Chapter 1: The Emerald Steps

A table is a place to eat, to drink, to relax, or conduct business. It says much about the status of a man. What material is it made from? How many people can it dine? Is it plain or decorated? 

 

Their table was magnificent. Its smooth surface was made of a merlot colored timber that shined with gloss. It could likely fit 20 people, but only 10 currently sat there. Decorative metal snakes with golden gems for eyes slithered up its legs. This was a table for devils.

 

“Have you heard what the humans did most recently?” The man who spoke was named Elton. He loved to tell stories. In other words, there was nothing he loved more than to impress an attentive audience. 

 

“No, pray tell. I’m always curious what they get up to on their lonesome.” Ivan loved to listen to Elton's stories. More precisely, he loved to pretend to listen to them. In other words, he was a flatterer, an expert at fawning over botched jokes and boring stories.

 

“Something diabolical I assume?” Aleyna simply loved misery. 

 

“Oh quite so, it may be the worst thing they’ve done since they ravaged their planet with explosions, a few centuries ago.

 

As you may know, after the great explosions, the human population was a mere fraction of what it used to be.    

 

The humans needed more people, more laborers to rebuild what they had lost. But, they couldn’t reproduce quick enough, or as effectively as they did before.

 

They realized they needed an outside source of labor, and so they turned to the beasts around them.

 

With the use of their beloved science, they experimented and experimented, and eventually managed to actually transform the beasts around them into human shapes.

 

But of course, they were still beasts. With no mind for themselves, they could never even do the simplest of labor. 

 

So, the humans again experimented and experimented, and they eventually managed to actually give the beasts consciousness, the ability to think for themselves.

 

And what did they do after this?”

 

He paused for dramatic emphasis, just as he had practiced the day prior. 

 

“They enslaved them. 

 

That, my friends, is diabolical.”

 

“Hahahaha. My goodness, the humans never cease to amaze, do they? This will be an excellent choosing.” Ivan had only been listening to every third word, but this seemed an adequate response. Bringing up the choosing was a tactical choice, a way to assess the others' thoughts. As the saying went, a devil’s tongue is even looser than its undergarments.

 

“Indeed. Has any child caught your eye yet, Elton?”

 

“Oh, I have a few in mind. A politician's son, a mad scientist's daughter. I have high hopes.” Elton revealed his candidates freely; the choosing was a silly game, a way to make eternity go by quicker. It perplexed him how others still took it so seriously.

 

“What of you Dante? Surely there’s someone for you this choosing?” Ivan’s question was meant to mock, but he truly was curious. The fact that Dante had even shown up to their dinner was a surprise. 

 

 “No, none that I have seen. In fact..

 

I believe this may be the worst choosing we’ve had in quite some time.” Dante’s grin was a mix of sinister, charm, and madness. A smile that could convince you it was okay he had just bludgeoned your children to death.

 

“HAHAHAHAHA.” Laughter broke out at the table. 

 

“Oh goodness, Dante, you are always good for a laugh. Unfortunately, seeing as you have never taken part in the choosing, your judgment seems a bit preposterous.”

 

“Perhaps you are right. We shall see.” Dante rose from his chair and headed towards the door. 

 

 “I am glad I could give you a laugh Ivan, you always take yourself oh so seriously. I must leave now, many important matters to attend to. Have an excellent choosing everyone.” The rest of the guests continued to chat, unsurprised by Dante leaving first. 

 

Ivan wondered if he was the only one to notice. Something was different. There was no doubt in his mind. For the first time in eternity, Dante was going to participate in the choosing. 

 

.

 

.

 

.

 

“No, please, I'm really sorry. I can get them tomorrow! Please don't…” Julian’s cyber hand kept pulling, and pulling. Fingers weren't supposed to bend that way.

 

“AHHH!”

 

His finger was broken, it had to be broken. 

 

“We told you to have the cores today you stupid fucking creatch!” 

 

“If you don’t come back here tomorrow with 10 cores, every one of your fingers is gone. You understand that, creatch!?”

