Towards the abyss, looming before him like a black nightmare.
The smell of sulphur filled the air, it's odoriferous tentacles violating the sanctity of his nostrils. To this, he grimaced, eyes wildly darting about as he gained his bearings.
All he could see were the flames. From every crack in the ground, a wretched heat emanated with a forked tongue of bright red, dancing with gleeful mockery.
Places like this were supposed to exist only in the imagination, or so he thought. Yet, his eyes could not help but shine in bewilderment as he surveyed the blackened land before him.
He could not see to the other side, nor what laid beyond - yet his feet shuffled in a straight line to a destination that he could not have known.
Naked, streaked with the beads of glistening sweat - Adam peered into the darkness, watching and listening for signs of movement. There were none, for he appeared to be utterly alone.
Hours had passed, he could feel the blisters on the soles of his feet swell with painful abandon as he fought back the fear that threatened to overwhelm him.
Fear of the unknown, the gravest kind there is.
The ground crackled with each step, it's dry dusty countenance sullied by the unexpected weight pressed upon it. A deep, dark grey flecked with black. Terrifyingly yielding yet surprisingly resilient.
He fought the fear relentlessly, beating down it's snarling fangs with the hope that he still carried within him. A warm flame rooted firmly in the center of his chest.
"My mind is impenetrable. My will is unmoved. My body possessed. I shall not begrudge myself the luxury of self-pity, for my heart is as pure as ever and my resolve is strong."
The whisper of his words fluttered away into the darkness.
Tears soon began to roll down his cheeks, their salty venom sneaking into the corner of his lips, teasing him with their pearly kisses.
Yet he remained unstirred, unafraid as he pressed his way forward. The clanging of leg-irons marking each step of his journey.
"How had it come to this", he wearily announced to the emptiness. "Why am I to be cursed in spite of my faith? Why these tests?"
He no longer strode forward as confidently as he once had. His head now bowed low to the ground and he could only focus on the noise that the chains were making. A slouched spine bearing evidence of his toil.
As the minutes turned into hours, Adam paused and scrutinized what lay immediately ahead of him.
A shadow of a tall skinny monument appeared distantly in the horizon. It could almost had been mistaken for an overactive imagination had he not looked upon it with hard, glazed eyes.
His tongue dry and coated with thick salivia, he adjusted his trajectory and tentatively made his way in the direction of what he was seeing.
Soon, it loomed before him. The thick clouds of dust that encircled the air surrounding this obelisk masked a horror unlike anything he could ever have conceived of.
He did not have to move any closer to know what it was, the sounds described it better than his eyes could have done.
Soon, the dull whispers surged into the air, rapidly articulating and intensifying with every step he took.
They were screaming.
The sounds chilled him to the bone. A tingling coursed over his body like an icy wave from his stomach to his arms and then into his heart.
He fell down onto his knees once he saw what laid before him.
The tower was a soup of limbs, flailing about wildly. He could see faces peering at him with an expression of pure, unsullied hatefulness. Their mouths moved in a strange discord that did not appear to correspond to any language he has ever heard spoken.
What scared him most, were the eyes. Unblinking orbs the size of a human head looking down upon him in silent judgement. To which verdict, he did not know.
The heat from the ground began to pucker the thin flesh on his knees, yet he remained as he had - kneeling transfixed before this monstrous, cacophonous altar.
He fearfully bowed his head in painful deference to the deep penetrating gaze that the mass appeared to direct upon him. He could feel the intensity of it's glare upon his balding scalp threatening to unravel the very fiber of his soul.
The noise continued unabated, yet he had noticed a subtle shifting that gradually formed the shape of English vowels. He could make out the sounds of "O" and "Am" while he clasped his hands together in silent prayer.
In the span of minutes, the words soon began to appear. Randomly and without apparent meaning, yet he understood clearly what was being said. He knew that soon there would be sentences and with that, a conscious entity shall assert itself.
"Slaughter..." "Hail..." "Madness..." "Death" .. The words will still disjointed, yet the speed at which they were spoken began to increase. An unseen intelligence that was both struggling to absorb and express a form of communication unfamiliar to it.
It cycled rapidly through a vast spectrum of sounds that seemed to coalesce into something that much resembled it's physical appearance. Verbs, nouns and adjectives convulsed furiously about as Adam strained to recognize the meaning of what was being said.
Soon, the limbs ceased their thrashing and dangled lifelessly about. The eyes began to blink.
And the noise stopped as suddenly as it had appeared. For a moment, there was only the clarity of welcome silence hanging in the breeze.
"Adam, look up." A gentle voice filled the air.
The man hesitated, he could feel the wetness of his brow seeping into his eyelashes, forming drops that gaily splashed upon the ground.
"Adam..." The voice became firmer. A thick baritone with a slight feminine nuance. The tone was one of concern rather than condemnation. Fatherly, even. Suspiciously devoid of the malevolence it's frightful appearance had inspired.
The man opened his eyes, mere slits at first and later stripped of the fleshy confines of his eyelids.
He could now see a light beyond this monument of depravity; a reddish-brown hue that emanated far into the distance, but grew closer with each passing second.
The flames were gone, the heat had mysteriously vanished into the cracks of the Earth. The air became cooler, purer and the suffocating smell of sulpher gave way to the rich, musky odour of freshly tilled dirt.
The monument continued to observe him in silence - almost as if it had felt that words alone, could not have sufficiently impressed the gravitas of it's thoughts upon the listener.
It was Adam who dared to speak first. As the distant light expanded itself, he could now make out the grains of tree bark along the sides of this creature. The limbs now could be seen as branches, the eyes were knotholes and suddenly he became aware that it had only been a tree blowing in the wind.
Yet the voice was real, or so he thought. His hand rested upon his chest, feeling the thumping of his heart slowing to an easy, relieved rhythm.
"My God.. " His mouth trembled with uncertainty.
The silence enveloped him warmly with the faintest hint of supressed mirth.
"Your God.." The voice now appeared to reach his brain rather than his ears. It had a distinct, hollow quality that was accompanied by a solemn measure of sadness.
It repeated those words once more, yet plaintively, as if it could not understand the meaning of what it spoke.
Adam bowed his head low to the ground, feeling blades of grass brushing against his ears.
"For are you not? Why have you forsaken me?"
Several minutes had gone by.
There was not one whisper more.
Soon, the sun peeked out over a thick belt of fog and Adam began to stand on his feet.
There was a lake nearby, the reflection of dawn playing across cool, still waters. The chirping of birds filling his ears with innocent and joyous melodies.
The voice remained quiet. Yet, he did not have to strain to hear an answer to the question that he had asked.
He first felt it deep within his being. A radiance that seemed to unapologetically spread itself out, flooding his core with an elegant and simple grace. He could feel a blossoming in his heart and a smile crept onto his face once he recognized the sensation that he was beginning to experience.
It was love.
It had never once abandoned him.
