The Wretched Rite - Round Three - DSRS Darwin

Originally posted on MSPA by Ixcalibur.

---

The shuttle was in direct contrast to the heavy handed theme of Inferno Alpha. It was functional, not aesthetic, essentially a small metal box designed to transport anyone who was accidentally miscategorised between the afterlife worlds. Inside the shuttle there were three or four rows of uncomfortable seats bisected by an aisle down the centre of the shuttle. There were no windows in the thick metal walls and if you weren’t already aware you were in space it would be difficult to tell from the interior of the shuttle, which as the focus of the room was a massive widescreen monitor mounted upon the wall resembled more a small badly lit movie theatre than any mode of planetary transport. As Vera slowly awoke the first thing she was aware of, besides the uncomfortable seats, was a voice.

“We at the Church of Certro-Christechnianism apologise most profusely for your accidental miscategorisation. As compensation for the inconvenience and any trauma you might have suffered during your brief stay on Inferno Alpha we are prepared to provide you with a complimentary upgrade to the next highest sphere of heaven after you have been processed…” The message was delivered in a calm measured tone by a friendly youthful voice; it was very clearly intended to be as inoffensive and reassuring as possible. Vera was not reassured, she was pissed off. In fact furious might have been a more appropriate word. That she had been pulled from her fateful confrontation and dumped into some drab metal box…

She tried to get to her feet, but found her progress hampered by some kind of restraining harness; a black strap that would stretch so far and no further. Irritably she snatched up her razorwhip up from where it lay coiled on the seat next to her and began hacking away at the harness. In the background the reassuring message described the various things that one could look forward to in Paradiso; an omnipresent feeling of eternal enveloping happiness, the opportunity to reunite with lost loved ones and karaoke ever Thursday night in the Alfheim bar. It did not take long for the message to loop back to the beginning, where the voice introduced himself as Grand High Pope Honorope (carefully pronounced Honor-o-pay) the First.

After a minute or so frustratedly sawing through the harness with the blade of her razorwhip Vera was free. She stomped her way to the front of the shuttle, to the only visible exit, a pair of heavy metal doors that had sealed air-tight, and attempted to force them open. When this proved not to work she resorted to pounding upon the doors, to screaming at anyone who might have been on the other side to let her the fuck out. Of course she did not receive any response, and eventually breathlessly she was forced to admit temporary defeat. Physically exhausted she slid down the wall, coming to rest upon the cold metal floor of the shuttle. It had become clear that for the moment, fate wanted her to remain in here, and begrudgingly she accepted it.

It was unlike her to get so worked up at something that she had clearly no ability to change, Vera had always done her best to accept whatever situation her fate had delivered her into. It was, she reasoned, the tantalizing taste of a fate almost fulfilled that was causing her to get so frustrated. That she was not realizing her fate at this moment was irksome, but that she would eventually put an end to that fate-denier was an inevitability; it could wait for now. After an uncomfortable couple of minutes half-sat upon the metal floor Vera opted to take a seat instead.

She scrutinised the screen with its still repeating message from the Grand High Pope Honorope the First. The youthful pope was dressed in a white and gold suit and tie. He had blonde hair which it appeared had been painstakingly gelled into the ‘just got out of bed look’, azure blue eyes and killer cheekbones. Though Vera sometimes had difficulty distinguishing between humans, even she was able to recognise that Honorope would have been considered to be attractive; not the traditional quality one would look for in a religious leader. Even more incongrously he was seated upon the edge of a hot tub with scantily clad human females frolicking in the water behind him. Whatever, she thought, this human and his less than reputable religion were of no relevance to her. She tuned out the message and happily thought about the confrontation that was still to come.

It was only now, an entire round of the battle having already passed, that the truth began to dawn on her. A tsote’s fate-sense was always accurate, but seldom comprehensive enough to get more than a rough sense of the life someone was going to live. Vera had known that one day she was to fight someone and defeat them. When she had been taken to be part of this battle she had been happy to assume that this grand and elaborate battle was her fate finally manifesting itself, but then she had seen the Tsote in the library at the end of the previous round. She was her fated enemy, Vera was sure of it this time. At the time she had been so eager to fulfil that fate she hadn’t considered what light that threw upon the battle itself, but now that she had a moment of quiet contemplation she saw it for what it was; an unknown quantity. Nobody she had met had ever been able to read her fate past the confrontation she would win; a fact that gave her pause now. Up until now she had never really considered how up in the air her fate was once she had finally killed her fated opponent. The idea of not having a clearly mapped out future to follow unnerved her more than she would have thought possible.

