Third Rainbow

By J M K McMullen

Beta Masterson is having trouble sleeping. So much so that he can barely function in his waking life. The firewall program he designed to keep his nightmares at bay isn’t working anymore, and the demons that haunt his bad dreams have begun to appear in the real world.

With the demons systematically destroying the world around him, Beta can’t help but feel the universe is out to get him. Like he is being intentionally hunted for no good reason. He knows the three perpetual rainbows that only he can see are an omen, that when they finally complete their journey across the sky something monumental is going to happen. Maybe it’s time for him to turn the tables on the universe, no matter what the repercussions.

Third Rainbow is a time opera about how far a man will go to change his life, told from the vantage point of a demon called the Narrator on a quest to escape hell.

• Language: English
• Publisher: J M K McMullen
• Release date: Apr 20, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301961955

Book preview

Prologue

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Chapter 1

Gray mist surrounds me.

I awake for the first time, inhale my first breath. The smell of blood and stone and caustic mist burns my lungs. Two suns glare through an omnipresent haze, searing my skin.

This is my world. This is my first memory, not chronologically, but definitively; this is the moment that defines who I am.

There are other memories before this, but they are nothing more than a prelude. They will come eventually, but for now there is only this moment.

Shoulders and elbows crush into me as the crowd surges forward, pulling me along with it. Rocks rain down from the ledges above, followed by guttural curses. All around me bodies reshape themselves, spiked backs breaking and stretching, tails twitching as they grow longer, hands deforming into mangled claws.

My body undergoes the same transformation, making me truly one of the crowd. How is it then that I can feel so alone?

Large demons line the perimeter of the ravine, cracking their whips into the crowd, driving us ever forward. One of their barbed whips slices past my face. Any closer and they would have taken off my head. A deep gash across my shoulder leaves a trail of blood winding down my chest.

The walls of the ravine become taller as we are led deeper into this hell, eventually opening into a large canyon. The two suns have disappeared behind a ceiling of thickened mist, black tendrils rolling languorously above the mouth of the canyon, leaving us in darkness. Cave openings line the walls at odd intervals, most with a lone demon hanging out, curious about the new arrivals.

Occasionally, one of the guardian demons will grab one of us by the scruff of the neck and toss us into an unoccupied cave. The crowd thins as we move deeper. Eventually I am the only one left. By now the gash on my shoulder has fully healed. When did that happen? A clawed hand grabs me by my neck and throws me into a cave. My world turns black as I hit the ground.

Chapter 2

This world has reshaped us all, turned us into slaves. This is not a world that could ever belong to us. We will always belong to this world. Existence here has taken its toll on me. My skin is thick now, taking on a deep shade of red. My memories are a violent blur, a hodgepodge of inconsequential moments, all the same, repeated over and over, forming the ugly gray miasma that is my life.

The hammer in my hand slams down, breaking away chunks of rock, as other hammers fall all around me, beating a slow and dismal rhythm, a symphony of souls bled slowly. Quitting time arrives and once again my barrel is barely half full.

Today is no different than any other day. Nothing changes. Time is meaningless. I grab my supplies and work my way to the surface, waiting as the line of workers exchange barrels of useless rock for their nightly water rations. Those who, like me, fail to meet quota are thrown to the ground by the Maltrusian guards and whipped until they can barely stand, then told not to be late in the morning.

My beatings always last longer. The guards hate the fact that my scars heal faster than they can produce them. They froth at the mouth, spiny tails slashing in frustration as they stand over me, cursing me.

Eventually they tire and let me go home, long after every one else has left. The only other thing they can think of to hurt me is to withhold my nightly water rations.

This scene represents no single night. This is every night. Nothing changes. Time is meaningless.

There comes a point where the mind just turns itself off. It gives up trying to rationalize, trying to find a better way. It’s easier. Your muscle memory pulls you along, dragging you from one night to the next, one beating to the next. The time in between quickens, until the nights melt into one.

Eventually there comes a time when that point is long forgotten. When the struggle to exist becomes a distant memory.

It was on one of these nights that I met her. Raven.

She approached me in the shadows and offered me her water. As I drank she told me she thought it wasn’t fair how we were treated.

I agreed.

She asked me to meet her again and I told her I would.

I was so overwhelmed by someone taking the time to share a moment with me that our first encounter is nothing more than a hazy recollection. All I remember clearly is how warmly her eyes had glowed. It would be nice to think this glow was the result of the profound connection instantly formed between us, but most likely it was just the reflection of the setting suns.

