Ariane met up with Kimo and Jumanah outside their apartment. They packed their things in the back of Jumanah's Volkswagen; Kimo sat in the passenger seat and Ariane jumped in the back. Jumanah unfolded a large map and laid it on the dashboard. Kimo glanced at the paper, bright colors glowing along the road map that crossed and vibrated with various readings of the landscape and the fluctuations of temperature and humidity, as well as power transmission lines in an oblique projection. Kimo tried to focus on the fading and glowing symbols and paths, struggling to read multiple levels of information fully (he had not practiced carto-sense much). Ariane purposefully adverted her eyes from the paper to keep from getting a headache.
The ride was mostly quiet, stress radiating from Ariane that Kimo and Jumanah tried to ignore. The girl was diving into a world she did not understand for a desperate reason. She sat with headphones over her ears and eyes on the window, landscape changing as they moved further from civilization. Trees grew to great heights, lights faded and the sky began to blacken.
They turned off onto a dirt road and Jumanah turned on the brights, the car rocking and shifting as its poor suspension took them to a deserted hill where tree stumps loomed over a full moon. Jumanah began to closely look at the map, eyes barely looking at the land in front of them as she tried to line up the vehicle exactly with the spot on the map. They finally came to a stop among the tree stumps and put the van into park.
Jumanah got out of the car, map still in hand, and walked slowly for a few paces, stopping beside one of the stumps. "It should appear right here," she said, looking to Kimo and Ariane who watched her through the windshield.
"How long?" Kimo asked, opening his door.
Jumanah checked her watch. "About twenty minutes."
They unloaded their supplies from the van, putting on the armor, goggles prepared over their eyes. Kimo pulled out his baseball bat and placed it beside him while he took a seat on one of the stumps. Jumanah grabbed a handgun and put it into a shoulder holster she slipped under her arm. The metal glimmered with a pale color with demonic symbols edged into the surface. Kimo recognized the piece: an infernal repeater fired bullets imbued with an internal fury spell that caused targets to burn with an unholy fire upon impact. She then opened the cage at the back of the van where the tracker had sat soundless the entire trip. She latched on a collar embedded around its neck and pulled it from the cage. The creature began to crawl across the earth, colorful feathers on its neck ruffling and shifting in color. Jumanah made a hissing noise with her lips and the blaanarak dropped its head and sat on the ground. Ariane looked at the tracker with a sad expression.
"Don't feel bad," Jumanah said to her, not needing to look into her mind to know what she was thinking, "creatures like this thing are designed and created to have a single desire—follow paths. We're letting it fulfill its purpose."
Jumanah was fastening the last of her tools to a belt around her thin waist when the doorway appeared, literally in the blink of an eye. Suddenly fog was lingering among the deforested land, a halo shimmering in front of them, another world opening before them where shadows ran across the ground and the air filled with mist.
Jumanah nodded to Ariane who pulled one of her father's socks from her bag and put it under Hermes' nose. Its spine began to shiver as it pressed its nose to the clothing, colored feathers flashing and changing. Suddenly, it dropped its jaw, sharp teeth protruding from the gums, feathers glowing in warm colors, and charged through the doorway.
Kimo noticed that Jumanah was stronger than she looked, the leash gripped tightly in her steady hand, keeping Hermes from getting too far ahead. As they began Jumanah grabbed the pack over her shoulder and pulled out necklaces dangling with animal tongues. They smelled reached but Jumanah predicted it created the correct stench to mask their presence among the beasts.
The ground was uneven, boulders towering above them, the sky nothing but white. The land felt soft beneath their feet, a thin layer of water soaking into their lungs like they were journeying into the tropics. They walked among piles of grey stones and the world felt quiet. They couldn't even hear their footsteps, just the panting from Hermes as it tried to rush across the piles of stones and shadows.
Hermes led them up a hill of silver grass that looked like shards of glass when a shadow began to move in the distance. They dropped into the grass that began to cut their faces, and Jumanah made another hissing noise that made Hermes stop and sit on the sharp grass while a beast moved past the hillside. It took the form of a massive elk, over 20 meters in height, taking slow steps across the land. Ropes were tied to the antlers that held corpses that swayed with the gentle movement of the head, vibrations radiating through the ground. No one breathed while the beast passed them, white spotlight eyes pointed ahead, skin like leather, and they waited until it bled back into the fog before moving again.
After they passed the clearing the fog gave way to jagged mountains, tops fading into white to make it impossible to tell how tall they were. Hermes began to scale the cliffsides, digging its claws into the stone like memory foam. Jumanah tried to keep a tight grip on the leash as the tracker became more frantic and excited. The feathers around its head were beginning to glow warm shades, its fur blackening as it blended in with the rocks. Kimo and Ariane tried to keep up, scratching palms and bruising knees, until Hermes reached a cliffside. It stopped pulling on the leash and dropped to the ground, feathers a deep red/orange shade.
