warriors, a guy names Timmit with the build of a fire hydrant.

"Grehl will return," says Gwen. "She always does. She is the Summoner."

"So I hear."

I wish I had her confidence, but I am sensing a bit of cultish devotion in her tone. I am sorely tempted to take a dive into the Sing and see what I can dig up what happened to them, even though I know that the Sea of Souls has no purchase in the Upper Realms. But who knows? Maybe some soul in there knows somebody who knows somebody from an upper realm.

In my experience, when these rifts close, they close hard. The one that Olivier opened to spring us from the Deeps had slammed so securely that not even the biggest and baddest of the will bombs he could conjure Root-side could pry it back open enough to let any more folks through. He had tried his damnedest, too.

Those millions of souls left behind in the Deeps were long gone now. The Deeps was no more. Their bits were scattered in the soul recycling machinery of the infernal processing plant that was Avernus.

Out of boredom, I get up and start repairing the cairn, replacing the stones knocked down when the gals climbed it, rebuilding another corner that seemed to have collapsed on its own. Some skinny guy from the nearby settlement is the only one to lend a hand. Everyone else just sits around and watches us.

Sometimes, I think Avernus gets a bad rap. No one wants to be the soul who gets processed, but recycling per se is not such a bad idea. You have to admit that you have met at least one person with a soul so evil or twisted or cruel that they are irredeemable. So why not, in those cases, tease them apart and reassemble the bits? Maybe it only takes one bad bit to spoil the whole. I figure that most random assemblages of whatever stuff makes up a soul results in the sort of dully benign bloke that constitutes 95% of humanity. Truly exceptional good folk and bad folk are uncommon. Saints and demons are rare.

The main problem I have with the whole Avernus thing is that I don't trust the politics of the vetting process. I've met so many fine folks in the lowest realms while monsters and demons frolic. The mis-vetting is not even always that extreme, but too often unexceptional souls are rewarded and the good and humble get punished. What do we expect from a system designed by a bunch of monkeys?