The Desire of a Hybrid

Chapter 27- The Fields of Ahaz

Disregarding Dev's warnings, I found myself staring at my laptop screen dead into the night like a zombie starved of flesh, pondering on the big decision ahead of me. It would only take one click of the mouse, a simple 'book now', and then there would be no going back. 

I would be following clues from one of the most unreliable sources present in the entirety of the universe. 

No wonder I felt reluctant. 

With all of the mistrust and evidence stacked against The Oracle, I just couldn't bring myself to jump in and leave my fears and doubts behind when there were so many of them. Any information I missed whilst I was away could jeopardise my general existence, let alone my job and the power that came with it. 

The internal conflict within was becoming exhausting: I just wanted a problem where the correct option was obvious and not full of secrets and ulterior motives. It didn't seem like much to ask for. But then again I supposed I should stop moaning. I'd come across many tense situations before and I'd dealt with them fine back then.

Every demon left standing had. Being the epitome of evil wasn't easy, especially for someone who felt the deep desire within to do good. 

Even now, I still struggled. I still had that war on my mind. And there was a time in every demon's life where they felt something akin to that, which was a thought I clung close to in the lonelier hours of the moonlight.

And that moonlight had drifted in through the open windows of my study for what felt like eternity, as my fingers drifted over that all-important button. The night was clear and strangely cool for a summer on the West Coast, and the crisp air was inviting, seductive, comforting: a fresh whisper against my warm and tired skin. 

I felt myself drifting, and drifting, and drifting; further and further from reality as my subconscious dragged me away from troublesome times ahead, only to encounter the trouble that I faced in my sleep...

Someone was screaming. I felt panicked and disorientated and I couldn't see. The darkness around me was the only thing that was visible and I couldn't get past it. Couldn't break into the light. 

My body was moving. But I wasn't steering the hull. Something was dragging me upwards, dragging me through the black and I wasn't in control. I didn't like it. I was scared. I was alone. And the screaming was getting louder. 

Sight and sound was not comforting to me, so I reverted back to my other senses. I tried to smell, but I was immediately repulsed as the air of decay and sulphur wafted in through my nostrils. There was nothing to taste and I tried to feel something, anything, around me by the simple brushing of my fingertips, but...nothing. Nothing distinguishable. 

Where was I? 

But before I could think about my situation any further, everything began to intensify in no more than a split second. The screams became louder; the decay became even more potent and light suddenly began to filter in to combat the surrounding darkness. But this light was no emissary of hope: it was crimson and vivid and made my eyes sting, bringing pain instead of relief. 

I shied away from the harmful rays by closing my eyelids...but I was forced to open them almost immediately as I felt myself fall onto something that seemed to be the tough and earthy ground. 

I allowed my gaze to become accustomed to the red light before I moved one single bone in my body, and as soon as it did I wanted to be blind again. 

I knew this place. 

The crimson smoke from the volcanoes of suffering billowed through the atmosphere to create scarlet skies of harshness, hovering above the carnage beneath to represent the burning superiority of Lucifer himself. Every breath I took was a choking struggle of survival, as poison and death combined with oxygen to become a detrimental factor in the game of life Satan planned to play with us. This place was the beginning, or the end, of a difficult journey in which all morals were forced to bleed out and into the confining atmosphere of decay.