Between

 
Blood still trickled from his open wounds. The taste of the sword gripped in his teeth was foul, the stain of dried black blood on the blade forced him to work at keeping his gorge down.  He was without clothes or armor or adornment.  Naked with nary a scabbard.  Sweat glistened his muscles as they trembled with the struggle.  His fingers searched for purchase, toes curling into fissures of the rock face.  His belly scraped the roughness of the stones.  Slowly he ascended.  Maddeningly slow.  The walls curved to either side of him forming a vertical tunnel that rose to the light above.  He paused to breathe, tried not to look down into the abyss.  The smell that drifted up from below was rank with death and despair.  And it was black beyond reason.  Out of that blackness had come the creatures, gray and leathery, lizard-like with humanish faces.  Elongated trunks taller than his own. Long digits, as long as daggers and just as sharp, snicking ominously against the rocks.  They had scurried up the sheer face almost effortlessly, hissing and swishing their tails.  Many of them.  He had taken the weapon from his mouth, found sure footing and a good handhold hugging the stone and began hacking.  He took legs and heads with ease, the blade slicing through their tough skin and clanging on rock. But there were so many.  He had fought right, then switching the sword defended left.  He had dispatched them all but there came more and he fought on until the last one slid down the gore splattered wall into emptiness.  And they had done damage.  His back, buttocks and legs had been savagely grooved and ran blood. The pain was strange.  Distant and bearable.  Like a memory of pain. But the fatigue hit him hard.  How long had he been climbing?  How long.  A day less than forever it seemed.  And how afar did he have to go?  He gazed up, bright light flooded the circle at the summit but the glow seemed as distant as the sun setting across the breadth of an ocean.  Yet he could feel the warmth, energy radiating from it and hardening his resolve. He began again, to climb.  But to what end?  What was the ultimate purpose?  Why the drive for this monumental quest?  Perhaps time would tell.  Or perhaps time had left him.  Abandoned him like his garments and reason. Just another question that had no answer. The sensation of order seemed further from him than the pain.  Hand over hand, gnarled feet leveraging, teeth clenching the steel edge, he moved cautiously, grappling the stone facade. What he knew; he must gain the top, he must keep his sword until then and he must endure whatever atrocities came from beneath.  How many attacks had he fended off?  The red serpents with poisonous skin that had slithered from the cracks in the well.  The swarm of giant bugs that swirled in the pit looking for nourishment and found his flesh like foliage. The dragon who was so massive it used both sides of the tunnel to ascend like a ladder.  Its roar alone had near deafened him. They were only those he could remember.  His existence had become either climbing or fighting and yet he feared neither, nor sense of falling or for that matter failing.  His nemesis was discouragement.  Always the finish to this endurance dangled beyond his comprehension.  A distance so great that a bird might exhaust its life trying to fly it.  Would  he be climbing this wall for eternity? Yet that insurmountable goal was the only desire; pumped the blood in his veins.  He was just so tired.  And there were no outcroppings anywhere on the wall to lay his body down and close his eyes.  Nowhere to rest if only for a moment.  Of course, he could let go and plunge down into the emptiness below, that would bring relief.   But he would not.  Could not?  A coward’s way out.  He had a will of iron and a great inner strength that renewed in him each time his eyes lifted to the light. His plight eased scantily.  He would go on. His progress over the next hours was insignificant, or was it days. The passage of time was a numbness, yet desire pushed him onward.  Single minded in his fierce determination. To conquer his inner demons as well as the external ones.  Then came the screams, more screeches than human sounds, echoing from the darkness.  And the pounding of wings against the air.  He readied himself, turned his body to face them, back to the wall, heels dug in.  His left hand gripped firmly, his right held steel.  He closed his eyes, bowed his head, prepared his mind; steady swift strokes, sharp eye, valor.  And then he looked up, became emboldened.  No fear.  The first pass of a wing nearly caught him off guard.  Slashing, he separated a bat-like appendage and one fell away.  Then they swarmed.  Ash-skinned with pale faces, lower halves hairy, claws for feet and long nailed hands.  Faces ghastly and ghoulish.  Huge mouths of teeth, needle like, jagged and protruding in all directions.  Spit flew from their thin lips as their wails echoed off the walls.  They hovered and darted, dozens, the size of giant dogs but with expansive wing spans.  For a moment they stayed at a distance, judging and sizing.  One flew too close and a quick flick of his sword took off its head.  The others seemed transfixed as the decapitated harpy tumbled down into the darkness.  Then they galvanized and attacked in staccato formation.  Another swooping in after another attempting bites or raking swipes of their claws.  He kept his swings compact, controlled; slash, back-cut, down thrust, up.  So many of them pounding away at his resolve.  He was able to score a count of about three out of every four but the one that passed through caused pain.  One wrapped around his upper thigh as he dispatched two others with a single blow.  He looked down just as the apparition was about to engulf his groin into its spiky mouth. The sword hilt wrapped hard into the skull once, twice, cracking thin bone, third time dislodging it.  As it fell off, its talons took chunks of his flesh.  He continued to hack and their brackish blood formed a mist around him, still he hewed.  He slew them as fast as he could swing and he grew weary.  Over his head he skewered a bat that had tangled its claws into his hair.  Finally there was only two still dogging him.  One with an arching dive sunk its teeth into his left shoulder and locked them there.  The other came on a frontal attack.  He thrust out his sword and plunged it into the gargoyle’s mouth and out the back of its head.  In its dying action it wrapped both hands around the blade in a death grip and he could feel the weight of the now flightless creature pulling the sword from his hand.  The one still left gnawed into him, striking bone.  He closed his eyes groaning in agony.  He released the stone, grabbed its wing but could not dislodge it.  Suddenly it was all too much.  Just to fall forward into the abyss.  Just to let go of the sword.   It was so simple and the fight would be over.  The struggle was too hard, unending.  His fingers started to loosen on the leather strapping of the hilt.  His body pulling forward off the wall.  Defeat consumed him.  But he opened his eyes and looked up and the light from above filled him again, gave him approbation because it seemed closer than before.  Almost reachable and warmer.  With a burst of energy he swung his sword toward the wall.  The impact shattered the dead thing from his blade and it fell like leaves from autumn branches.  He turned the sword to his chest and slid the length between the last demon’s mouth and his shoulder bracing the tip against a rock, exerting, he pried the teeth from his skin.  The harpy, still gnashing its jaws, finally released him but before it could fly back he slashed down in a sweeping crescent and bisected the left shoulder, arm and wing and most of its chest cavity from the rest of its upper torso.  The two sanguinary pieces sunk into the darkness.  Now, only his ragged breathing filled the hollowness of the chamber.  He closed his eyes, pulled the sword up to his chest and held it tightly.  Again it had served him well.  He felt sure that when he arrived at the summit he would have to relinquish his weapon.  But its purpose was to aid him until he breached this well of squalor, reached the next level.  And what waited for him there?  What was beyond that?  More evils, more tortures.  He didn’t think so.  In fact he sensed fulfillment and understanding from above. Enlightenment.  Was that what he strived for?   Again he looked up into the light. The radiance nourished him, staunched the flow of blood from his wounds, quenched his thirst and soothed his mind.  He wiped both sides of the blade against his forearm, put it into the sheath of his teeth, turned and again, hand over hand, pulled his body up, began to slowly ascend.  The top was closer, ever so slightly, but definitely attainable.  It had to be. It’s what he prayed for, what he had lived for.  It’s what he had died for. Ω