Ouroboros II | The Wolf

15 | Bezel Isn't Doing Better, Thanks For Askin'

For many moments, Bezel thought he had died. In a way, well, maybe he had. After all, waking up in Hell was what humans had promised him would be the end to his nearly-immortal life. Unfortunately, he couldn't be so lucky. His senses returned very slowly. The scent of ash was embedded into his nose. The bubbling pain in his flesh was bone deep. His fingers glided through sands hot enough to cook human flesh--luckily Bezel didn't have much of that left--until coming to a rest positioned under his chest. With a groan, he shoved himself shakily upwards. His trembling legs folded, taking the brunt of his weight. 

Bezel's head drooped back, his long throat exposed to the sulfuric air wrapped around his charred skin and exposed bone. His feeble fingers rose to the buttons of his black dress shirt, stumbling as they undid each fastening. Bezel sloughed the dripping wet fabric from his shoulders, wincing at the hissing spitting steam that rolled off whatever remained of his back. 

Freed from the burning biting at his bones, he took a moment to inhale the full scope of his situation. He was alive. That much was evident from each of his melted nerves regrowing only to remind him of his agony. He blinked his weary eyes to scrub them of sand and blinding hot sunlight. Luckily, the thin membrane of his eyelids had been easy to replace. Bezel twisted his neck, ignoring the popping as his joints shifted. He was most definitely in the pit. Far below sea level, in a desert contained at the bottom of a cavernous ravine. The scorched red sands bubbled from the fires beneath Avernus' crust and blistered from the sun hanging millions of miles over head. With no foliage strong enough to survive and only a thin layer of shimmering Trammel between, the sun cut directly down into the heart of the Tachtadh. It almost made Bezel glad for the red smog rolling along the earth, curling to climb up his limbs. 

The air was dense, as if packed down by the weight of the world. Bezel thought it would have been easier to suck in lungfuls of water at the bottom of Lake Seneca than the scorching winds whipping at the regrowing skin stretching across the frames of his bones. The bottom of the cavern was immeasurable. Bezel only knew it did end because there was no horizon--only jagged cliff walls raised up in all directions. He was sitting in the bottom of a massive pit, all right. A hole full of all of Avernus' worst problems--and now him. 

He lifted his golden cat eyes to trace the path of his downward descent. Miles above his head, the shimmering blue lake floated in the sky. It's edges had been worn down to fuzzy rims against the rust toned smoke in the atmosphere of the cavern. The gate was askew, hanging a leap-able distance from the nearest basin wall. With ledges and grooves as wide as football fields cut into the cliff face, it was plenty climbable. He could see how even King Behemoths had made their way up and out of the gate. And given the state of the trap they lived in, he couldn't fully blame them either. Well, no matter what happened next he wouldn't be leaving the pit that way. He had to find the wolves. Somewhere among all the ash and dust.

Bezel rolled his shoulders, wincing from pain he wished he had been mimicking. His leather shoes trembled where he steadied them against the blood-colored earth. Bezel pushed himself upward. His legs held for only a moment before he collapsed, just barely managing to catch himself on his flattened palms. The muscles locked over his spine twitched uncomfortably, alerting him that he had been chewed down to sinew and bone in some places. Bezel sucked in a breath of poison air that didn't even begin to sooth the hollowness in his lungs and exhaled with a shudder that came from no sense of cold. 

He blinked his yellow eyes, dragging them in a labourless manner across the desert grounds. Buried in a mound of orange sand, visible only by the curled talon above the dust, was his kris. He reached for it, gently reclaiming the carved handle with the tips of his fingers. Bezel dragged the blade across the bubbling earth, watching listlessly as the sand was etched into the curved pattern of the keris. The weapon might have been the perfect weight if he could have only felt it in his hands. He laid it over his crumpled legs, taking many more moments than he should have to study the old object.