 

“YES, I’ll have them, I promise!” He didn't know how he was going to get so many, but he would say anything to get Julian and his friends to leave him alone. If he didn't get back to the factory soon, the Overseers would get suspicious, and that might lead to everyone getting punished. 

 

“You better. Ugh, let's get out of here. It smells like he shit himself.” That smell was actually a combination of sweat and lots of different chemicals from the assembly line, but they would never know that. 

 

After they left, he really would smell like shit though. He planned to open one of the waste pipes and blast himself with it to explain why he was late. 

 

Julian and his gang of bullies sauntered away, probably off to kill rats or some other defenseless animal with their new cyber-hands. He was going to get up, but noticed Leck still hasn't left yet. She smiled sweetly at him, and whispered in his ear.

 

“You’re friends with that old creatch in the factory, right? The one with the big floppy ears?”

 

He didn’t answer.

 

“You don’t have to answer, I know you are. If you don’t get me an extra 5 cores, I’m gonna say he raped me. You got that?”

 

His blood ran hot, and his claws scraped the ground silently. 

 

“...got it.” She was the worst of them all.

 

“Good boy.” She softly rubbed the fur on one of his ears like he was her pet. “Ya know, when I get married, I’ll need a creatch to do work around the house, someone to play with when I’m alone.” 

 

She yanked his ear. “I think I’ll take you.” 

 

She lightly skipped back to catch up with the others.

 

He wanted to cry so badly. He wanted to cry until he had nothing left. Licia had once told him about zombies. They were humans that had died and come back alive, with no more thoughts, just the need to eat brains. Obviously, because they weren’t real, it would never happen, but more than anything, he wanted to be a zombie. He wanted to not feel anything, to be so empty inside that the world could never hurt him. 

 

After drenching himself in waste, he ran all the way to the factory. He was a fast runner, and got there in minutes. 

 

The factory was a huge black building. It was very…square. That was really the only way to describe it. The building was square, the huge metal doors were square, the small windows made to let out the chemicals were square, the sleek black tiles that covered it, everything was square. Darvin, the smartest and wisest of them, said that they did this on purpose. Squares were made from four straight, equal lines. They were all basically the same, which is what they wanted creatches to think about themselves. It was also why the Overseers only referred to them by numbers. They had to come up with their own names. 

 

He pushed the heavy metal doors open and, as always, was met with the smell of rancid sweat and chemicals. Everyone was hard at work, laboring in their section of the long winding assembly line.

 

The two Overseers for the factory today began to briskly walk towards him. Every day, the Overseers would rotate out so that a new pair were responsible for watching over the factory. Most were mean and brutal, but a few were decent enough that he could get through the day without worrying about a beating. Today's Overseers, Max and Lance, were known for using their pain sticks the most. 

 

“What took you so fucking long, Creatch 17?! Waste maintenance takes 15 minutes. Not 30.” Max shouted, even though he and Lance were only standing a meter away. 

 

He tried to look meek and apologetic. They reacted better when they thought you were broken.

 

“Sorry, the pipes got backed up.”

 

“Eugh, you do smell like shit.” Lance pinched his nose with disgust.

 

“Go hose yourself off outside. Then get back to fucking work! If you creatches don’t do 1,000 cores today you're gonna get beat, bad. Understand?”

 

“Understood.”

 

The water from the hose outside was freezing cold, but it felt good to be clean, or, at least not covered in shit. 

 

The factory used an assembly line to make cores, the power source for cyber arms and legs. Everyone at the assembly line had different roles. At the beginning were the mixers; they had the unfortunate job of mixing together the poisonous chemicals which gave the cores their power. They often got sick and had to be replaced. After them were the freezers. They had to put the mixed chemicals in the hyper-freezer and take them out once they were totally solid. He tried to give a warm smile to the workers here as they shivered next to the freezer. Beyond this point were metal workers, creating various sections of the shell for the core. He walked past them to the end of the assembly line. He had the final job, assembling the metal shell parts around the cores and putting them away in their container to be counted. 

