A Tale of Forfeit and Surrender

I couldn't stand there for too long. She would have guessed my number.



Stepping back from the darkest crevasse would be the most difficult thing I could do, but after tearing myself away I knelt next to my backpack and pulled out the water. It was cold, so cold as it flowed down my throat.
Bowing my head for a moment I took the opportunity to breath deeply and consider what I had to do next. It struck me suddenly. The rest of the dynamite.

I pulled it out and stared at the 3 sticks of explosive in my hand. Last night was exhausting, but this would be the worst of it. I knew it.

The distance to the top of my prison tormented me. There was no way I would leave this place alive and I had to be sure she was gone. Nobody could ever find her.

Grabbing the shovel in my pack I counted about 10 full paces from the edge of the drop of the crevasse and started digging. I dug deep. As deep as I could go.
It was a smart thing to have packed extra cable, I smiled at my last little bit of ego that I was ever going to appreciate.

After digging a good 5 foot hole, I stuffed the dynamite down into it and pulled the cable out extending it and letting it drop over the edge. I buried the explosive and packed the snow as tight as I could. No energy should be focused or escaping. I wanted a very broad and simultanious range of power. Feeling sufficient with the job at that point I went back to my pack and pulled out the detonator. For the moment I sat it on top of the pack and went back to the shovel.
This was going to be the long part. I wanted to make sure this awkward overhang would split and fall. There could be no mistakes.

Plus, I had all the time in the world.

There was a decent overhang directly below the ridge that the thing...the woman...whatever it was, that is where it was nesting.
The overhang was a marginally sloping crust 5 yards to the right of me and 3 yards to the left. Using the shovel I started dotting my oasis with deep holes cut as lines about 2 feet across measuring out the whole structure I stood upon.
It gave me a good baring and I used it to create fractures that would fold under the explosion.

"Kiiiiiing?"

The undertones behind the female voice were devilish. I had never heard such frightening sounds in my life.

"Kiiiiiiiiiiiiing?" it wailed.

I was silent. I stopped digging and stood with my eyes closed, breathing very slowly.

"Kiiiing...."

"I am not king." I whispered under my breath.

My heart was beating thunderously. I wanted to clutch it. To pull it out of my chest and protect it....or smash it.

A low moan followed by a mumbling and then a voice. A perfect beautiful female voice spoke.

"Show me your face King and I will guess your number."

My legs gave out. They failed and crumbled beneath me. I fell onto my knees and hands and began vomiting. The tears pouring from my eyes were painful. All I could do was heave and weep. Everyone of them was gone. I was terrified and alone and about to die.

The faces of my friends and family swept through my mind. Horrible deaths. Each one of them had seen it....each one had been given a number. Each one perished...there had been some pattern, but it was beyond me and it didn't matter.
I had to make sure this thing was dead.

I had to make sure this thing was dead.
That thought echoed through my mind and I took a deep breath and stood up. There was a job to finish.

Night came early....too early. I had two flares and my headlamp but it was dying. I moved as quickly as I could going deep...going hard....no time for sexual innuendo. No time for distractions. No time for pity.

Finaly as the last bit of sunlight died out I grabbed the detonator and stumbled over to the edge where I had laid the cable out. As I knelt and placed the detonator down next to the cable. I stood up and turned the headlamp on as the last bit of sunlight gave out. It was going to get below zero tonight and I know that there is only minutes before I become a slow fumbling freezing idiot moving through the darkness trying not to disturb the waiting wicked that lays beneath me. Fuck this shit.

I remembered though that I needed a trigger attachment in my pack and ran hastily over to it, fearing that my time was running very very short.

I grabbed the device and turned back around to attach it to the detonator. As I mulled my way over there I noticed the cable over the edge go taut and before I could react it had whipped me in the face and I was knocked on my back. The headlamp shorted and I found myself enveloped by a cold void.
There was a bruise on my right temple where it had made contact and I rolled over pulling the flares out of my pocket. Lighting one I raised it into the air to see what had happened.
Squinting in the first red flare up I adjusted my eyes and realized in horror what had happened. Whatever it was that was trapped on the outcrop below me had enough of the cable slack to grab onto. It had doused me in darkness and tossed the detonator over the edge.

Fuck.

FUCK!

I couldn't stand it. It hurt to be in this situation. I hated it! I HATED IT!!

