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Ch 25: The Silent Prison

The Silent prison was, well silent, other than the drip of water coming from a leaky shower head, under which a bar of soap rested on the floor. Michael slowly came to, a crappy light bulb swinging from the ceiling providing the occasional light. “You’re awake….” Trish said, deathly pale looking like death. Michael sat up, after she had left coat form she had Michael’s head resting on her lap. “I...was beginning to think you up and died on me, you inconsiderate b*****d.” She weakly joked; her face was worn and looked to have had the youth drained from it.

“Trish?” Michael tried to stand up but his legs failed him and he dropped to his butt. “You’re a hag.” He said in surprise without realizing it.

“Who’s a hag?” Trish asked with the veins in her head showing.

“No one,” Michael told her, “what happened to make you.. old?” He searched for the appropriate words.

Trish mustered her strength to hit him with a bedpan. “Beelzebub tried to kill you with Omega,” she told him wearily, like a granny who needed to rest. “I managed to re-bind your soul with….” She trailed off, nodding off.

“Hold on,” Michael told her, trying to keep her awake.

“I gave up my life for yours.” Trish told him, looking into his eyes.

“Just hold on, if I..” he was interrupted when she put her bony finger on his lips.

“No, I’ve seen the good die young too many times and I stayed young on their lives for far too long.” Trish told him “Michael, get out of here.” She told him, “kill Beelzebub, for me.” Trish told him and closed her eyes. Pieces of Trish stripped away and paper crumpling while it was burning. His head slumped as she died, his hands shook as he clenched them into fists.

“Damn it!” He cried pounding on the floor. He couldn’t do anything when a tortured scream pierced the air. Michael pushed his feelings of guilt and anger to the back of his head, or he tried to at least, and he picked up the now reformed Nirvana and left the cell, he would have time to mourn after he left the prison. “Goodbye,” was all Michael allowed himself to say. The cell block was dark and damp like the prison had fallen into disrepair from neglect. The scream came again from behind the rusted metal door at the end of the cellblock. Michael walked at a quickened pace and opened the door, which wasn’t locked to his surprise, and entered the next one. The next cellblock had a heavy wrought iron gate with a metal platform, the center of which was on a spring mechanism so sufficient weight would have to be applied to raise the gate by completing an electrical circuit. The scream came again from the cell closest to Michael, he looked towards the source and muttered disheartened, “Those sons of bitches.”

In the cell in front of him was a man, ‘bout 5’11”, his body was bent over in pain while sweat made it glisten. His head was covered by a burlap sack with no openings in it and it was stitched into the man’s collarbone. A blue surge of energy surged through his shackles on his arms causing the man to scream while arching his back, the scream was filled with agony that it seemed the last bolt would have burned the man alive from the inside but he never could submit to it. As Michael was cutting the chains he saw the man’s feet, while nothing was special about his feet there was a square made out of chalk which was roughly the size of the spring pad. Michael realized what the intended solution was but after a moment he came up with another idea. “Hold on,” he told the man and cut the chains off his shackles, the man just fell to the floor, reveling in the coldness of it.

Michael then initiated his plan, he made his way up onto the platform and changed Nirvana into a staff with Bishop’s soul and took off one of his shoes which had a rubber bottom and fit it onto the staff. Michael pressed down on the pressure pad until a small click meant it was in place. The gate was slowly lifted up with a series of clicks “win,” Michael said grinning when the doorway was fully opened. He lifted Nirvana up and the gate came crashing.

“Epic Fail,” a heavy yet disembodied voice announced. Michael felt like crying out of frustration but instead emo’ed in a nearby corner. After a few minutes of emoing in the corner, Michael heard a sound; he looked at the source and saw it was the prisoner tugging on his old chain. Before the penguin of ingenuity reached him, he realized what to do on his own, leaving the penguin in despair. Michael got the chain and cut it off the wall before going over in front of the gate and he stuck the Nirvana into the space under the pad. After some effort he ‘popped’ the pad off and saw where the circuit needed to be connect so he stuck the chain in there and heard a click as the gate went up, Michael’s face lighting up like a kid on Christmas day.

