Antah

[Hell, the Eleventh Circle of Pride, Antah]

The pride was a desolate place. No living being lived in it. It was a place where nothing had ever gone. The dead were there, but they were dead by choice, to rejoin with the rest of the pride. Some called them, "Heaven."

The pride wasn't a very interesting place. Not at first, anyway.

By all means was it a desolate place, and there weren't many living things around. Because no matter where you looked for yourself, you'd never find the pride. The place was a sheer circle, an enormous round mouth of rock, with no entrance for human eyes. There was nothing for anyone or anything to be seen around it. The only natural thing in the circle of a pride was the sand.

The sandy desert around the pride was nothing but a mass of red and black. So much so that it seemed as if the red was the color and the black was the material. A mass of minerals mixed together in a way that made it look like blood. Even the air, that was almost black itself, seemed to be blackened from the red.

Red was the color of the lord, and red was the color of royalty. The lord of the pride, of course, was Hell.

Hell was about as large as a city. Most cities are like hell, too. But the pride was a city with a giant mouth for a gate. And inside it was nothing but a desolated nothingness. 

It was a silence that was as pure as death. No breeze. No birds. Nothing that a pride would ever have.

But for some, that didn't matter.

For them, the voice of Hell was amplified, as if to be at the loudest. It was a cacophony. An octave. A reprise. A plague on anyone who had ears to hear it.

The octave came from the screams of souls who died, the ones who were within the pride. Those screams spoke of something else beyond suffering, something beyond anything human eyes could possibly understand. The screams spoke of pain. The pain of the pride.

What is the pride? What was it before it died? Where did it go? Who's there now? What's it like? What's found within the city of the pride? 

The questions were endless, but no one could ever find the answers. No one could ever find answers, not because there weren't any. The answer was just as simple as everything else. The pride had fallen. The curtain was drawn back. But before a curtain can be drawn back, it needs to be held open. And before that curtain is held open, there has to be someone opening it.

When the silence ended, with the screams of souls in the name of Hell sounding throughout the desert, the curtain that had been held back fell once again.

There were only two places left in the city of the pride. The first was the throne room. Where the lord resides. And then, there was the room of silence.

The silent room, lit by the glow of a giant fire, was directly behind the throne room. A sword hung above the fire, its point aimed at the floor.

The sword's symbol was that of a black cross. A circle and a cross. A sign for the blood sacrifice of the dead.

The silence that was deep within the room was different than the silence that was outside of the room. Inside of the room was a sound, not a low voice, nor a high one, but a deep, deep sound. It was the sound of silence.

Most of the souls within the pride had died by suicide.

It didn't matter if they had been forced to kill themselves. They just wanted to die, and if they could get killed, they did.

There was a sword with a black handle that stood behind the throne. The sword was made of a substance that had been forged from the souls that were sacrificed to the blood sacrifice. But, unlike a normal sword, it was indestructible.

The sword's hilt was black, as were the eyes that were welded to its metal blade. The blades themselves were dull, but they were sharp. They had been sharpened to be as sharp as a sword, but they could never be sharp enough.

Behind the throne was a man. He was completely black from the neck down. His face was completely without expression. His skin was tanned. His clothes were all black. There was a noose that hung around his neck.

It was a noose made from the blood of the dead. He hung there, hanging from the noose. He was the lord. He was the blood sacrifice.

At the sight of the man, the souls in the room froze in place. They had all come to see the lord. They had all been coming since the curtain was first pulled back, and there had been none of them that had ever been able to see the lord before. What awaited those who saw the lord; was but a gruesome display of death and suffering, that was eerily recognizable from within the pride.

Outside the pride; the desert. That was where I was. My skin was so pale that it was almost translucent, that the sunrays would burn me if they hit me. I could see the shadows of the animals that walked the desert, but they too would hurt me. I could smell the brine and the sulfur. And that was where the smell came from; from those souls in the room of silence. They wanted to leave, but it was simply too late. All I saw around me was a clutter of darkness and sand, yet, the dark sunrays pierced through to me. 

Was it because I was a dead soul, and didn't know what was about to happen to me. Was I supposed to be afraid of the shadows? I wasn't afraid, I just wanted to close my eyes.

The second I closed my eyes, I felt the blades of a thousand knives piercing into my skin. I couldn't feel the pain at first. All I could feel was the silent, dark, darkness that surrounded me.

It was eerie, and yet it was completely familiar, as if the pride had created it. I began to hear faint whispers, and I could hear a lot of them. The pride has opened once again. 

Oh... was it time? I feel it now. The urge to enter the pride. It is time.

Was I dead? I opened my eyes to see myself infront of the mouth gate; the entrance to the pride.

I was dead.

I could still feel the knives, but I bore no scars. I was still in my human form, but I had no wounds. 

There was no blood on me. There was no blood on me, yet, I was sure that there was blood on me.