 

Horton was a metal worker, and just a few meters from his station. He must’ve smelled him, because he turned quickly to glance in his direction.

 

“What happened?” Horton’s droopy ears tensed upwards. 

 

“Pipes got backed up, that’s all.” He got to his station and started to assemble the pieces they had left for him. He had to use a special glue to stick each section together.

 

“Backed up pipes gave you those bruises?” Horton always knew. 

 

“Just tell me the truth, Cin.”

 

“You can’t do anything, Horton, none of us can. There’s no point.” He had come back with bruises many times, and they had had this conversation often enough that it was like reading a script. 

 

“You're not going to be here forever, you know that, right? I’m gonna die here, but you’re gonna get out of this, I knew that the second I saw you pop out of your momma.”

 

“You know why I call you Ci…”

 

“YES, I know, you’ve already told me a hundred times Horton.” Horton just smiled his easy smile and kept talking.

 

“It’s ‘cause that first time I held you, you were burnin’ up. Like a piece of cinder. You have more life in you than anyone here. Never forget that, Cin.”

 

He sighed, but couldn’t stop the half-smile from forming on his face. 

 

“Thanks, Horton.”

 

“Anytime, Cin. You gonna tell me who did that to ya now?”

 

“Nope, I can handle it.” He was actually handling it as they spoke, and dearly hoped nobody noticed. If an Overseer saw what he was doing…

 

Red lights beamed all around the factory.

 

“CORE COUNT! CORE COUNT! STOP WORK IMMEDIATELY CREATCHES!” The announcement blared from the walls and the Overseers rapidly approached Cin’s station.

 

Horton whispered to him. “You think we got 1,000?”

 

“I really hope so.”

 

Overseer Max took out his key and inserted it into the core container. 

 

“You creatches better pray to whatever devil you worship that you hit the quota.” 

 

Veins of cool blue lighting glowed on the container and a tiny screen beside the keyhole said one word: Counting.

 

The blue veins from the container connected through the walls of the factory to a gigantic screen placed on the back wall, where every creatch could see it. 

 

In black writing, the word ‘Count:’ popped up on the huge screen.

 

A number 1 popped onto the screen.

 

Many of the creatches silently mumbled prayers to themselves. 

 

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10

 

100

 

Finally, one more number appeared on the screen.

 

1001

 

“YES!” He jumped high into the air in excitement. They had made it, barely. 

 

Max’s face twisted into a dark rage. The rest of the creatches were utterly silent.

 

“Sorry, I, uhm, I got over-excited. It won’t happen again.” 

 

Max flipped on the switch of his pain stick, and a white current of lightning crackled over it.

 

Horton spoke quickly. “Please, he…he didn’t mean any harm.”

 

“Didn’t mean any harm?”

 

One second Max was beside the container, and the next he had tackled Cin to the ground.

 

“DIDN'T MEAN ANY HARM?”

 

“ANYTHING YOU DISGUSTING CREATCHES DO IS A FUCKING HARM!”

   

He jabbed the pain stick into his ribs. 

 

“ESPECIALLY BEING EXCITED…

 

He did it again.

 

“…FOR BARELY…”

 

And again.

 

“…HITTING…”

 

And again.

 

“…THE QUOTA!”

 

Max spit on his face and stood up.

 

“I’ll be alerting the Factorymaster of your transgression here.”

 

“...sorry.”

 

“Every creatch better be out of the factory in 10 minutes.”

 

Horton hurried over to help him up. 

 

“Oh Cin, I’m so sorry. I shoulda done something. I’m so sorry. Can you walk?” 

 

His heart was beating so fast he felt like it would explode. The effects of the pain stick always lingered. He really couldn’t walk, but he’d have to.

 

“It’s..okay, Horton. Just help…me…up”.

 

And strangely, in a sense, it was okay. The pain stick usually hurt a lot more, but his anxiety had distracted him. When Max had jumped on top of him he thought for sure that he would notice the cores he had glued to the bottom of his workstation. The first part of his plan was complete. 

