International Legends

Chapter 32 - Jasper

The whispering and groaning is all the louder, and it pervades my every thought, making me want to scream. It's the demons, and when I see them, I don't know how to make heads or tails of it. They are infinitely different from myself, and they terrify me.

After Naomi's very long and very confusing explanation of everything, I nearly fell asleep when she got into conspiracies about the universe. The voices had subsided at that point, and it was much nicer. Ozara poked me awake however and said, "I have to hear all of it. So do you."

"What we gathered was that the virus in 2020 was mostly the CIA and China's fault," said Naomi. "Both were playing around with extra dimensional portals and that is how the energy of the spirits had started to leak in. It was only a year or so later that they realized the portals did work. Yes, they continued with the experiments even after the massive detrimental impact on human health."

Leo, wide-eyed, said, "So what you're telling me is that they set the whole world on lockdown and they continued to go on with these experiments in spite of it all?"

Naomi nods and says, "Exactly. I was sworn to strict secrecy along with everyone else. That is why I couldn't say anything when my friends were struggling. I couldn't even tell the individuals in Emgralore what was going on."

"I just don't agree with you," I say. "You've been a supercomputer for 2 years now? So, you're bound to think everything's a simulation. You do not know what happened to me."

It was clear from the blank expression that Naomi gave me that she did not know what happened to me. Perhaps there were limitations to interdimensional viruses, but she was unable to register any information about it all.

Which is when I saw them. The demons. Unlike anything that I had seen before. Sure, I had seen shadow creatures. Had dealt with a variety of demonic characters. Hell, my own mom had dreamed of becoming one of "Hellish" royalty. I always thought it was a myth, the idea that there would be a darker place than our own. I was wrong.

They were soulless and lifeless. You could not stare into their eyes, as they seemed to go on for quite a while. Staring blankly into yours. There was an infinite boundlessness to this energy, and all at once I was quite afraid. They knew me by name. Whispered it as if they were beckoning me to come follow.

I feel like Naomi only has part of the picture. Computers can think logically, but there are parts that not even science can explain. Such as the nature of souls. In spite of my time as a Grim, I've never understood why creatures have souls nor why they need to be picked over after death. An energy did leave the body, but what it was remained mostly unexplainable to us.

My mom had told me that Hell as we knew it was a pretty lifeless place. This was written about from Bruno's perspective in his brief stint as Hell's overlord and in the time of Sophia the Nun when she ventured through it. They had written about Hell not being a real place. That, at its core, the torturing of souls was nothing more than a simulation.

In Genesis's rule, things became a lot lighter and more fun than the time in which Amair ruled. People like Moth Man ended up having respectable lives, even going so far as to vacation in the Pools of Despair (smelly, sulfuric waters in which we used to burn corpses). Now, Hades had more of a say over things. Things were better, brighter. With Persephone building her gardens, Grims being well-organized, and my parents being in love - it wasn't that bad of a place to be.

Yet, there was whispering in Hell long before I left that Genesis had been getting soft. That there was a greater Hell, one in which people trembled in fear of demonic influences and where the torturing of souls went on forever. Demons fantasized about this place, but it seemed mostly fictional rather than real. Just a pit where souls info for eternity and demons enjoyed torturing souls without getting bored of it. A fairytale.