To read from the beginning: The Winding Way, Chapter 1

"I am named Lucifer, Lord of Night, and I am the Master of Chaos and Dreams. I am an Immortal, and I must return to my realms to reclaim my title, or else I am Master no more."

"Master? Chaos? What?" Aden asked, bewildered. Sure, she had a book on the Immortals, but nothing so specific.

"It is unreasonable for me to expect one such as you to know anything about these matters," he sniffed.

Still stoic and aloof. Aden hated it. She gripped the book in one hand and glared firmly. "You said you need to 'reclaim your title' -- was it lost somehow?"

Finally a hesitation. The Immortal didn't meet her eyes and stared past her at the trees, at first as though he wouldn't answer at all. Then he finally said, "I was otherwise occupied."

No further information seemed to be forthcoming on the matter.

Aden gritted her teeth and tried to think through the situation. She usually didn't have problems with people doubting her abilities -- she was a student, after all, the most respected occupation in all of the Incarnate. If not learn and succeed, what else could she do?

"Look, if you have to get back to the Immortal so bad, I can help you get there," she said, almost hating herself. Why was she so desperate to help this... being? "Do you know how to travel the Incarnate?"

Lucifer shook his head slowly, still refusing to look at her.

"Well, then I'll take you to the next town, there should be someone there who knows how to get back to the Immortal," Aden said agreeably. "I mean, how hard can it be?" she muttered after.

"It will be a long journey," the Immortal said, finally turning to look down at her. The expression in his dark eyes was unfathomable. "And in all honesty, I am unsure of your intentions."

"Huh?" Aden frowned.

"I mean, can I trust you?" the Immortal stared at her, and for a moment she felt an almost-awkwardness emanating from him. "I am, Incarnate, in need of a guide. I know not of this realm, not of time nor space nor direction -- such things are not of my Nature. I know of the ideal of Trust, but not whether I can trust you."

"Do you always speak like a text book?" Aden grumbled, using it as an excuse to mull over his question. He had a point, and in all honesty she did have an ulterior motive -- by signing on with him, she'd gain valuable experience, and most likely be the envy of her peers. Plus he was an anomaly... and beautiful. There was just something about the whimsy of it all that attracted her; semester was done for the winter, and she would have nothing to do for a full two months before heading back to classes. She didn't want to sit in a chilly town and relax -- she wanted something new. Something fun.

Now how to make a creature from an entirely different level of cosmic thought understand all of that?

He beat her to it. "How about we sign a contract."

"A what?"

"A contract, young one," the Immortal intoned. As he said it, a feather drifted down, and before her eyes Aden saw it shift into paper. Another feather floated up next to it, forming itself into a pen, already dripping with ink. "These are all-binding, but do not fear. It simply states that you will help me return to the Immortal."

"Wait, I can't read this.”

 

And sure enough, she couldn't read it at all. It was a blank piece of paper. There wasn't even a line to sign on. She placed her fingers around the quil haltingly, unnerved by its floating presence, and snatched the paper in her other hand, holding it up to him. “Look, there's nothing written on it.”

 

“Written... I do not write, child.”

 

“What?” she choked, taken aback and even more confused than before. “Can't write? Well can't you read?”

 

“Oh yes, I can read, but I do not write.”

 

“But... how?”

 

“I have no need to write, young one. The paper,” he took it from her hand without asking, “is a symbolic representation of our all-binding contract. It does not need words, nor does it need your signature. Place your hand upon it.”

 

Aden frowned, suspicious. “What's going to happen?”

 

“In the Immortal, we transfer information instantaneously, since we have no concept of boundaries. Place your hand upon the paper, and you will... understand the contract.”

 

Aden was hesitant, for more than good reason. But here was a once in a lifetime opportunity. Here was something she had never experienced before. As a Student, it was her duty to Experience as vast and wide a range of things as possible. And when was the last time an Incarnate had a chance like this?

 

“Alright, here we go,” she muttered, and put her hand on the paper.