200 creatches packed into one room. Their blankets barely covered their bodies, and were centimeters apart from each other. He stared up at the gray ceiling. Normally, by now he would be asleep; you had to sleep as long as you could to work in the factory all day. But night was the only time he’d be able to sneak back into the factory and get the cores. Slowly, he crept out of his blanket and peered at the sleeping bodies around him. Hopefully everyone was asleep by now. 

 

He tiptoed in the small gaps between blankets until he got to an open window. By stretching up as far as he could, he was able to reach the bottom ledge and pull himself up. Luckily, he wasn’t very tall for his age, so he could fit through the window without much difficulty. With deft movements he crawled through the window, grabbed the outside ledge, let his body hang against the cold brick, then dropped lightly onto the ground. This side of the house was hidden from the Overseers quarters, so he didn’t worry much about being seen.

 

Once at the farthest edge of the wall, he peeped around it. Lights were still on in the Overseers’ quarters, they were probably gambling, like usual. There really wasn’t any other choice; he sprinted through the open space as fast as he could, not looking back once. He didn’t stop running until he had reached the waste removal site. 

 

For a few moments, he waited. No screaming alarm sounded, just the steady gurgle of liquid in the waste pipe. 

 

The pipe wasn’t very big but it ran through a larger tunnel that he was able to crawl through. If Julian or Leck had to do this, they probably would’ve passed out from the smell. He was used to it. 

 

After 10 minutes, he reached the end of the tunnel. The pipe stopped here, and traveled up through the dirt above him. He chipped away at the dirt until he reached hard tile, the floor of their waste removal room in the factory. During the day he had loosened a few of the tiles, so now he was able to gently pop them up and climb out of the tunnel. From there, he had to grab the cores from under the assembly belt, hide them closer to the beginning of the tunnel, and sneak back to the house. Miraculously, he did all of this unseen, and was back through the house window in 30 minutes. 

 

He shivered under his covers. It would’ve been strange if in the morning he went to the factory covered in dirt and mud, so he was forced to hose himself off before he ran back to the house. 

 

Such a long day. It was unfair. The things he had to do to survive, all because he was a creatch. If he had been born a human he wouldn’t have to crawl through shit tunnels, or be beaten by the Overseers. Horton and so many of the others believed in God, but he never could. Maybe the devil existed, but a kind God seemed unlikely.  Thoughts like these circled in his head, until eventually exhaustion reined his mind in, and he fell into the black void of sleep.

WAKE UP, WAKE UP CREATCHES!!

 

Feeling unrested, he and everyone else shuffled out of the house and into the factory to begin working. The hours went by without incident. He groggily did his work until he was told to do waste maintenance. At the tunnel, he retrieved the cores and waited for Julian and his gang to show up. 

 

“Hello Cin.”

 

He twisted his body in the direction of the gravelly voice. How could there be someone out here? His sight and sense of smell would have told him if someone was coming near.

 

Yet, somehow, standing just a few feet to his left, was a man. Or was he a creatch? He was dressed in a long black coat, with a white ruffled shirt, and silky black pants. He had never seen any creatch dressed in such fancy clothes. Only people like the Factorymaster wore clothes like that. He couldn't be a creatch. But how could he be human? His skin was the color of blood, and he had long black fingernails. No human looked like that. Whatever the man was, creatch or human, he had to be careful.

 

“Uhm, can I help you mister? I’m just doing some waste maintenance, like I was told.” The bag of cores was still in his hand, but it would be strange if he dropped it now.

 

“Waste maintenance? It looks like you are waiting for someone, Cin.” The man’s voice was rough, but easy to listen to. It was strange that he called him Cin. Only the other creatches did that.

 

“You’re right, mister, creatch 15 is supposed to be comin’ soon to help me. Then we can start fixin’ the waste pipe.” He had prepared this lie in case someone had found him waiting here.

 

“You are an excellent liar, Cin. That will serve you well in Hell.” 

 

Gulp. Hell? Is he being serious? Or is that some kind of joke? It must be a joke. But he knows I’m lying. How does he know that?