A sudden change in the recording of the Grand High Pope cut her contemplation short.

“You are now arriving at Paradiso Alpha. To avoid any unnecessary physical reconstructions please fasten your seatbelts during atmospheric entry.”

--------

The transport pod into which Alice had been bundled made the interplanetary shuttle look positively luxurious. It was a roughly ovular capsule large enough to contain a person, should that person be curled up into a ball. The inside was well padded but more to save on unnecessary physical reconstructions than to provide any level of comfort. There was a separate hollow for personal belongings, in which Vera’s pistol was rattling around. It might not be the most dignified way of moving people from one level to another, but it doesn’t require them to be guarded and, well it’s hell; it’s not like they deserve any better, right? The pod plummeted down an enormous transparent tube that snaked through multiple layers of Hell, occasionally banging against the side and slamming Alice around inside the confined space. It was a nightmarish situation to wake up in.

In the fifth circle, high above the stygian waters, there was a slight curve in the transportation tubing, a spot which meant that the transportation pods had always slammed into it especially hard. Tiny cracks had slowly spread across the glass, and as Alice’s pod slammed into this segment it finally gave in, shattering under the transportation pod’s weight. The pod erupted from the broken tube in a cascade of glass and plunged into the murky waters below with an enormous splash. Alice could do little more than bang ineffectually upon the sides of the pod and anxiously mutter profanities as the black waters started to seep into the already claustrophobic confines of the pod.

The dark waterline crept higher and Alice scrambled to try and rearrange herself in the limited space, so that her head was not in the lowest part of the pod with limited success. After a minute the pod clicked open and turgid water poured in. As Alice sputtered and thrashed in the blackness a hand reached in and grabbed hers. For just a moment the struggle to stay alive was sidelined by surprise; that after all that she had said and done back in that town Addy had saved her. Then there was a tug on her hand and she snapped back to reality. She swam after Adelaide and within a minute they burst through the once again placid surface of the tenebrous water, leaving the pod and Vera’s gun behind them. Alice coughed and sputtered and eventually managed to get her breath, when she did: “Oh.” she said disappointedly.

“Hi, I’m Rain.” Alice scowled at this girl who was not the girl she had been hoping to see and felt a little silly for letting her imagination run away with her. She had short black hair, large black bags around her eyes and the wrinkled skin of someone who had spent rather a long time underwater. But despite all this she seemed relatively upbeat; the smile upon her face was warm and genuine and there was no pain in her eyes.

“Rain is a fuckin’ stupid name.” Alice spat. “Where the fuck am I supposed to be now?”

“This is the fifth circle.” Rain replied a little hesitantly. “Specifically the river Styx, where the wrathful fight each other on the surface, and the sullen lie gurgling beneath the water, ‘withdrawn into a black sulkiness which can find no joy in God or man or the universe.’” It sounded like she was reciting it out of a book. Alice took a moment to glance around, the river stretched off in every direction, here and there it was possible to see people thrashing in the water, tearing at one another in a feral rage, and blood seeping into the Cimmerian river. She looked back to chirpy cheerful Rain and scowled deeper.

“You don’t seem particularly miserable.” Alice observed.

“Well…” Rain looked thoughtful. “Who could be miserable here? This is what I always wanted.” Alice’s eyebrows shot up.

“You wanted to drown in a dismal black river?” she asked.

“Well, you don’t drown exactly.” Rain replied. “They have this special process to infuse the water with oxygen, so it just feels like you are perpetually drowning.” There was a long moment of silence between the two, which Alice broke.

“Yeah, well, you make that sound really fuckin’ appealing and all but I think I’m going to go and do something else instead.”

