The Tribulation Chronicles

It took John hours before he recovered enough from his journey to become mentally coherent and responsive.  His body was weak and shaking as he lay face down on the smooth surface of milky quarts.  He raised himself on his arms, then he twisted his chest to rotate into a sitting position.  His head seemed heavy and his eyes were hard to focus.  He tilted his head back to rest it on the wall behind him, but the cold bit at his scalp like teeth of an angry predator.  Nursing his head with his hand he found tiny drops of blood from his scalp on his fingertips. 

The unpleasant stimulus cleared John’s mind and vision.  He was in a cave that was made completely of salt.  It certainly wasn’t ordinary salt.  It had a sting like an angry hornet; fortunately it had a slight glow which enabled him to see.  John tested it a few more times by bringing his hand close to it and noticed that human proximity made the light dim.  He concluded that whatever it was, it wasn’t conducive to human life support.  If he stayed more than a few hours in this spot he would be overtaken by hypothermia. 

John’s walking tennis shoes would protect his feet for a short distance but he would have to find a safe-haven soon.  He noticed that the smooth quartz surfaces were safe and there was one about every thirty yards.  Unfortunately, when he ran to the next plane there was an increase in the pressure in the surrounding atmosphere.  It increased every time he moved, but he had to keep moving.  He wasn''t sure how much longer his shoes would protect him.  He ran once more and leaped to the next plane.  The pressure was piercing inside his ears.  While he was holding his head he looked over at the wall and noticed a pattern forming on it.  Every time he experienced pressure there were pulses moving through it.  It resembled a tree with branches.  John could see a junction up ahead, between the pressure in his head and the cold; he had to find a way out soon and this may be it.

As he started to run there was another surge and it was clear, the images on the walls were not branches or roots but veins.  They were vessels for the blood of dark matter John had seen inside the crystal Heart of Darkness.  Was there some type of trans-dimensional quantum shift that placed him inside the molecular lattice of the crystal — perhaps some bizarre parallel universe or even hell itself?  He didn’t know, but he did know that the pressure would make him black out and falling on the cold salt unconscious would be the end.  Just when John didn’t think he could take anymore, he reached the junction and the pressure instantly stopped.

He stood in a giant room.  It was completely quiet except for a strange demonic chant of contempt in the distance.  The room was completely dark, but he could make out some detail from the glowing salt that was on the floor.  Some salt clusters were actually floating in the room.  It appeared that he was in a great dining hall.  The table was more than 50 feet long and made of black crystal so pure it appeared as suspended oil.  The plates were made of china so black no light escaped them, like tiny cosmic black holes.  If it weren''t for the unnatural refractions they caused on the table they couldn''t be seen at all.  The goblets seemed to be cut from darkness itself.  The eerie light from the salt gave everything an unworldly hue. 

Where was the host?  John squinted his eyes and looked toward the far end of the table, and there, deep in the darkness, was a giant being.  John’s eyes widened and he stumbled back to the very edge of the doorway.  But he did not take his eyes off the massive creature as it spread its great pteropus wings synchronously to the surges of the veins in the walls.  Dark matter streamed through ruptures in the veins from the ceiling.  It poured down onto the body of the beast, where he absorbed it.  He finally relaxed and lowered his wings.  As his wings came closer to his body the flames from a great pit behind him came to life and the fires rose increasing the illumination.  His host was a massive, hideous creature.  He stood over nine feet tall.  His skin was a deep scorched red, pulled over bovid reptilian features with a Herculean physique.