The Rising Darkness {Currently under editing}

Chapter Eight-Life on the Murder Scene

As soon as I passed through the gateway it closed behind me. Typical magical maze, always closing its paths and opening new ones. Hopefully the whole 'follow the left wall' trick would still work. After the first couple of turns my first enemy appeared. Well I say appeared, I assumed that he was there. Owing to the static and the crazy vision. Why? How? Primal Fear knew, he knew. I slapped myself, literally lifted my hand and struck myself with it. Of course he knew. His name was Fear, surely that meant his business was fear.

Finally the static stopped. And I was still following the bloody left wall. I didn't know why or what type but the walls of the maze were drenched in blood. Some of it had congealed, some was dried out and some was stilling running. This reminded me of a line from a poem that I'd read all those years ago. 'The hapless soldiers cry runs in blood down palace walls' I'm not even sure if that was how it went.

As I wandered along I came across a wide open space, a dark forest. Now I knew that this was no normal maze, after all forests don't normally appear in the middle of evil mazes in underground secret bases. This must have been crafted with nebulous 'dark magic'. I wandered through the forest and found a clearing. In the centre of the clearing crouched Primal Fear. So it was time for the face off!

"Welcome" Primal Fear began "To the darkest depths of your own subconscious" So this was my subconscious. Wow my mind was neglected. "This is where I control. Perhaps in this battle you may defeat me but I will not be destroyed. I may defeat you and absorb your strength. In that case you will be dead and I will become all powerful. Either way you cannot win"

"What would happen if I died of, say, natural causes?" A small plan was forming in the back of my mind. Hey hang on? If I was in my mind didn't that mean an idea was forming all around me? [Ideaception]

"Natural causes" He laughed "If you were able to die of natural causes then you are incredibly unlucky" Then he paused "If you died not by my hands then I would be unable to absorb your strength and would thus be banished from this place"

That was all I needed, to die not by Fear's hands. I pulled out my gun, which Fear clearly took the wrong way. He ran at me like a giant dog. I, meanwhile, put the barrel of the gun between my teeth and pulled the trigger. I hated the decision the instant I made it but I knew that it was the only option.

Time slowed to a crawl so I am able to describe to you exactly what dying felt like. The immediate effect was the gun breaking my teeth. The recoil on the gun drove it upwards causing it to strike my teeth with similar force to that of a hammer. I was aware of the ripples that the sound sent through my cheeks. I was aware of the bullet spinning its way through my mouth. By the time that it struck my flesh Primal Fear had made it about four feet. That was when the agonizing pain started. The bullet felt like a tornado burrowing its way into my face. It was sucking moisture along its path. I could feel the blood, flesh, and saliva and brain matter being sucked through my skull. The bullet took less than a second to travel the complete way through my face, and by that time I was already practically dead. It left with the same force with which it had entered, surrounded by a mushroom cloud of bone and gore. I was dimly aware of Primal Fear exploding into dust. Then I began to fall backwards. My body arched down gracefully before crashing into the grass and began to spasm uncontrollably. As I lay there with a gaping chasm in my face I was dimly aware of a strange kind of emptiness entering my body. Moving upwards from my toes to my ankles. Then from my ankles to my knees, then up into my thighs. As it reached my chest I began to realise that I was no longer breathing, my stomach was empty and my heart had stopped beating. When the lack of feeling reached face my senses stopped working one by one. First I could no longer feel the pain, then the taste of the blood just vanished. After that I could no longer hear the wind, then the smell of the gunpowder disappeared. Finally the world blinked out of existence. One by one my thoughts began to vanish each one draining out of my skull with the blood. The last thought of the group was a name and that name was Ebony. At the moment that I died she was my entire universe...

I jerked upwards, coughing. Flecks of blood and spittle sprayed out of my mouth. There was a dim memory of an incredible pain and a bullet. I reached up and placed a finger on the back of my skull. It was completely fine, strange. I reached forward and dabbed the nosebleed that I had developed. I stood up. I was still in Fears office, lying on the other side of the room. My shirt was torn open, and the three half metre gashes in my chest were already healing. Where Fear had been last time I was here there now sat a small, unassuming, pile of golden bronze dust.

I glanced across to the girls, who were obscured from me by the desk. Jordan's cage had been slashed open with Gunmere, which Ebony had fixed to her back. The Smith sisters were sat on the desks, watching Alice, arms around each-other's shoulders. Alice meanwhile was speaking to someone on an Iris message, her body superimposed between me and that person.

"Hey" I called. Jordan and Ebony turned around a gasped. Alice stepped to the side and I could see who she was talking to. Why hadn't it occurred to me?

"James" Said the goddess of the spring. "You look so much older than you did when I last saw you"

"It's Jem" I'd had enough of Gods and Monsters in my life. I was sick to literal death (Something which I had just physically experienced) of them. "And do you mean that day you burned my house to the ground?" As if to illustrate how much I hated her I spat. A glob of phlegm, which had been lodged at the back of my throat since Vegas, splattered over the floor near my foot. The thing had the radius of a drachma, and was dyed red with blood.

"Don't be flippant with me mortal" Her eyes began to glow gold, then she calmed down and turned to Alice. "I shall see you soon darling" Then the Iris message faded. Alice turned to me.

"Do you always have to be so rude?" She yelled at me.

I balled my hands into fists, but my posture was sloppy. I didn't really want to fight anyone, I just needed to defend myself.

"Well maybe..."

"You two are worse than me and Zeus" Said a voice from the doorway. I jumped, then turned to see Poseidon standing there. "Bickering all the time" He sighed and put a hand to his forehead. "Well it looks like you've completed your quest and it is time for you to go home" He raised his hand as if to snap his fingers but I had one thing to ask first.

"Lord Poseidon?" I said, getting his attention. "Is Primal Fear dead?"

"I don't know" He explained "While we can detect no trace of him, he does not appear to be in Tartarus. Perhaps he has fled back to whatever retched abyss he crawled out of in the first place. Perhaps we shall never know"

With this he clicked his fingers, and the four of us were whisked away into Oblivion...