My cave had never felt as lonely as it did that night. Never before had it been so clear how empty my life was. I needed something more.

We have met every night since then, travelling deep into the mines, planning our escape. And every night I return to my cave. Alone.

I need something more.

Tonight has to be the night. The night we say, No more planning. Together, Raven and I will escape this dismal reality.

Together, we will find something more.

Tonight, everything changes.

Chapter 3

Within the empty corridor a shadow rises. In a tunnel built more than tall enough to allow passage of Maltrusian guard patrols, the shadow can barely stand to its full height. His shoulders slump as his hands cling to the ceiling for support, protecting his head from colliding with a support beam as he passes under. Hanging from the beam, the shadow stares down the Sublevel Four corridor.

A single note so pure it washes away all pain breaks the cacophony of work hammers.  It is by far the most beautiful sound he has ever heard.  He steps around the body on the ground, careful not to slip in the slowly spreading pool of blood.

Up to now, this shadow was nothing more than a myth to me. A tall tale. A spook. A dark whisper crawling across my spine, breaking the vacant silence, making me keep watch over my shoulder and around every corner. But now he has entered my story. Soon to enter my life, he has become real, giving the shadow substance.

Every inch of his fire-blackened skin is covered with black ink. The purest jet black, shaped into intricately winding, non-intersecting patterns, folding and enveloping each other endlessly. These tattoos hold no symbolic or spiritual meaning. He finds no solace in their hypnotic designs. He sees no beauty in this ink-worked chaos so meticulously placed upon his body. The layout of the tattoos is random and insignificant. Only two designs deviate from this stochastic labyrinth of black dye.

The first inconsistent tattoo is an eye centered low upon the front of his hairless scalp. Long, winding tentacles reach out from the eye, each tentacle replicating before coming to end in fruitless, arthritically coiled grasps, reaching around his eyes and toward the base of his neck, around his jaw line, and under his chin. The only use of color on his body can be found in the iris of this eye, which fades from a soft violet, through the entire visible spectrum, into a deep maroon.

The second inconsistent tattoo is a cover-up of two scars permanently etched into his back, forming a ninety-degree intersection at the base of his neck. One scar runs horizontally from his left shoulder blade to his right. The other runs from the base of his neck, where it meets the first, down to the base of his spine. This tattoo reminds him and others of the burden they all must bear. It is also how legend has come to name him:

T.

T releases his grip on the rafter in search of that one beautiful note. He wanders through the passages, absentmindedly studying the glowing ecosystems that exist upon the cavern walls, touching each of the faintly pulsing crystals as he passes.  Following the sound, he soon finds himself at the mouth of a corridor clogged by a congregation of Lightbringers.

The Lightbringers stand around him, postures so distorted their hands almost brush the ground, their atrophied muscles barely able to support them. Their skin emits a faint luminosity, a pale white beacon to the Maltrusians who make their short patrols into the Sublevel.

At the mouth of each corridor branching off from this small cavern stand a dozen of these white beacons, stooped and glowing, staring.

A sensation in the back of T’s mind causes him to look up just in time to see me disappear down a corridor on the far side of the chamber. All this time searching for me and I practically fall into his lap. Later, he will follow my trail back. He would follow now, but to do so would mean forcing his way through a sea of Lightbringers.  Besides, the scene before him is far too captivating.

In the center of the cavern, a lone Lightbringer has taken refuge behind a tall stalagmite, hastily trying to clean up the broken shards that litter the ground around it.  The broken crystal this Lightbringer so diligently tries to dispose of still resonates with the energy formed by its shattering, the source of the sound that had drawn T here.

A pack of Maltrusian guards surround the sobbing Lightbringer with whips unleashed, their spiny tails whipping in anticipation.

Another Maltrusian enters and crosses the cavern to where the ruined shards lie.  The Lightbringer grovels at his feet, osteal arms protecting its head in a pathetic display of submission. Its feeble cries and the dripping stalactites are the only sounds heard as they bounce off the cavern walls.

Drip....

Drip....

Drip....

Two of the guards each grab one of the sobbing slave’s arms and lift it so its body and legs hang lifelessly between them, its pale blue eyes wide with fear. It shakes its head left to right, right to left, trying to erase the past few minutes.

The lead Maltrusian begins to chant.

T shakes the fog from his mind. He had become entranced by the Maltrusian’s chant, as had everyone around him, losing the last few moments of the ritual. The lead Maltrusian now holds an ornate spiked hammer high over his head.  T watches as the perfectly balanced spike crashes into the Lightbringer’s skull with a weak crack.