 

A tingling against the tips of her fingers, but that was all. Then suddenly something bloomed in her chest, something that reminded her of a flower, and what felt like a huge air bubble traveled up her throat... only instead of coming out her mouth, it continued into her head, where it expanded. Quite suddenly she felt light.

 

And then the emotions funneled through. Aden had never experienced anything like it -- direct feelings and understandings coursed through her, concepts and images that she couldn't fully interpret, yet which translated into overall sensations of trust, sincerity, partnership, and... severity. There was something gray and dark hanging over the entire ordeal, as though the situation was very dire. Aden wondered once again what had happened to her new companion -- what had made him Fall into the world of the Incarnate? Had he truly Fallen, or was something exceptional happening here?

 

Suddenly a list of information transferred through her, and she understood what would be expected of her -- honesty, loyalty, and a vow to see it through to the end. And on his side, he was offering....

 

“Nothing?” she blinked, surprised that she could talk while all of this was going on inside of her.

 

When the Immortal responded, she wasn't sure if she heard him or felt him through their strange new connection. “You are a Student, are you not?”

 

She was surprised. “How did you know that?”

 

“I am all-knowing, young one,” the Immortal replied, with no inflection of emotion. “But your just rewards will be through the Experience, so whereas I offer you nothing, I actually offer you exactly what you want.”

 

“Oh.” So he knew. She should have guessed -- the Immortals were as gods, after all. As close to gods as existed between the worlds of the Immortal and the Incarnate.

 

“How do I know you're not lying to me?” she asked suddenly, the thought having just occurred to her. “How do I know I can trust you?”

 

“The Immortals do not lie,” Lucifer answered fluidly, one perfect eyebrow raised. “We know what a lie is, and we can tell when someone lies, but we do not lie.”

 

Aden frowned. “Why not?”

 

“Because it is not in our Nature.”

 

Another vague answer -- for a fourth-year student, Aden was beginning to feel that she had missed out on some very serious information. “So then how do you know when someone else is lying?”

 

“Because,” he said plainly, as though stating a fact about the weather, “We know everything. It is the actions of things we have no familiarity with, since we are the containers of knowledge, not the actors of experience. That is your job, Incarnate.”

 

“Look, this is impossible, every time I try to get a straight answer out of you, I get a lecture!” Aden dropped her hand from the contract and picked up the quil she had set aside earlier. “I'll come along, alright? I'll help you out. And look, even though this contract is forcing me to help you, I'm doing it of my own free will, okay?”

 

The Immortal's eyes glinted, and for a moment she got the horrible feeling that he knew something she didn't. “Of course, young one,” he nodded. “Your assistance will never be forgotten.”

 

She had to reflect for a moment on just how literally he meant that.

 

“Alright,” she said. Then, “I can do this.”

 

She set the tip of the quil to paper.

 

Scratched in her signature. A-d-e-n P. L-o-s-t.

 

“Aden Lost,” the Immortal murmured, and turned the paper to look down at it. He raised a finger, and it was then that she saw his left hand, the one he had healed, how the fingers were shaped into black, clawed points. The claws were long and glinted almost metalically, as though part of his armor. He tapped his index finger against the paper and suddenly she saw a signature appear across it; elegant, long script compared to her tiny scribble. When she focused on it, however, she no longer saw the signature or the letters, but rather... somehow... felt his name.

 

“I do not write, young one,” he reminded her.

 

“Stop calling me that,” she growled, embarrassed that he had caught her staring. She shook her head, trying to clear it, and clutched the book in her hand. For a moment they stood there like that, hesitating, silent and awkward. She kept expecting something fantastical to happen since she had signed the contract, but no event or transformation took place. The sounds of the forest grew loud. Finally Aden looked back the way she had come. “The road is that way,” she said, pointing. A brisk wind suddenly skipped up, brushing at her plaid skirt and loose brown hair. She had decided to walk home in uniform, since her university clothing was no more suited for winter than the casual summer garb she had back at her dorm.

 

“Let us go,” Lucifer intoned.