Inhaling deeply I walked towards the inky deep cast in a maroon aura. There was such a horrid creepy feeling inching up my stomach as I neered the cliff. Quietly...though I'm sure it didn't make a single bit of difference; I craned my neck very slowly over the edge. I could feel the lips quivering in the freezing temperatures and I tried to silence them.
I peeked out over the edge holding my breath in, barely showing my face over.

There it was. The detonator. On the damnable nest with that thing. I could only see a bit of it in the glow of the flare. Beyond the barest image of it I found the silent darkness behind to be intimidating. Not just like high school bully intimidating, or thug in an alleyway intimidating, but like a supernaturally frightening and patient death kind of intimidating. Pulling my head back I sighed and closed my eyes.

I had no rope to get down but I had some stakes and so I made sure the cable was fastened against the ice so that it would hold my wieght for the short distance I needed it.
There would be no mistakes. I could slide down quickly, attach the device and cables and then detonate.

A weapon. I might need one. The only thing I had was one more flare and my shovel. The shovel might be useful. It had fairly sharp angles.
I walked back over to the edge looking over it with the flare raised up high. Maybe 15 or 16 foot drop, not sure how close it is to the edge.
Something slid past the ice below me. My eyes widened and I froze as I felt a trembling beneath my feet. I looked down back into the abyss and from the dark nest I found that my gut felt as though it was collapsing.

Suddenly there was a creature in my gaze!! It looked like a rotting fetid skull of a woman. It's neck was made up of severed arms grasping one another and the jaw bone dangled from the stinking strands of sinew that remained on this corpsish thing. It's left eye was gone and in its places a radiating ember fire. A blaze in which I could see myself. It drew me into a terrifying world. The world was not hell. I could see that. This was not showing me hades or a burning eternity for my soul...it was showing me the future of the earth. It was showing me the pain and suffering and torment that the earth witnessed throughout its epoch.

I crumbled at the truth that befell me and there I saw what my number was, burnt into my vision, melting into the walls of ice with the breath of fates; 0


I was...zero?

I was....cypher?

It wasn't a number.....it was a beginning.

I fell backwards breathing heavily having seen and now been influenced by the future I knew what needed to be done. I just needed to finish it.

Standing up I walked over to the side of the crevasse and stared deeply without fear. Down there, down in that dark I knew what was waiting for me. Gripping the cable I pulled the cable tight to make sure it was stable, then jumped.

I made sure it was stable...then I jumped.

My feet hit the ground and my flare went out but I could not stop, I did not stop. I fumbled in the darkness for the device with the hand that held the cables. I searched in the darkness for the detonator. It was only a foot from me, I saw it as I hit. There. I found it.
I turned towards the cable and reached into the pocket to grab the second flare.
I pulled it out, put the detonator next to the cable and found the slot to insert the trigger mechanism. Then grabbed the cable and took hold of each end readying myself. I had to see which current was which and I couldn't in the dark.
In the darkness then I heard slow indistinct breathing. My entire body froze, my hands in place.

Once I lit the last flare this thing would be there, it would be waiting for me to see it. To tell me what zero means.

0

Closing my eyes one final time I took a deep breath and lit the flare. The red spark ignited the environment around me and I saw for the first time this creature and what it was. It wasn't what I thought it was.

Behind the ice wall a throne was frozen. For what I could make out it was one of the largest and ornate thrones I had ever seen. It wasn't made of gold though, it was made of oak. Carved symbols for which I could only guess might have been religious in nature thrived in the design and it seemed like a powerful vessel for an emperor.
The thone, while magnificant, was not was I actually staring at though. It was the body that sat, frozen on the throne. A heavy and regal being, whoever this had been was of great importance. The body was draped in certain vestments but it was hard to make out. The head of this body was gone however.
On both sides of the throne a body knelt beside this emperor. A frightening visage, these were creatures of enormous stature and strength obvious protectors of this...king?

Both of the protectors heads gone as well and in place of them a sword planted where the heads might have once been. A strange and familiar site to me. Everything seemed so familiar.

A different creature seemed mottled up against the edge of the ice closest towards me. I couldn't make out the shape but it's neck seemed to have stretched beyond the edge of the wall and been freed.
The gangley rotten head hovering by way of severed arms as a neck was stemming from this fracture in the ice and it actually couldn't reach me.

Still.....I was petrified. It didn't even move. It just hovered staring.

Quickly and frantically I looked down to twist the cables around the correct current and the moment I had them wrapped I flipped the shell to the trigger and looked up.
The decrepit skull had moved closer to me and was literally 3 inches from my face.

"Welcome back to us king cypher...we have been waiting."

With that I closed my eyes and flipped the trigger.