She falls to the ground in silence.

The Maltrusian places his foot on her shoulder and pulls back on his hammer, calmly reclaiming the tainted spike, passively wiping away chunks of bone and brain tissue.

A younger Lightbringer charges past T, breaking past the guardian.  He kneels beside his lifeless mother, resting her head in his lap, her comatose blue eyes staring up at him.  Blood and gray matter flow onto his lap in regular bursts.  Tears stream down his face, falling onto his mother’s face, washing the blood away.

At a command from their leader, the Maltrusian pack snatches the body away from the boy and departs.  The cavern is now empty except for T and the young Lightbringer, who kneels in his mother’s blood, holding in his hand one of the broken shards that had been the cause of his mother’s death.

Chapter 4

I am not accustomed to real sleep. It is not safe to fall asleep in a world where you must always be on guard. So how did I end up here?

Fear stills the beat of my heart as I wake from my first true slumber. As I wait with eyes closed, pretending to not be awake, listening for any foreign sound, I notice a throbbing tenderness at the base of my neck.

What happened? My last memory is of going down into the deep mines. Of accidentally brushing that Lightbringer, causing her to drop her precious crystals. Of waiting for Raven at our rendezvous point. She never showed up.

What happened to me? How did I end up here?

Where is here?

Leaving my eyes shut tight, I focus my other senses, searching for any clue that might present itself. I can feel myself lying prone, my old familiar hammock supporting me awkwardly in the air. At least I now know where I am.

My cave’s recognizable moldy smell is mixed with the aromatic smoke of smoldering wood. This smell is familiar, smoke from the only wood available, a sweetly decaying essence, but it is also mixed with an unfamiliar, pungent aroma that causes my nostrils to burn.

And so I lie there as time passes, intoxicated with fear, weak and vulnerable, surrounded by absolute silence and darkness. My untended claws dig into my palms; my tightly clenched fists are sweaty and aching. My muscles twitch irregularly, undergoing clonic spasms caused by my still unconfirmed fears.

What awaits me when I open my eyes?

Sweat rolls down my forehead and past my horns, two tiny nubs that have barely broken the surface of my scalp. The sweat penetrates my eyelids; the burning sensation antagonizes me, but I do not blink.

I cannot let myself blink. I dare not open my eyes.

Something awaits me in the shadows. It waits stoically for me to acknowledge its presence. It wants me to see.

I can feel it, haunting me. The energy it emits mingles with mine, the very presence of its aura twisting and perverting until I am no longer the demon I remember.

A tiny whisper of sound penetrates my aural threshold. A spastic flutter, like that of wind passing over a dancing flame.

I notice for the first time a subtle heat against the back of my eyelids. An almost imperceptible red haze tinges what had appeared before to be total blackness. An ethereal white essence pulses and merges with this red filter. Someone has gone to a great deal of trouble to stage this scene on my behalf, but why?

Cursing my fear, I open my eyes. A message is written in blood on the ceiling above my hammock, awaiting me in the waxing and waning, flickering light.

Time to open your eyes, it says to me.

Swinging my feet over the edge of the hammock, I make a run for the cave’s opening. By instinct I navigate around the fire pit, unaware of the display laid out there but, before I can take a second step, my legs give out beneath me. My shoulder and chin slam into the stone ground.

Her eyes stare back at me, cold and lifeless. Two red candles, dwindling in their short-lived illumination, frame my beloved’s preserved head in the center of my cave’s cold fire-pit. I call out her name. Raven! Four crystals, pulsing white light as one, arranged equidistantly around the perimeter of the cave, add an eerie quality to the already macabre pathos.

A tall, muscular body crawls from underneath my hammock, the shadow formed into flesh. His claw drips blood as he pulls himself toward me. The same blood that drips from his claw now flows freely from a gash running down the back of my right calf.

His dark eyes stare at me with longing. The third eye tattooed into his black scalp glares at me, a reflection of the dream from which I have just woken. Its silver lens glitters, hypnotizing me, pulling me towards it. The rainbow iris swirls psychedelically. A white crystal hangs from his neck, pulsing in time with the four crystals arranged around the cave.

He opens his mouth, as if to speak, or to enthrall me into not fighting back.

Before he can utter his dark evocation, I pull my good knee to my chest, throwing my foot toward his face. With the first sweep, my front claws rake his eyes. I quickly return with the ball of my foot, colliding into the subtle indent of his temple. His massive shoulders go limp and his head hits the floor. He is still breathing, but for now he is unconscious and unable to cause me harm.