 

Aden led him silently through the trees towards the road she had been following, her sense of direction more instinctive than knowledge-based. They reached the road soon and she paused again, looking up and down the dirt track, suddenly worried. Where to go? Who in the Incarnate knew how to get to the Immortal? It wasn't a simple matter of crossing a border, after all -- this was a matter of transcending dimensions. It required not just a change in reality, but a change in Consciousness -- to walk a path that was experienced as much spiritually as it was physically, which would blur the meaning of time and space. Then there was the matter of whether or not she could even enter the Immortal, or if it would somehow transform her into something that wasn't even herself anymore.

 

Maybe she should have thought this through before signing the contract.

 

Aden shook off her doubts; as a Student, it was her job to investigate, not worry. It was too late now, and she had her Experience to consider. But which way to go? Who in this world knew anything about the Immortals, other than historians looking at dusty old texts? She couldn't very well take him to her university; this was her discovery, after all, and they wouldn't know what to do with him... and she didn't want to waste time going home if it would do her no good....

 

She riffled the pages of her book with her thumb, then suddenly she paused.

 

The book. A brief foray into the world of the Immortal. She was holding it in her hand.

 

And all books had authors.

 

She snatched up the text quickly and checked the front cover, then the binding; it was an old, leather-bound thing, and no marks adorned the front or side. How could it be that she hadn't checked the author's name before? She opened it, turning to the title page... and let out a sigh of relief.

 

“And to think, when I pulled you out of the school's library for some vacation reading, you would have come to such use,” she told the book, straightening her glasses. “Written by Elo J. Hymn.” Luckily right below the author's name was the city and date it had been printed. Since authors usually printed their own books, and printing itself was a fairly new, bulky, and awkward process, chances were he would be found in the same city. “Krishna,” she murmured.

 

The Immortal was standing silently next to her, then he looked down at the book. “This book holds information about the Immortals, how did that come to be?”

 

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

 

“I do not guess.”

 

“Don't be so literal,” she sighed... she wondered if Immortals could be anything but literal. “Well somebody wrote it, and we're going to find him and ask him how to get you home. We're headed to the city of Krishna -- let's see here...” she stopped for a moment and rummaged through her book bag. Finally she produced a map. “According to this, we continue on this road for a bit, then take a fork about a mile or two that way,” she pointed into the forest in the direction she had been heading. Thankfully Krishna wasn't back the way she'd come; she didn't want to risk running into any of her schoolmates who lived closer to the university. She'd only been walking a few days, after all. Still, the town was awfully close to the border between the Goodlands and the Opaque. Evil was a force in the Incarnate that could not be ignored... they wouldn't be crossing into its domain, but they would be damned close.

 

The Immortal hardly looked interested. She turned to look up at him, curious, and her breath caught in her throat all over again -- if this was her traveling companion, then the trip was bound to be easy on the eyes. His ribbon-and-feather plated hair was the most perfect black she had ever seen, his skin flawless, his features smooth. He was ageless, it seemed, embodying all of youth and all of wise years into one perfect being. She knew she didn't look like much with her mousy brown hair and thick-rimmed glasses, but in this situation, that didn't matter in the least. Immortals were not sexual creatures. He probably could care less about how she dressed or what condition her eyes were in.

 

Black feathers still managed to be falling and dusting the ground around him, though she was never sure where they fell from, since his wings had solidified into metal ornaments. Perhaps that was it. Perhaps the feathers somehow melted from the armor itself.

 

“Let's get going,” she said, and started off down the path. “Just stick by me and we'll do just fine.”

 

“I know,” he responded, falling into step beside her.

 

Aden couldn't help but feel a boost of confidence at this. Immortals didn't lie, after all. They knew everything.

 

This winter vacation was going to be better than she ever anticipated.

We landed some hours after that, not another word having passed between us.

The atmosphere of Hibbus 9 was yellow-brown and thick, like diving into a smoker's lungs. I imagined I could smell the dense, sulfer-laden air through the portal window, though that was impossible. The meager light cast by Hibbus' singular red sun was dim and hardly worth mentioning; it was like being locked in a room that perpetually needed on more lamp. The shuttle glided through the heavy air, guided completely by radar, until it finally came to land with a grating jolt. I bounced and hit my head on the wall.

