The 9th Fortress

'What is it?' I said, perusing its ancient paper and foreign text.

'It is your passage,' he returned, 'and my payment. It allows you entry to the furthest reaches.'

'Including the 9th Fortress?' I asked, interested.

'Including that most notorious destination,” he confirmed, with another sprinkling of maggots. 'There is exclusivity beyond the bridge. The Great Alexander and Vlad the Impaler are just two found suffering there, where Lucifer himself dwells in his castle, and signature is required before passage maybe granted.'

'Latin,” muttered Harmony, her blue eyes examining the parchment. 'I…need time.'

'Crap!' I scoffed at the corpse. 'You expect us to sign something we can't read? Bullshit!'

'Hell has rules!' he said, sounding strained. 'Identity is necessary. Records must be kept!'

'Lies!' exclaimed Kat, caressing his sword hilt. 'Why haven't I heard of you?'

'And what keeper wears a crown?' I added, noticing an unmistakeable malevolence on that abhorrent face; the real fire behind the layers of barbecued bone.

With Kat like impatience, the keeper shunted his quill firmly to my chest and urged me to sign his parchment. 'Refusal will see consequences,” he said, thinly. 'Terrible consequences. You will all join the drowning in the sea of nevermore, where your skin will be supper for sharks! Reject me, and the slow dissection of your bodies will begin this very minute!'

I took his quill with a fearful haste, but still reading and with a furrowed brow; Harmony prevented my hand from signing. 'We cannot sign that parchment Daniel!' she said, scared. 'This is no register, but a contract binding our light to this charlatan!

She read — 'That you wholeheartedly agree to terms stated above — that you're will, your spirit and your soul be taken into his custody, and never be granted liberty!

Exposed, the fraudulent form remained calm, even as Eddinray tore and threw his parchment pieces off the narrow bridge. 'I'm not signing a damned thing!' he announced. 'What do you say to that, stinky creature?'

As the golden fragments flickered down the chasm, Eddinray received an answer. His transformation was immediate — his body shrinking to become a frog the size of my hand. Amazed, all of us gawked over this spotty amphibian as it croaked and hopped, and a distressed Harmony dropped to cradle it. 'What have you done?' she moaned. 'Bring him back! Bring him back!'

'Treacherous dog!' growled Kat, removing his sword without grace and aiming the tip at the corpse's neck. 'Who are you?'

'Mephistopheles!' Harmony sobbed. 'It says as much in the parchment! He is the Devil! The darkest light!'

Those words sent images of the formless ice witch into my head, her chilling voice repeating a prediction. 'The wizard has come across Mephistopheles. On this journey you will too!'

If this cadaver were evil incarnate then Eternal's other prediction would likely come true: 'One of your friends will not reach the Waiting Plain alive! One will perish in Hell!'

Superstition overruling instinct, Kat lowered his katana from the corpse, the maggots forming a pile underneath its scraped shins whilst caterpillars slugged through the ribcage.

'I did not expect you to sign,' the corpse said, resignedly. 'I have gained numerous souls using that elementary deception, you would not believe how many! But such tricks would not wash with the wily Fox and his headstrong companions.'

'Save your flattery,' I said; 'and bring our friend back!'

Harmony held frog Eddinray as he attempted to leap from her cupped hands. 'Restore him to me!' she begged. 'Restore him, please!'

'I will do as you ask angel,” he replied, leering at her with watery eyeballs. 'On one condition — one little prerequisite…'

'You'll get no payment from us!' I protested, pulling my sword and slashing at the free air between us. 'Nothing at all!'

Unperturbed, the corpse stepped from his maggoty pile, slid his leg under Harmony's face then revealed his simple condition. 'A kiss, angel exile from Heaven. You will bow to your knees, and you will kiss my foot.'

An outraged Kat cursed him, but still had the good sense to keep his distance.

'You can't make her do that!' I yelled. 'It's against everything she believes in!'

'That is the cost!' he returned, sharply. 'And your only way across this bridge. Now kiss…'

Harmony let go of her frog to smear the tears from her cheeks.

'You don't have to do this,” I said to her. 'I don't want you to!'

'I have to,” she said, examining the croaking Eddinray. Already, it was clear she would do anything for him; thus swallowing back centuries of pride, she crouched to her knees and bent to the decayed foot of Mephistopheles. However, as she pursed her lips an inch from the kiss, Kat sprang toward the crumbling, Mephistopheles and was supernaturally reduced to a ginger cat, caught in the corpse's own grip.

'No!' shrieked Harmony, falling back.

Mephistopheles held the cat outstretched as it scratched, pawed, and wailed.

'Fool.' the corpse said, rattling this animal by the scruff. 'The brave have very few brains in their heads.'

Glaring now at the bouncing frog, he kicked the amphibian over the bridge's edge. 'You bastard!' I roared. 'You fucking bastard!'

He laughed hard, resulting in several teeth dropping from his mouth. He next threw the ginger cat after the frog and into the chasm, and it meowed all the way out of earshot.

'Careful!' he barked at me. 'You have already lost two companions — and look there goes another!'

All of a sudden, in a blink of time, another enchantment transformed Harmony into a minuscule white butterfly with a clasp around the wings. Snickering like a child, the wearer of the crown bent, picked up this beautiful insect, then flicked it over his shoulder to join Kat and Eddinray in the pit. 'Harmony!' I cried, watching her disappear.

Friends gone, I was alone. Absolutely alone. 'What do you want from me? What do you want? '

'An explanation,” he curtly demanded, the bridge now disintegrating with the entire location around me, a vortex of ash stirring in the background. 'Why has the scientist sent you?' he demanded. 'Answer immediately!'

'The 9th Fortress!' I cried.

'Do not dare patronize me!' he screamed, clutching my cheeks and lifting me off my feet. 'What is your true mission? Tell me your objective or I carve my names over your chest!'

I could only think of one idea in this vacuum of swirling doom, one single thing left to do. I slid my dagger free from its pouch, and as I drew the weapon, the corpse instantly released me and staggered back. It was my dagger — he was petrified by it. 'You…you keep that away from me! ' he baulked, gasping as if out breath.

'You keep it away!'

His fear genuine, a stupid confidence consumed me. 'The power of God!' I roared. 'In my fucking hand!'

'Keep it away!' he screeched, covering his face with stick arms. 'Be gone from here! Be Gone!'

Was this my true mission? To destroy the blackest soul? I lunged for that prized kill with all my energy and hate, then suddenly found myself falling…and falling.

***

I thrashed in the darkness as a ferocious wind pulled me one way then another. Sound came to my ears before Terra firma, a rousing clash below, as if the two largest creatures in the jungle were fighting for supremacy. Light followed — whites dashing here and there, topped with spurts of random foam. It was water, it was ocean, and I hit it hard. Spluttering to the surface, the ocean was bold black, and a thunderous sky struck that sea with white bolts

'Help!' I yelled, gulping salt water. 'Anyone!'

'Fox?' a faint voice returned. 'Are you there?'

'Here!' I bellowed back. 'Is that you Kat? I'm over here!'

I searched the rising and falling ocean for any sign, and saw the black angels first. This was the most I had