 

“I, uh, I better get back to the factory and see what’s taking 15 so long.” He didn’t know who or what this man was, he just knew he had to get away from him.

 

“Stay, Cin. Let's wait for your friends.” It wasn’t a request. The man was not going to let him leave.

 

“Okay…”

 

“When they get here, you must pay very close attention, Cin. This will be your first lesson.” 

 

“My first lesson?”

 

“Yes, your first lesson as my apprentice.” 

 

He was going to ask what that meant, but his nose was assaulted by the smell of oiled metal and freshly cleaned cotton clothes. Julian was here. 

 

His group approached until they were a few meters away from the man. 

 

“What's a creatch doing here dressed in human clothes? Who the fuck is this?” 

 

“I, uh..”

 

“Do you like swords, Cin?” The man grinned at him and it sent shivers down his spine. 

 

“I, I dunno.” What was he supposed to say?

 

“No, a sword is too big for a child like you. A dagger. I will make you a dagger.”

 

“Get the fuck out of here, creatch. Cin and I need to talk.” Julian raised his cyber-arm and pointed it towards the man. The metal palm glowed a cold blue.

 

No, this is bad. This is bad. “Julian don’t do any-

 

It all happened in a moment. He didn’t even see him move. Suddenly, the man was right next to Julian. In one swift motion he carved open Julian’s throat with his fingernail. Blood began to trickle out.

 

“Unfortunately, I need quite a bit more than that.” He stuck his fingers into the crescent wound and ripped it open. Now, the blood flowed out like a river. Julian's eyes stared blankly, his cyber-arm limp at his side. 

 

The man let Julian fall to the ground. The blood pooling around his body began to rise into the air and form into shapes. First a sphere, then a thin cylinder, and finally a long, sharp triangle. The crude shapes combined and became more detailed. The cylinder became flatter with wrapped grooves around it, and the triangle curved into a sickly blade. 

 

“Perfect.” The man tapped the blood dagger and it became solid, dropping into his other hand. 

 

No one said anything. No one dared to even breathe. The man glided towards him and put the dagger in his hand. 

 

“This is yours. Never let it go, and never let another hold it. Do you understand, Cin?” 

 

He nodded. This is a dream, this is a dream. I just haven’t woken up yet. 

 

“Now, Cin, I am going to finish my business here. I will be sending you to limbo. Do not stay there long.” 

 

He flinched as the man placed his finger on his forehead. I am dreaming, I am dreaming. I must be dreaming. His eyelids drooped and a darkness enveloped his body. Yes, I am dreaming.

 

The boy faded from Earth. This has gone well, Dante thought to himself. Hopefully the boy will be in Hell shortly. He has so much to learn. 

 

Now, to deal with the rest.

 

Two of the children looked vacantly at the dead boy's body. The other two stared at him with gaping mouths. All of them stood still, with tears dripping off their cheeks. 

 

So small and weak. If just one had shown up to meet Cin, then only one would've died. He had simply needed to kill one in front of Cin. Alas, they all had come. 

 

A human cannot live after seeing a devil. These were simply the rules. He could not change them, for now. 

 

So, he cut one throat, then a second, then a third, and finally a-

 

“Step away from her, Dante. She is mine.” Such a melodic voice. Such a detestable woman.

 

“And if I do not? What will you do Aleyna?” 

 

“I will challenge you to a duel. I may not win, but I will at least have your arm, and you will look like a fool in front of all of Hell.” Hmm. He could kill her and the child now, but he would not leave unscathed, that was true. It would be harder to teach the boy, and he would have to find a new tailor if he lost an arm. Still, he had to do something. 

 

In a second he was able to cleanly slice the girl's cheek before he had to dodge a lunging attack from Aleyna. 

 

“I WILL HAVE YOUR HEAD FOR THIS DANTE!”

 

“Goodbye, Aleyna.” Before she could retort, he was already gone, descending the emerald steps to hell. 

 

Once he was back he would make sure the boy’s accommodations were in order.

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