The Hades Throne

Chapter 31 - Means To An End

In hindsight, I'm not sure how I fell asleep on the moving train.

Rick's boys had it hotwired before I could even question what was happening. Perhaps that was the reason behind the bumpy ride. It jostled and threw anyone without an iron, white knuckle grip, and I fell victim to it's power to bruise more than once. But, more likely, it was the fact that Dog Pack, as Rick's gang ironically called themselves, had voted in a guy named Axe to drive.

They told me I didn't want to know how he got his nickname.

The electric rail train, a division of the city's public transit system, had a bright green interior. That, unfortunately, did not include plush seats or pillows. Instead, unyielding plastic benches and an ill placed window sill that kept contacting with my head, are the characteristics of the train. That, coupled with the rocking, grinding, and worry-inducing bouts of shaking, made the prospect of sleep improbable.

Yet, the last almost forty eight hours of sleeplessness won over, triumphing over comfort like a bird over a stone in a flying contest. The drag, the need to sleep had been binding my mind, making it slow and snail-like, until I gave in.

And the dream hits me as soon as I slip into the chasm below consciousness.

I'm sitting in an empty stadium, rows of seats lifting above and below me in a wave. At the center is an oval of empty space, just a beige concrete floor occupied by nothing but the threads that make the tapestry of a dream. But, as I watch, the seats around me are slowly filled, people taking their places.

Dread lifts, and I realize that the occupants of the seats are not living. No, closer inspection reveals the lack of life, of breath and of movement.

I really hate dreams.

Dream-me struggles to get up out of the seat. But, when I look down, I no longer exist. I'm just a vantage point, a set of looking glasses into the strange arena. I can't move; I'm fixed in place by the bolts of a dream and the screws of my own twisted brain.

As if it couldn't get worse, or anymore weird, the forboading emptyness of the arena is filled by a clanging of metal. Metal scratches against metal, scraped across a plain so that it screeches out. The sound alone makes me shrink, shivers running the extent of my spine. The sight, though, is enough to make any great warrior cower.

I can't place exactly where the fear comes from, but the scene makes my heart pump more fright than it does blood. Two non descript figures move about the designated area in a deadly waltz, blades like fire and ice swinging like hurricane bent trees between the shapes. I try to comprehend the features of the figures, but each attempt is useless. The more I focus, the less solid each form becomes, until it fades entirely and reappears at the corner of my vision. The more I chase the description, the less it solidifies, until even seeing the fight is limited to my peripheral.

"Strange isn't it?" I don't turn at the voice, not anymore, not even if I had a body in this dream to turn with.

Hades sounds strained, despite the same gruff, honest voice I'm used to. Each word sounds like a struggle, and when he speaks again, it's like being on a phone with poor connection. "The legends call them the Eternal Enemies. The personifications of good and bad in the minds of humans, just like the Keepers themselves."

I manage to catch a glimpse of one stabbing the other with its red hot blade, piercing the body in a gruesome chest-kabob. The wounded figure falters, backing up as the wound fills in with more mist, then continues the fight.

"Why don't they die?"

"Adalia." He sounds tried, as if I'm testing his patience with my bothersome, lowly question. "They aren't real. They aren't the Keepers, who must only die to preserve the balance between life and death.  They are as good as spirits, the spirit of evil and the spirit of righteousness, fighting eternally."