“Oh!” Rain began, “I saw the designation on your pod, you were heading down to the seventh circle right? The best way to get down there is to follow the river that way,” she pointed, “all the way to Dis. There’s a bank of elevators in there that’ll take you right down.”

Alice rolled her eyes and without another word to the girl she swam off in that general direction, not because she was keen to get down to the seventh circle of hell but simply because she would have sort of liked some dry land to stand on. She was here, Alice ruminated, that well-fated bitch. She’d actually been stood face to face with the woman who would kill her if fate had its way. Of course she’d suspected that something as outlandish as this could only be the work of fate, but still, to come face to face with her ‘fated enemy’… For a moment there she’d really thought she was going to die, then again for a moment there she had also thought she was going to win. It was pretty much the worst fuckin’ moment of her life so far, and her life had had some pretty shitty moments. Being thrown in a box and dumped into this caliginous river immediately afterwards had not helped improve her mood any. There was shouting coming from behind her.

“Vera!” Adelaide yelled. It had taken some serious effort to dredge up her name from back when they were introduced to one another; Adelaide didn’t think it suited her.

Alice recognised the rusalka’s voice and turned around, just as Adelaide emerged from the water behind her. For a moment there was an awkward silence between the two, their last meeting had not been all that pleasant for either party and they were each waiting for the other to say something first, to test the water so to speak.

“What do you want now?” Alice asked. “And who the fuck is Vera?”

Adelaide thought for a moment; even if she hadn’t really thought about it all that much at the time, it quickly became apparent that the tsote she had been introduced to by the old man was not the same as the one who bobbed angrily in front of her now. “There’s two of yeh ain’t there?”

“Oh.” Alice replied. “Vera is it? What a fucking ridiculous name.” she paused. “Looking for that bitch then? Fine. I won’t keep you.”

Adelaide dithered for a moment, unsure of exactly how to respond. “Naw, y’ fucker I was lookin’ for you.” She admitted.

“Well…” Alice began. As much as she wanted to stay mad at the rusalka, she didn’t have it in her right now, not when she was lucky to have her life after facing off with… Vera. She sighed wearily. “The name’s Alice.” She said, the vitriol gone from her voice, for the moment at least.

“m’Adelaide.” Addy responded. There was another moment of awkward silence.

“How about you tell me what the fuck is going on?” Alice said. “And this time without the assumption that I already know.”

--------

Vera had quickly figured out what was going on as soon as the recording had started using terms she associated with space travel. Probably the only reason she hadn’t worked it out sooner was because she’d been more focused on her own issues and tsote spaceships were a lot more aesthetically pleasing than this flying box. She’d even managed to work out the ‘seat belts’ which had made her feel a bit silly about cutting herself out of the other one. The descent was incredibly turbulent but not unbearable. Grand High Pope Honorope the First’s final words to her as the shuttle doors opened were: “Have a delightful afterlife.”

The doors opened up on a mostly white landscape. She had no doubt that it had taken a lot of time and energy to terraform an entire planet to resemble clouds. Underfoot they felt slightly spongy but they were sturdy enough to support her weight. Standing in front of the shuttle there was a host of angelic robots. They had glowing blue eyes, pure white chassis and wings covered in what upon closer inspection would prove to be white felt. Some of them clutched golden harps with mechanical hands that could not hope to play such a delicate instrument. The manufacturers of these machines had clearly tried to portray the angelic heirachy from tiny cherubim to imposing six-winged seraphim that stood over ten feet tall. Of course such classifications meant nothing to Vera who would have described them as 'little angels' and 'big angels'.

She felt very self-conscious under the glowing glare of hundreds of robotic eyes and thought back to the scraps of information she knew about human religions (most of which besides gossip or hearsay, was what she'd heard from Pope Honorope on the ride over).

“What’s going on?” she asked warily. “Don’t you have people to be looking after?”

“No.” An angel standing at the head of the group (a seraphim) said.

“No,” Vera replied. “I know this one; this is heaven, right? This is where good people go when they die.”

“Correct.” The angel said.

“Then where is everyone?” Vera asked. Her realisation about the nature of the battle had left her shook up, and combined with the gaze of these machines she felt more nervous than she ever had before. It was distressing.

“You are the first.” The angel said bluntly.