Jumanah lit the lantern and held it in front of them as they entered the cave. The silence was heavy and the dark almost absolute, the lantern providing a light source that did not reach more than a few meters ahead of them. Kimo noticed the paleness of the walls of the cave compared to the outside. The surface looked smooth to the touch and he was tempted to reach a hand out, but Jumanah stopped him, shaking her head.
"…Can you hear that?" Ariane whispered in Kimo's ear.
He was surprised he had not heard it first, but when he paused he agreed he heard heavy breathing somewhere in front of them. Jumanah raised the lantern higher, light pushing away the fog that lingered, and they came upon a massive sleeping curled serpent. Its white skin glimmered in the light of the lantern, and in the center of the coil was a hunched human figure. His back was to them, revealing a dirty and torn flannel that exposed a heavily bruised back. The breath left Ariane.
"Dad?" she asked in a meek voice.
"Ariane?" the man asked in a cracked voice but continued to face away from them. The serpent kept in its curled position.
"I came to take you home, Dad," said Ariane, voice still a mere whisper.
"You shouldn't be here. It's not supposed to be you," said Ariane's father.
"What do you mean?" Ariane asked, taking a step forward. At the movement, the beast shifted and Jumanah grabbed her wrist before she could move further.
Ariane's father rose to his feet and turned to face them, revealing bright white spotlights in his eye sockets.
"He wants her," he said. "He wants your—"
The man's head was lobbed clean off before he could finish. Ariane released a shivering wail of terror as the three saw another man rise from the coiled serpent; the same man that had been on 27th street when Jonathan died. Anger wrinkled his expression as his bat began to glow shades of red.
"You," he hissed and the tall man smiled.
"Hello, Kimo. Good to see you again."
Kimo released a raging shout and swung the bat, bright flames flowing from the surface and for a moment coated the cave with the brilliance of orange light. Jumanah pulled Ariane away from the flames and they began to run to the mouth of the cave.
"Who is that?" Ariane shouted as they ran towards the foggy landscape.
"No idea, but Kimo certainly does not like him," said Jumanah.
Kimo shouted behind them, flames still coating the walls of the cave and turning the surface black.
Ariane and Jumanah were almost out of the cave when their vision blurred and the pale man was in front of them, grimace on his face. Hermes was next to him, body still and eyes lifeless.
"It was supposed to be your mother," the man said, looking at Ariane. The woman was pale as a sheet and could not find a response. Tears continued to flow.
Jumanah pulled her gun from her holster and fired a round at the man. It hit him like a small firecracker hitting a massive wall, smoke seeping from his skin but his body unmoved.
"Out of the way!" Jumanah shouted as she loaded another round into the gun—one with much more explosive power, but there was a good chance it would collapse the cave in the process.
"Can't do that," said the man, his voice scratchy and ringing with autotune. "I have work to do." He looked to Ariane. "But you might do."
Ariane trembled but her eyes blazed with fury. Kimo came running behind them, charging towards the man again, flames twirling around the bat. But he did not extend them further to keep from roasting Ariane and Jumanah.
"You bastard!" he screamed as he ran to the man, who did nothing to defend himself. Kimo knocked him down the cliffside and the two tumbled across the rocks. Jumanah gripped Ariane by the hand and dragged her down the rocks.
"We have to get out of here," she shouted, "the doorway will be closing soon."
At the bottom of the cliff, both Kimo and the pale man had landed on the ground, Kimo bleeding from numerous parts of his body. The pale man landed worse, a forearm snapped and ankle broken. The man looked at Kimo and grinned. No blood flowed from him, the gashes revealing blackness within his body. As he got to his feet his bones snapped back into place.
Jumanah was pulling Kimo away from the man, forcing him to run with them to make it back to the doorway.
"Let me go!" Kimo shouted. "He killed Jonathan!"
"Unless you want to end up like Jonathan we have to run now!" Jumanah shouted and the three of them raced over the waving land, across fields of silver, until they came upon the tall stones that led the way to the doorway. None of them had looked behind to see if the man was following, just praying he was not close.
By the time they reached the doorway it was shrinking, the surface world within grasp, and they pushed their bodies as best they could to make it on time. Kimo and Jumanah raced through the opening, collapsing on the grass with legs exhausted. They looked at each other and realized Ariane was not with them. They looked back to the doorway, continuing to shrink, Ariane standing at the edge of Occidens, pale hand wrapped around her neck, wide smile above her head. The portal shut suddenly before either Kimo or Jumanah could say a word.