A few creepy hallways and what looked to be a shower room later, Michael arrived at one seemed to be another puzzle. There were two statues one, a delicate looking man with arm outstretched and his hand looked like it was supposed to be holding some sort of bar, about two feet behind the first was a second statue of a significantly larger man with both arms in mid pump. It took Michael a few seconds to figure it out before he realized that he saw a shower on the way to the puzzle so he back tracked there where he found a bar of soap on a rack and took it back to the puzzle. “Get in there,” he muttered with his tongue sticking out, he attempted to shove the soap into the hand before figuring it would be easier with wet soap. He went back to the showers and turned them on after hitting it some and wetted the soap he was carrying.

He made it back to the puzzle and slipped the soap into the delicate man’s hand. The statue squeezed causing the soap to fall to the floor and it bent to pick it up, that’s when the larger man slid up behind the first man with surprising speed and said in a gruff tone, “Get in there.” With the delicate man’s eyes going wide with surprise and agony. Michael tried to ignore the scene as he walked through the now opened door.

After a good while of walking he stopped to rest against some bars in a hallway with only enough light to see the path going down the middle. A pair of hands stained with blood shot out and grabbed Michael by the neck to choke the life out of him. “Ack,” Michael gasped attempting to pry the hands away but couldn’t get them to budge, by some stroke of luck he managed to grab Nirvana and plunge it into the darkness behind him. The hands let go of him as their owner died from the wound Nirvana had inflicted. Michael collapsed on the floor, gasping for breath as he tried to recover his strength. Michael got up and went over to the heavy iron door and saw a lever with a sign next to it. “Pull level to open emergency doors,” Michael read off the sign and shrugged, “that sounds simple enough.” He grabbed the lever and pulled it down.

There was a ‘bing’ and a pleasant female voice came on “Emergency doors now opening, prisoner cells unlocked, please take this time to line up in a calm and orderly fashion, thank you,” it said with a giggle at the end and the door began slowly lifting. He could hear the cells all along the way he came down opening.

“That can’t be good.” He said, backing up against a slowly opening door, out of the cells came brutes with muscles ripping through their skin, the blood giving them a red tent. They came in all shapes and sizes but their defining features were that all of their hands were covered in dried blood and railroad spikes were shoved into each of their eyes, blinding them as their rage had blinded them in life. These were the Brutes: the most basic of the souls damned to Wrath. The Brutes charged Michael as he sized up what forms to use, he couldn’t do long swings in the narrow corridor and stabbing was out of the question since there were so many charging him at once. He remembered the Gemini soul and did the only combo that might work: he used staff and snake sword, which oddly enough became a pair of nunchuks. “Bring it!” Michael yelled and swung the nunchuks down on a Brute and hit him straight in the head.

‘Bonk’ it bounced of the Brute’s head and they pinned Michael against the wall “Stop bringing it!” Michael cried as his legs flailed to hit the Brutes away, he was on survival mode right now. He fell to the ground and the Brutes tried to tear him apart on the floor but he managed to slip under the opening door, though a brute stole his right shoe and almost ripped off his leg. He ran like a bat out of hell, the adrenaline blurring out the pain of being choked and the strain on his leg in desperation and he came to the edge of a chasm and he could hear the Brutes rapidly approaching. There were no doors other than the one behind him and the one on the other side of the chasm and in desperation, Michael jumped and was sure he was going to plummet to his doom but he landed on a hard surface where there should have only been air. He was busy pulling himself up and running across the surface instead of questioning its existence. He got to his feet and dragged his right leg through the door as Brutes were running over the ledge, most like lemmings but a few ran along the invisible path and Michael slammed the heavy door shut right before they got there. Michael slumped against the wall, letting Nirvana change back as a huge stone door separated him from the Brutes.

He was panting like a dog as the brutes slammed and bounced off the door behind him, some falling into the chasm. The new room was several floors, like modern prisons with cells on the floors but several of the safety railings were torn out, making it unnerving to walk on the ground floor. He got up and continued on his way, taking off his other shoe because it felt funny to walk in one shoe. He walked down the hall; he stopped as he swore he heard a strange clacking, like blades across concrete.

The monster jumped at him and it was pure luck that he avoided what would have been a fatal attack; it had clammy grey skin and an iron mask fastened securely to its face, its hands were replaced with stumps that had the blade of a boning knife at the end of each, and it had what appeared to be knife blades protruding from its back. It balanced on two shimmering blades that resembled semi circles, giving the creature a rocking motion to its movement. It stabbed at Michael repeatedly with the boning knives, each time the knife glided across his body leaving a light wound and a stain of blood on the blade; Michael tried to dodge, his panic rose as he realized that the creature was purposely not hitting any vitals like it was playing with its prey.

