The Ashes beneath the Green - July 15, 2010

    I traveled this road once before, but it was not so kind in appearance then as it now is.  When I last walked this road, it was in the dead of night and upon my back I carried the ashes of my father.  My father, killed by the murderous monsters who once haunted this land, borne on my back in a bland and lifeless vase, deserved a far greater fate than to be ferried across the world like some package of a merchant’s goods.  My father was a great warrior, a great leader, and if it were not for him you would not be looking out upon the green fields you see before you. This land has been renewed since those dark days when the infernal armies of Hell crawled screaming and moaning and gnawing and burning and driving mad everything before them.  I never knew the land before it turned to ash.  I was born into a reality of horror, where at any moment my window could fill before my innocent eyes with the bloodstained, shrieking maw of some spawn of Hades, where any day my home could burst into blood-red flame and my family be shred apart before my very eyes. 
    My father died to send them back.  He died for every blade of grass, for every drop of rain, for every cloud that passes through and every rainbow that arcs across this land. He fought, though the horror was too much for any man to handle, and even when the monstrosities that stood before him were just barely conceivable to the human mind, he drove himself and his men forward to fight.  He drove me forward to fight. 
    The priests burned him alive.  They had to, there was no other way.  My father was willing, but that didn’t make the torture any less.  He tattooed his body with strange letters before they burned him--spells of the most ancient powers this world knew and prayers he crafted himself.  They prayed, he burned, I watched.  The smoke and the screams drew the demons to us.  We fought until there was naught but ashes left of my father.  I was the one who took them up, and I carried them out of the city as it fell.  I heard the screams of the priests and the citizens as I ran.  I followed the road that led out of town as far as it would take me, but ultimately, I knew I would have to leave it.  My father had to carry out one final mission, and I had to take him to complete it.  My father had to dive, soul-first, into the depths of Hell. 
    I had no idea where to go until the road led me up to the edge of a cliff, or, perhaps, the top of a hill.  I looked out upon the land and saw the hills and valleys--the same you look at now--lit by raging wildfires.  On the horizon was a great bloom of firelight and from it rose a black pillar of sickening smoke, only visible by the shape it cut in the massive light of the fires.  It was there I set my course.  It took me days to arrive, and in my stumbling journey I came across worse horrors than any I had before seen.  I found a man with empty eye sockets and a lacerated scalp who had lost all semblance of language or sanity.  He just stood in one spot babbling and gaping up at the sky like some blind dying fish, the remnants of his hair sticking out in bloody tufts from his leathery skin.  The next day after seeing the madman, I was attacked by a pack of men who had been completely skinned.  They shrieked as they chased me, blood leaking from their bodies and staining the ground in a trail behind them.  I only escaped because I fell into a hole that had been covered with ash and disappeared within.  I nearly suffocated in that hole, but it would have been better than dying at the hands of the skinned monsters that awaited me outside.  I waited for hours before I stopped hearing the screaming and assumed they had wandered away.  They had left my hideout, but they have never left my mind.  Even now I hear their screams at night and see their bloody faces in even the least terrible of my dreams. 
    As I grew closer and closer to the great fire, it became harder and harder to breathe and more difficult to avoid the sight of demons.  I prayed every moment of my walk that I would not be seen.  I could see from where I stood the lip of a great pit which coughed forth the terrible smoke and the hellish light I had seen from the cliff, and it was there that the demons finally discovered me.  I thought I was well enough hidden in a bank of ash, but a beast on the horizon spotted me--a great mass of viscid, gelatinous flesh flowing around twelve massive legs of bone.  The beast’s mouth was like unto that of a stomach worm, but far more full of teeth, and various bones and appendages emerged from its body sporadically, rising and sinking within the flowing flesh. 
    I was instantly frozen with fear.  I wanted to move, but my body would not respond, wanted to scream, but no sound would emerge from my mouth.  I turned my eyes away from the beast and for a brief moment felt some small strength in my limbs.  I seized that one moment and ran towards the pit.  I never stopped, never looked back, even though I could hear the roar and the heavy breathing of the beast behind me, though I could feel his footsteps shake the Earth.  My feet screamed in pain, and my heart in agony. 
    As I came to the edge of the great scar of the land, I finally turned.  The beast was rumbling and growling but a few yards behind me!  I stared the demon in the mouth.  My mind disappeared in fear.  Every nightmare I’d ever witnessed or dreamed filled my mind and my heart went numb with beating.  As it grew closer, as it was about to devour me, as my mind began to contemplate what it might feel to be swallowed, crushed, torn apart, I felt a force push me to the ground.  I sank into the foot-deep ash and felt the beast trample upon me.  I felt my arm break and two of my ribs snap.  Ash forced its way into my eyes.  But the beast could not stop.  It barreled over the edge of the pit, roaring and screaming. Falling, falling.  I immediately stood and in a fit of rage and pain, tore the vase from my back and hurled it after the plunging demon.  Bleeding, I watched the vase spin down beyond my vision.  In the corners of my eyes I could see demons crawling the edges of the pit, flying from the depths, many of them coming at me, but my eyes never left the spot where I saw the vase disappear.  I felt the Earth shake beneath my feet and witnessed a rising white light shine from the depths of the hole.  An unholy voice boomed forth from the pit, the final words of a lost war.

    "A human cannot cast out the strength of Lucifer.  I will not be denied my dominion!"

    I felt a fire burn through me, pressing me to speak.  When I opened my mouth, my voice exploded from my chest.

    "You are Lucifer no longer.  You are Satan, devil, you are the exile.  You have had your time on this Earth, and you will torment it no longer.  Go! Leave my children in peace."

    I fell to the ground, barely holding on to consciousness, but I never felt my body hit the ash.  Everything fell into darkness.  All I can remember is an eldritch scream, thousands of screams in unison, and the rumbling of the Earth. 
    When I woke I could tell the demons were gone.  No longer was there a constant clawing terror on my consciousness.  No longer did my nightmares follow me into my waking days.  I lay in a field of ash, littered with the carcasses of those demons too slow, devoid completely of any life save my own.  The pit was empty; no more fire, just a gaping empty hole.  The horror was dead.  Dead, but never gone. 
    Remember that, as you look upon the fields of beauty that now constitute our land.  Remember that the scars of our mistakes, our horrors, and our triumphs are the pillars that hold up that which you treasure most.  Remember that if you dig just a few feet below that wonderful green, you will find ash and skeletons and the bodies of monsters.  Put your ear to the ground and listen closely in this land.  You will hear the echoes of the devil’s scream.  Remember that someday you, too, my son, may be called to face the same as my father and I once did.  Will you fight as we did? I hope for your soul and mine that you will.
 

-Martin Christopher Sovis