Chapter Text
Orel’s ears rang, his body ached, and he tasted blood.
His head throbbed with the greatest pain he had ever known. Or so he thought until he tried to move his left leg and his nerves seemed to explode in a collage of pain, filling his vision with red and white and sending him back down into the black earth.
His leg felt wet with blood. The dull steel platemail on his body-- that even with his thoughts and memories as muddled as it was he knew should be as natural as his own arm-- were lead weights weighing him down.
He coughed, head mercifully happily and numb for the moment. (Had he been hit in the head? He had no answer except for a dull throb, though perhaps that was the answer). Red spittle fell to the dirt.
“Oh Baby Jesus, we are in it now ...” he groaned. His voice sounded weak to his own ears.
Some memory of a voice deep in Orel’s mind whose mind was obscured by the pain just said “This was dumb. Great plan, you idiot.”
Through the pain, Orel let out a chuckle for reasons he couldn’t understand. He found he couldn’t disagree.
Another voice, more comforting, more familiar, said “Come on, Orel, get up. We gotta get out of here. You can do it..”
“Not ... really sure about that, Doughey,” Orel muttered.
That was his name, right? Orel felt so sure in the moment, but then a twitch of his leg shot more pain up through him and all his assurances dissolved.
Orel looked around as best he could from the ground, vision finally coming into focus. He couldn’t tell much though. Leaves and twigs amid the dirt. There was a large mound nearby that Orel thought might have been a creature, but it was still. For some reason, he felt a wave of revulsion as he looked upon it. Beyond that, there were only trees like great towers stretching above him and between them ... darkness ...
Until Orel sniffed ... and with dawning recognition and fear, looked more carefully. No ... it was not just darkness ...
It was smoke.
He realized at his back, his platemail began to get hot. And then, the dark, void-like earth beneath him began to brighten as lights of orange and red behind him made the shadows dance a macabre dance right underneath him. He heard a low crackle punctuated by loud pops and deafening cracks. Pops and cracks that were getting louder ... and fast approaching ...
Orel wondered, briefly, if this was Hell; the thought was so outlandish, ironic, and utterly terrifying to him that a sharp, nervous laugh, louder than his chuckle earlier, escaped his mouth.
“I thought ... there’d be more to it than just this ...” he said, remembering the fear placed in his mind for so long during Cleric Putty’s sermons.
Orel sprawled on the ground. The plates on his back was getting hotter and hotter; he was sweating and briefly felt somehow surprised he could still sweat amid everything else that clearly happened to him.
And yet he was still stifling laughter. He wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t funny. But everything was funny when you were tired and Orel was tired. Hurt and so very ... very tired ....
Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad, he thought. He didn’t have to fight anymore. He didn’t have to ... endure any of it anymore. No Moralton. No House Puppington. No questions. No doubts. No disappointments. No heartache.
No father.
That thought gave him pause.
Yes ... that thought could make a Heaven of Hell.
Orel buried his face in the dirt. Something like a laugh escaped him as his eyes welled with tears.
“Maybe it won’t be ... so bad ...” Orel said as he sniffled. His eyelids felt heavy all of a sudden. “It’s only ... an eternity ...”
His vision went black.
Then, another voice from his memory surfaced as if biddened by sorcery, this one brighter, softer, ringing clearer. The voice, the sweetest one he’d ever heard in the world, spoke words that he knew he had once heard in reality, even if he could not recall when amid his delirium.
“I don’t fear Hell as much as I fear losing you.”
Orel’s eyes popped open.
“Christina?” He mumbled. He squeezed the dark, clumpy dirt in his hand, all as the orange lights now glowing as bright as the sun waved and wafted against.
His mail grew hotter. He felt as if it may have been starting to seer.
He pushed his body from the ground.
Pain rocketed through his head like a gunshot.
He gritted his teeth.
He forced the one leg he could still move up. The injured leg dragged and his every nerve felt more on fire from than the literal actual fire behind him. He nearly doubled over and heard a scream that a moment later he realized was his own.
Death, he thought. This pain had to be death.
But he couldn’t die yet, he thought, trembling. There were still people who needed him.
So he took one step anyway-- more of a shuffle than a step, as his hurt leg could support almost no weight. He nearly toppled. Each shuffle and brush against his injured leg made him want to topple.
But he didn’t.
He moved towards Moralton, the fire at his back and always present but now ... just slightly further away, less hot than before.
And slowly, painfully, head barely capable of thought aside for the brief lucid moment that had driven him, he walked away from Hell.