"Ouch!" I yelped.

My companion remained silent. I'm unashamed to admit I had spent most of the journey glowering at him, then finally studying him. His manner of dress was unfamiliar to me -- sure, the pants were of a typical "space pilot" material, thick and water resistant, and his shirt was plain and black... but the rest of him was swathed in what could only be described as a heavy brown cloak, the hood bulking around his shoulders as the rest pooled along the seat. Even his wrist guards, which I had at first taken for bracelets, were less than normal -- they were metal, but a strange kind of shifting material, as though formed out of pure quicksilver. Strange symbols adorned his clothing that I didn't recognize, which was unusual, since I had been instructed on most of the languages of the nearby systems.

Perhaps he wasn't locked to the wall, but his hands were shackled together, and he didn't make a move as the cell door slid open. Air rushed into the room, bringing with it the recycled flavor of the ship's main cabin along with a decidedly unpleasant stench. I wrinkled my nose -- it was like someone had left a trashcan open and rotting in the sun.

The soldiers didn't speak to us, and I refused to say anything to them. Instead I was unlocked from the wall, my chains connected to those of my partner, and we were marched from the cell. He was ahead of me and a good half-foot taller, so it was hard to see around him, but soon I didn't have the strain. We were led through the shuttle and the outer doors opened; the air that met us almost brought me to my knees.

Eyes stinging, breathing as shallowly as possible, I set foot on the dank earth of Hibbus 9. The planet smelled like... like baby poo mixed with rotted food and old milk. It was all I could do not to empty my stomach right there.

The soldiers were actually still wearing their helmets, and now I understood why. I staggered at the force of the smell, and one of them prodded me with the butt of his gun, pushing me forward. I shot him a glare over my shoulder and raised my head, forcing myself to walk upright. I would not be treated like an animal... even if I smelled like one.

The walk was a short one, thank God. A few minutes later we entered a hunched metallic building that was surrounded by low, shrub-like trees, the only kind of vegetation that seemed to exist on the planet. The smell was much less harsh indoors, though it seemed impossible to get rid of completely.

"Ah, some new additions to our collection, I see?" a voice immediately spoke up to our left. The inside of the building emulated a secretary's office almost perfectly, except for the laser bars that covered the doorways and ceilings. Five seconds inside the structure and already I had picked up at least three security probes, hovering like small metal balls in various corners. I couldn't scratch my nose without being reported on a dozen different screens.

I turned to face the man who stood there, surprised to find an older gentleman dressed in the silver colors of the Planetary Confederation, a long metal rod in one hand. His smile was wry and utterly cold as he said, "Welcome to Hibbus 9. I trust you will enjoy your stay... Miss Mann."

I raised my chin slightly, unsurprised that he knew my name. They'd probably been expecting my arrival for hours now. "You can shove the formalities where they belong, Lieutenant," I recognized the rank of the badge he had pinned to his uniform.

The man's smile didn't falter. "I'd watch your tongue, Miss Mann -- your stay here is to be the next forty years, and I can extend that for as long as I want."

I opened my mouth in anger, thought better of it, and let my jaw snap shut. I glared instead -- pissed off, yes, stupid, no. Forty years was a long time to wait for freedom... and I didn't see how I'd get out sooner, since escape was impossible. I wasn't about to make my situation worse.

The Lieutenant's eyes slid past me to my companion, who he seemed to take much more interest in, curiously enough. "Ah, and I didn't expect to see you back so soon, Mr. Black," he murmured.

My companion's smile was a familiar one -- slow and utterly insincere. "I couldn't resist the lovely scenery," he said, his voice a low, rocky baritone that scraped over the skin.

My ears perked at this -- back so soon? Meaning, he had been here before? I cast a sideways glance at him but couldn't tell where he was looking, his dark goggles were still on. I wondered why they hadn't forced him to remove them yet, but then again there were plenty of personal items I still carried that hadn't been removed, such as my piloting gloves and the locket around my neck. I didn't so much care about the gloves, but to lose the locket... well, it was the last I had of my parents.