I pull myself up the wall and limp out of my cave for the last time, making sure my trail is clear for him. I want him to follow.

I return to Sublevel five, past where the Lightbringer was slaughtered, to where Raven and I secretly met to plan our escape. Only now I am alone; it is just me escaping. It still hasn’t dawned on me at this point that I will never see her again.

Running until I reach the underground river, I throw myself in, ignoring its putrid squalor. The current pulls me along, slamming me against jagged walls, dragging me under repeatedly, forcing me to swallow its vile elixir, and ultimately depositing me from some external aperture, the ground nowhere in sight.

Suspended high in a foreign atmosphere, I find myself floating through mist. My body gyrates, attempting to figure out which way is down.

My fall is stopped sharply as I slam through the surface of a small pond. Tiny, steel-like jaws tear bits of flesh from me underneath the water’s dark surface. A soft tentacle brushes my leg as I pull myself out.

The toxic liquids that fill my stomach churn violently within me. The noxious atmosphere makes me gag and I vomit. I do so again and again, until I can no more. Even then my body will not relent in its attempt to purge itself of this new, vile manifestation. After my body has ceased in its attempts of self-cleansing, I stand and return to my journey.

A vertical face awaits me. My climb begins. Hours pass, marking my slow ascent, engulfed within the choking mist. And as I find for myself a tiny shelf on which to take a brief respite, a soft splash echoes from below. He is following. Good.

Laying there, resting, I remember Raven’s smile, finally allowing myself to realize I will never see her do so again. I never truly believed I could feel this empty.

My ascent continues for two passes of the larger sun, eventually leading me to that first peak, looking out toward the horizon as the smaller sun tries to pull itself up and over. I have never before imagined seeing so much at once. The mist is low, and I can see peaks in all directions, to infinity.

What a wonderful beginning this is.

Chapter 5

Gray mist surrounds me.

I wait here now, hiding, hoping to spot him again. And though the mist is thick, concealing him from me, I find myself staring at a point in the distance, knowing that point is him, following. He’s a part of me now, his presence always in the back of my head. There is a bond between me and him. The question is does he feel it too? Can he sense me as well?

Sitting here is a waste of time, but I am tired. On a clear day the many peaks I have traversed would be visible, and also the many peaks that lie ahead. This chase has gone on far too long now, with no end in sight. I want nothing more than to stop, to give in to fate and die graciously, if only for a moment of rest. There has to be something more, something for me to find; anything is better than this. My only option now is to step out of the shadows, continue to press forward and hope to reach my goal soon.

Movement crosses my peripheral vision and I turn my head.

There is nothing but stone and mist.

I slide down from my perch and step to the ledge.

I am faster than he is. This has been my one advantage so far. I am more agile, more resilient. But my stamina grows low and my patience grows weary. How much more can I take? This beating myself physically, mentally, and spiritually.

A soft breeze blows, providing an all too brief sense of relief as it caresses my burnt skin. The mist eddies as the stagnant wind moves through the valley below, allowing me to see the pass into which I am currently descending. And what awaits me at the bottom but another ascent. The wind dies abruptly, and with it whatever fragment of hope I had left.

Will I ever escape?

At my feet, a sheer drop of a cliff face awaits. Slow and labored, my descent begins. Every muscle aches with the strain; my hands and feet are bloody. Scrapes and abrasions cover my body and legs, appearing as fast as I can heal them. If only I could wash this filth from my hands, my pores, from my entire body. It burrows under my skin, driving into the core of my being, filling my soul.

Pure water will one day be mine. I will drink of it freely, submerge myself in it, drown myself in it. There is no memory of what it feels like, caressing my dry skin, but I know it will be worth the wait.

A growl escapes my cracked lips as I push myself to climb faster. Let him catch me. Let him try to stop me.

*****

T steps to the ledge and surveys the valley before him.

As always, he can feel his prey ahead of him through the mist. A smile cracks his stone façade for the smallest of moments. Deep laughter, the rumble of a burgeoning earthquake, emanates from within.

Not much longer.

Looking down upon the rock face, he tries to recall a time he has ever felt so alive. He fingers the five parallel scars that cross his face and remembers when they would have long since disappeared. Time changes everything.

You can’t run forever, he muses, then begins to climb down.