There was blood everywhere.

The air was filled with the smell of blood. Maybe it wasn't so bad after all. 

I soon would enter the pride, finding myself at the gate.

I held my breath, and pressed my eyes shut, refusing to look. It was time for me to enter, but I could not do it. 

It seemed to take forever for the gate to open. What seemed like an eternity, I waited, and waited for the gate to open. When it finally did, I could hear the dead souls cry out in agony.

"My lord..."

There was a black silhouette of a man in front of the gate. It was the blood sacrifice, and as I saw it, that pristine figure, the noose hanging from his neck was stained crimson red, dripping steadily onto the floor. He was nothing but blood. The blood sacrifice- No, The Lord had just been killed.

All I could do was watch, in silence. The Lord did not fight.

It was less of a fight, than a mercy. He had hung there for what seemed like hours, without moving, seemingly, the body of the Lord had become a shriveled, misshapen, corpse; soon, his scream, that never subsided, filled the desert, and into my ears. It was his final moment, the sound of his death, more than a scream.

Soon, his scream would die too. 

The door began to open, and I could hear the dead souls struggle, and cry out in protest. In the distance, I could hear an old man scream "Mother, mother..."

I was in the pride. There were dead souls boiling within the walls, every bone of their flesh a needle to my very soul, and I knew it was only a matter of time before they found their way into me.

I wanted to close my eyes to avoid such sights, such visions. But something prevented me from closing my eyes, and something drew me to that moment. That moment of the sacrifice.

I entered a gate that was made of eyes and knives.

On the gate, I could see an eye that looked like my own, grown like a tumor, as if everyone who would enter the pride was being stared down by their own eyes.

I felt my flesh begin to crawl.

I was feeling it now, the anger of the Lord. He was long gone by now. For what it had felt like, mere moments. But for what it had been, it had been years.

I felt him in my soul, dead and alive, every trick up his sleeve.

The serpentine knife, the knifework, was something I would never forget. There was a seraph with only one eye, but his other eye was inside of him, staring from his pupil.

There were innocent women being paraded on crosses, a lie on their lips, screaming out that they were forced to do this. But they were smiling with a genuineness I could not comprehend, smiling as if it were the greatest blessing, as if they enjoyed being slaves.

The knife was always there, but now it was no longer crossing the shadow of my body.

And there were the Gods. I was reaching out to them, wanting to embrace them. I found their shins and legs. And their faces. They were smiling, content with their accomplishments. I stopped reaching out, realizing I was no longer infront of the gate, but at a crossroad of the Pride. Perhaps, was it the Lords soul that did this?

The serpentine knife fell from my grip.

I would not go to those gods. I hated those gods, I wanted everything to return to its normal state. Even if I was no longer alive, but I was already dead. my wishes would not fruition no matter what I did, so what was there left for me here?

The gate began to close.

I closed my eyes, waiting the knife to fall from my shadow. It fell with a clang that shook the stones in the temple.

I slowly opened my eyes, yes, the temple, that's where I am now. This is where the Lord was conceived, in front of me, was the man himself, the Lord. The destroyer of worlds. The one who had awakened me from the pit of madness. The one who wanted me to become him. I looked at my hands as they began shaking, slowly, from tip to tip, the red began spreading on my skin, my fingernails. Soon, it'd reach the core of my body. I clenched my fists. I clenched my teeth. I started struggling against my ropes, and by the Gods, they had no effect on me. I could hear their screams, and my eyes, seeing what was in front of me, they did not return to my face. I could see my own soul, and I can see my Lord's soul, locked in a cage, in a form that is unknown to me. There are millions of souls all around me. They hated me. I was the deadliest soul among them all.

I opened my eyes once again, my arms and legs were tied to a cross, placed upside down, as they had originally put me. But for some reason, there'd been a noose over my neck, and I was hanging in the air.

I continued to see the souls, as they watched, waiting for a death so terrible that it would bring them joy. The man who murdered me stood before them, he screamed at them, parading about in front of them, and then paused, before walking up to me. "Tell me!" He said in my voice, those screams I remembered. And he laughed. "Tell me about our existence! Our punishment!" I stopped laughing as he pulled the noose tighter, the red spreading rapidly all over my body, getting darker. I understood now. This is why the Lord didn't want me to exist, he would prefer I simply vanish. Or, perhaps it was my turn to choose, yes. It was. 

I pulled myself off of my cross, and as I did, I saw the smile of the Lord, I could still hear his screams in my head. They resounded with sadness and fear, that haunted me even after I'd had no eyes to see what I'd undone, no ears to hear the silence, and no mouth to speak the curses I cursed the Creator and Creator's souls. The flame appeared once more, but before it was the lord, smiling once more, before laughing once more.

I bent down as my shadows slowly began dissipating, I picked up the serpentine knife, and cut my throat.