"I can assure you that your stay will be much longer than the last one, my friend," the Lieutenant assured him, taking a few slow steps forward. He stopped when their noses were almost touching, and I didn't miss the tension in the air -- perhaps I wasn't privy to such confrontations, being a woman, but it was obvious what was going on. My friend, Mr. Black, smiled a little wider.

"Seems like the stench of this place is beginning to affect your breath, Lieutenant," he smirked. "I suppose you didn't get that transfer you were hoping for?"

Smack!

I jumped -- the Lieutenant's rod had slammed down on the desk next to us, so hard that it left a deep mark in the wood. My eyes returned to the older man, wide; he still appeared composed, but there was now a slight flush to his cheeks, the only evidence of his sudden outburst.

"That will be another ten years for you, my dear Mr. Black," he said staunchly. "Same for you, Miss Mann."

"What?" I gaped, disbelieving. "I didn't do anything!"

The Lieutenant didn't respond, the bastard! He just nodded curtly to the soldiers on either side of us. "You may take them away now... have them placed in Section 10."

"Section... wait, what's that?" I couldn't help but ask as I was rudely prodded forward. There was a security gate and then another door leading out of the compound; I could see a transport waiting for us outside. "Wait, dammit! Answer me!"

The Lieutenant only waved, his rod waggling in the air. "I do hope to see you soon, Ms. Mann," he called after us as we were yanked and forced through the security scanner; the green light traced over my clothes, allowing us to pass when it didn't detect any weapons. "But the odds of that are slim."

"Goddamn you, Lieutenant, I asked you a question-!" We were through the security gate and now exiting the building, being wrapped again in the harsh layer of atmosphere outside. I choked on my own words when the stench of the outer air hit me, then swallowed and turned to my silent companion. "You fucking bastard! I'll never forgive you for this -- I'm never going to get out of this place, and you just made it ten times worse!"

He continued walking, then stopped in front of me, waiting patiently as the transport lowered a ramp before us. The large land-based hover craft was almost as dirty as the air, but that didn't stop me from noticing the heavy duty locks on the doors, or the laser-proof windows. Miniature security probes hovered and darted about the air like gnats, tiny cameras so small they were impossible to see clearly.

"I don't believe this," I muttered, not sure which was worse -- being stuck on the same chain as this guy or being completely ignored by him. I was leader of the Shenron resistance; I was used to a lot of things, like being hated, hunted, or shot at... but definitely not being ignored!

We entered the transport a few moments later and were prodded into opposite-facing bucket seats. Our feet were firmly clamped down by a pair of rings attached to the floor. The transport took off in short time, and suddenly we were zooming across the Hibbus terrain, whizzing by brown mucky dirt and stubby dead plants. I glared at the man across from me, reminding myself of how much I hated him and why.

"Jerk," I muttered.

He raised an eyebrow and turned to look out the window. "Might as well make yourself comfortable," he spoke, his gravelly voice immediately catching my attention. He was humanoid, yes, but I was beginning to seriously doubt that he was from any of the surrounding systems... and he definitely wasn't Shenri. "Section 10 is a long trip South."

I sighed, willing to ask my question again. "What is Section 10?"

"The worst of the prison sections on Hibbus," he responded, and I got the distinct impression that he was looking sideways at me. "And with the tightest security."

I bit my lip until I tasted blood -- it was the only thing I could do, since killing him was impossible at the moment. The blood rushed to my ears though and for a moment I thought I might pass out, or explode, whichever came first.

"I'm never going to get off this fucking planet," I moaned under my breath.

He went back to looking out the window, obviously indifferent to my statement. I wished, just for a moment, that I knew what he was thinking -- how could a man be so calm in this situation?

Dammit, I didn't care, I didn't want anything to do with him. This was all his fault, anyway -- and an extra ten years at that! I seethed for a moment, then flopped back and took a deep breath.

Nothing to do now but wait.