*****

High on this rock ledge on the other side of the valley exists a solitary tree. Taking advantage of the minimal protection it provides from the suns, I have taken my perch beneath its canopy, swinging slowly in the swing that hangs from its bough. The motion of the swing is relaxing. Who would ever bother to wonder where it came from?

Mangled and tortured, twisted and misshapen, the tree above me does not grow in the sense that most living things grow. It feeds off of the decay and toxins residing deep within this barren terrain. It sucks from the sulfurous streams flowing like blood through the crust of this desolate landscape. This has been the key to its species survival. Others like it can be seen as distorted shadows in the distance, sparsely scattered across the landscape.

Swinging forward and backward below this twisted canopy, I overlook a three-hundred span drop, barely able to discern through the mist the floor of the valley I have recently passed. When his shadow appears again it will be time for me to continue, but for now I need rest. The warm embrace of the swing pulls me in deep. If only I could stay here forever.

The feel of him getting close wakes me from my reverie. Seeing his shadow in the valley below, I jump out of the tree swing and run.

*****

T pulls himself up onto the ledge and immediately moves to the tree for support. A fit of coughing doubles him over, whitewashing the moment in pain. One hand braces him from falling, digging at the tree’s misshapen trunk. His free hand grips the glowing crystal that hangs from his neck by a worn leather strap. His body convulses, threatening to pull him to his knees. Blood and spit drip from dry, cracked lips.

He needs to catch me soon, to end this chase before it kills him. Before the seizures consume him. Before he grows too weak to fight.

He collapses backwards, allowing his body to come to rest in the tree swing.  It glides back as he lands, yet amazingly the rotted ropes do not break.  He can’t help but empathize with the swing.  Completely out of place.  Ready to fall apart.  Somehow holding together.

As the caustic mist idly rolls past and the dark shadows melt with the changing angles of the suns, T forgets about the chase for a moment and swings. Still clutching his crystal, he closes his eyes and rests. The warm embrace of the swing pulls him in deep. If only he could sit here forever.

No. He needs to catch me.

Before it is too late.

T relinquishes his hold on the crystal necklace, the one he received from the young Lightbringer, and stands, continuing his pursuit.  Behind him, the decaying swing slowly oscillates to a stop, a gradually dying pendulum.  It never truly believed it could feel this empty.

*****

I kneel on the ground with my map rolled out before me, the one Raven gave me on our last encounter.  My clawed fingertip points now at the spot that represents the fork in the path ahead of me.  Clearly noted on the left path is a note that says ‘DO NOT go this way!!!'

I roll the map up and let it disappear, then quickly make tracks down the left path.  Once satisfied with my work, I return to the right path, concealing the trail behind me as I go.

He is on the move again but I am far enough past the fork that he shouldn’t see me. If he feels the bond between us the same as I do, then he will know when he gets far off course.

Hopefully this ploy will buy me some time.

Hopefully.

*****

T turns down the left fork, following the tracks left for him, not noticing the pull of the bond between him and me gradually changing direction.  He has been feeling weak and dizzy lately.  He is in a hurry; time is running short.  He has been seeking this moment for way too long now.  He can feel it in his bones.

Please, let it not be too late, he pleads to the mist that surrounds him, closing his eyes momentarily to fight down the pain.  As always, there is no answer.

Chapter 6

The mist is strangely segregated today; the threat of fatality hangs thick in the air. One layer of mist, black tendrils intricately entwined with one another, roils high in the sky, concealing the peaks far above. The other estranged layer creeps low to the valley floor, a rolling, vaporous inferno concealing my current destination.  An odd forest rises out of the midst of the liquid fire in perfectly organized rows, equally spaced.  The new and exotic trees that make up this forest are mere shafts from which no canopy grows.

Continuing along the steep path leading into the obscured valley, I wonder where my pursuer is now.  I can still feel the bond between us, but it has grown fuzzy, indistinct.

I soon re-enter the mist and immediately search for a suitable place to rest my eyes, taking my perch and beginning my meditation, still aware of my surroundings, always ready for him to appear out of nowhere.

Hours pass like the slow descent of a solitary teardrop, and before I know it I am once again twitching restlessly.  This constant anxiety, this perpetual anguish, is turning me to stone. Into a petrified replica of myself, unable to bend with the unending flood of distress that forever beats at my leathery skin.

I have become desperately rigid.  And I crave resolution.  At this point any ending will do.

Returning to the main path, I continue my quest.  My muscles twitch irregularly and my joints are swollen, symptoms of the constant physical stress exerted upon them