We press closer to the orb. We’re almost upon it. My mouth is dry. My skin feels like it’s burning. My eyes seem to be roasting in their sockets. I want to turn and get as far away from here as possible. But before I can beg Art to stop, we hit the outer rim and are swallowed by a billion licks of ravenous flame.
It takes several minutes to cut through the outer ring. I’ve fought demons made of fire, so a realm of flames is nothing new. But this fire is hotter than any I’ve experienced. It roars about us like a living, furious sea. But Art holds firm and guides me through the billowing walls of the furnace.
Finally we break through the flames and enter a realm of bewitching marvels. It’s a vast, oval, grey space, illuminated by constant bolts of lightning. There’s debris everywhere, asteroids, pebbles, and dust swirling around. The lightning regularly splits rocks and splinters them, but the pieces join with other shards to form new, larger rocks, which in turn are split again.
The space is dominated by a series of enormous square panels. Half are black, half white. The panels revolve slowly around the sphere, never meeting. Anything that hits the panels—lightning forks, rocks, flickers of flame—is absorbed, then spat out moments later.
Balls of multicolored light—Old Creatures—float around the black panels. Hundreds of demons cluster around the white squares. My insides tense when I spot the Demonata, but Art speaks quickly to calm me.
“They Will Not Harm Us,” he says. “This Place Is Sacred To Both Sides. We Do Not Kill Here.”
“You could have warned me earlier,” I growl, then frown. “What happened to your voice? It’s deeper than before, and echoey.”
“We Are All Speaking To You Now,” Art says stiffly. “We Do Not Experience Individuality When We Are Together.”
I glance around at the various balls of light. They were pulsing in unison as Art spoke. It’s too confusing to think of them all speaking at the same time, so I focus on Art and pretend I’m talking to a single entity.
“What’s the story?” I ask, shivering as a bolt of lightning strikes the film of light around me and is deflected. “Why are we here? What are the big secrets?”
“The Panels Are The Key,” Art says. “You Remember The Chessboard We Saw On The Earlier World?”
“Yes, but what does…” I stop and cast an eye over the panels again, doing a quick count. There are thirty-two black squares and an equal number of white.
“The Original Universe Was Shaped Like A Chessboard,” Art explains. “There Were Sixty-Four Zones, Half Black, Half White. Each Zone Was Limitless In Size. Time Did Not Exist. The Universe Had Existed And Would Exist Forever. It Was The Same For Us And The Demonata.”
“I don’t understand,” I interrupt. “Everything has to begin somewhere.”
“Only If Time Exists,” Art corrects me.
“How can time not exist?” I huff.
“Time As You Know It Began With The Big Bang.”
“I told you I don’t know what that means.”
“Peace,” Art calms me. “We Will Come To That. First, Accept That This Was The State Of The Universe. Sixty-Four Zones, Equal In All Respects, Black Separated From White By A Force We Called The Kah-Gash.”
I focus intently when he mentions the Kah-Gash, ignoring the things I don’t understand. I can try to make sense of the bewildering bits later.
“Demons Existed In The White Zones,” Art continues. “Vile, Violent Monsters, Who Could Reproduce. We Inhabited The Black Zones, And Were Sterile. That Did Not Trouble Us. Since There Was No Time, We Were Immortal. Death Did Exist—We Could Be Killed—But It Rarely Bothered Us. We Roamed The Endless Depths Of Our Zones, Peaceful And Content.
“Demons And Old Creatures Were Never Meant To Mix. The Kah-Gash Kept Us Separate.”
I spot a disturbance among a group of demons clustered around one of the white panels. Until a few seconds ago, they swarmed around the panel like ants, but now they part, forming two neat ranks. One of the beasts glides between the others, angles for the panel, then brushes against it and is absorbed. I wait for it to emerge but nothing happens.
“The Demon Is Dead,” Art says. “It Was Ancient, One Of Those Who Existed In The Original Universe. No Living Creature Can Touch The Panels And Survive. Most Of The Original Demonata And Old Creatures Choose To Perish Here When It Is Their Time.”
“One down, just a few trillion to go,” I chuckle humorlessly. Then I pause. “Is that why the other demons are here, to bid farewell to the dead one?”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t think demons worked that way. Those I’ve known don’t care about any of the others.”
“The Original Demons Are Different,” Art says. “They Have Known Each Other For So Long That They Have Formed Bonds. We Would Normally Stay Away At A Time Like This, As They Do When We Gather Here For A Funeral. But It Was Important To Protect You.”
“I thought you said you don’t kill here.”
“We Don’t,” Art says. “But If They See A Human, They Might Attack. We Will Distract Them If They Grow Curious, And Defend You If Necessary.”
We watch the end of the ceremony. Nothing much happens. The demons hold their ranks for a while, then break apart and drift towards the ring of fire that encircles the Crux.
“Initially We Were Not Aware Of The Demonata, And They Knew Nothing Of Us,” Art resumes. “But The Demonata Were Curious. They Tested The Barriers Where White Met Black, And Found A Way To Cross. They Discovered Us.”
“And they attacked,” I guess. “They set out to kill you all.”
Art sighs. “We Knew Nothing Of War. We Fled For The Furthest Reaches Of Our Zones, Hoping The Demonata Would Lose Interest And Let Us Be.”
“Some hope!” I snort.
“It Was Brutal,” Art says softly. “We Learned About Pain, Suffering, And Loss For The First Time. We Were Innocent, But We Matured Fast. We Had To Or They Would Have Slain Us All.
“We Fought Back. Your People Know Much Of Warfare, But They Have Never Seen It On Such A Scale. Universal, Timeless, A War Of Magic. The Universe Burned. The Kah-Gash Buckled. Ultimately It Could Stand The Strain No Longer.”
We’ve been drifting closer to one of the black squares. It’s bigger than I assumed, several miles high. I feel tiny as we pass within its shadow.
“We Knew We Should Stop,” Art whispers. “The Laws Were Shattering. The Universe Was Crumbling. The Kah-Gash Could Not Hold. But Still We Fought. We Had Become Slaves To War.
“In The End The Kah-Gash Fractured. In A Blinding, Destructive Flash, All Sixty-Four Zones Shrank To The Size Of A Speck. A Split Second Later, The Ball Of The Universe Exploded. Everything Was Destroyed And Reborn. Life As You Know It Began.”
“And that’s when the universe was created?” I ask.
“Universes,” Art corrects me. “There Are Two. Although There Were Sixty-Four Zones Before The Big Bang, There Was Only One Universe. The Laws Of The White Zones Differed To Those Of The Black, But They Were Held In Place By The Kah-Gash. Now The Two Universes Are Separate.”
“I don’t understand why they exist at all,” I mutter. “Why wasn’t everything wiped out in the explosion?”
“The Kah-Gash Protected Us. Its Last Act Was To Create Two Individual Universes, Dividing The Warring Races. It Hoped The New Structures Would Keep Us Apart. As You Have Seen, They Did Not.”
“OK,” I say slowly. “Our universe and the Demonata’s were born out of the ashes of the old one, like a phoenix rising from the flames after it dies. So what’s this place?”
“This Is The Crux, The One Point Common To Both Universes. The Explosion Happened Here. The New Universes Spread Out In All Directions From This Area. The Universes Overlap Each Other. They Share The Same Space But Never Touch. Except Here. The Crux Exists In Both Universes At Once.”
“And those black and white panels are the remains of the Kah-Gash?”