“Ahh!” he let out a cry and swung for the creature’s face with his fist and knocked off the lower part of its mask, it had no jaw but a pair of mandibles and a serpent like tongue hanging down from the darkness behind the remaining mask. It let out a hiss and swung its right leg at Michael who jumped back to barely the blade at the end, the moment the right foot touched down it swung the left and Michael grabbed it right above the blade in a reckless attempt “hah, not so tough now, are you?” Michael taunted it when it let out a frustrated hiss trying to free itself by tugging back. It tried to stab at Michael but failed because its arms were too short “awww, too short?” Michael was enjoying the role reversal until the creature swung its right leg, leaving a shallow cut up the right side of Michael’s torso and he let go of the left leg. The creature fell back on all fours in a position with its stomach sticking up; it scuttled across the floor faster than it walked and Michael had to sprint and hop to avoid the bladed kicks. Feeling lucky, Michael turned around and swung Nirvana lopping off the creature’s right leg as it swung.

The creature’s body began to spasm as its left leg relocated to the center and seemed to grow bigger to compensate for the loss of the right leg. The creature propped itself up on the now center leg and spindly arms shot out of its bag holding the knives that were sticking out of its back before, the knives dropped to the ground as the back arms fused together into two muscular arms with grasping hands. The hands grasped on the ledge of an upper story and the creature lifted its body into the air “Why does ‘oh ********’ come to mind?” Michael muttered backing up “oh that’s why,” he yelled as the monster swung its pendulum like leg at him and began chasing the running demon hunter by grabbing the ledges above him to move.

Michael tripped and fell face first as the pendulum swung through where he was a second ago; the creature had a hard time trying to turn around and Michael noticed it. He ran back and the monster clumsily chased him backwards “Eat Leviathan!” he yelled and Nirvana became a snake sword, he swung and it imbedded itself inside the monster’s back; he changed Nirvana back and the motion of the pieces coming together launched Michael into the air and he got above the Monster’s head and executed a helm splitter, cleaving through the mask and the head. The Monster let go of the ledges as it died and slammed into the ground.

He didn’t wait for it to get up or dissolve pr whatever it was going to do; instead he ran for the exit. The next room had a metal portcullis and a grand oak door facing each other so Michael went through the grand oak door first. On the other side was a lavish office with various animal heads on the wall, in the center back was a solid mahogany desk and matching chair resting over a tiger rug. On the desk there was a saucer above which two balls made out of steel were suspended, Michael took the balls and heard a disembodied voice “You have crossed through the silent prison and braved its monstrosities, proving you have balls of steel: take these balls and may your soul and will be steeled as these balls are for the trials ahead will test your limits.” Michael stared at the balls for a moment and they glowed before vanishing, making Michael’s soul stronger and Nirvana at the same time.

He walked past the desk and pried open a panel that looked out of place and a white light shone over him “By the power of Grey skull…..” he said in awe, there was a black coat like his old one along with a matching outfit; what got his attention was the gun that was nothing short of a hand cannon, it looked like a revolver with a large barrel and bulky cylinder, presumably for large caliber rounds. Michael put the coat on along with the biker gloves and boots it came with; he fixed the scabbard he found to the coat and put Nirvana in before putting the hand cannon in one of the coat’s deep pockets while he put whatever loose ammo for it he found in the other pocket.

From behind him came a whispering, wraith-like voice which said, “Hello Demon Hunter.”

Michael quickly turned around with his hand cannon pointed at the source which looked like the upper half of an emaciated corpse “What are you?” he asked it backing up, not eager to repeat any of the experiences from the prison.

“The one who will sponsor you in the Gladius Maximus, because I know you need to leave.” The Wraith’s once blond hair stuck to its bony face in scraps. It must have seen Michael hesitate “In time I will call you again,” The wraith placed a seal on the desk, “until then use that seal to enter and win your freedom Demon Hunter.”

Michael pulled the trigger but it only produced a click from the hand cannon, eliciting a laugh from the wraith who vanished as strangely as she came.