Chapter Text
The first thing I noticed about my new predicament was that I could breathe, which in some respects was an improvement on my previous situation. The next thing that stood out to me, aside from the obvious anguish going on all around me, was that I was acutely aware of being dead. I remembered everything right up to and including my death. I didn’t know if that happened the last time I died. Maybe it did, and I’d forget this the way I forgot that, but remembering this place sure had seemed to be a big part of Alec’s problem, so I didn’t have much hope this would be forgotten. The last, and probably most important detail about where I was now seemed to be that I was still in the dark.
I mean, there was a lot going on around me. There were screams and wails blending together to an everlasting crescendo. It was deafening, but I couldn’t see any of it. It also meant that I was basically down by two senses until I got used to the noise, and I didn’t like that much. I automatically lifted my hands to see if I could remove the blindfold, only to find that there was no blindfold. What I found was much more horrifying than that.
I think I may have preferred to find that my eyes had simply been sewn closed, because if they had been, then I'd at least have the option of finding a way to tear the sutures and get them open, but I didn’t appear to have any eyes at all. It wasn’t like they’d been ripped out and there were big gaping holes where they should be either. They just weren’t there. All that was there was skin where my eyes were supposed to be.
My hands shook ever so slightly as I lowered them back to my sides, and my hands did not shake, like ever. They were the steadiest hands I knew . . . so my eyesight was definitely out, but what was I always saying? Your mind was the strongest weapon you had . . . Wait. Was it possible that I did this to myself . . . I mean I had been dead set on keeping my eyes closed while I was here, but I hadn’t known how to do that, so I’d taken precautions on the outside against it . . . Maybe I did do this, but if I did, then I didn’t think it had anything to do with being blindfolded when I died.
This place was so disconnected from reality that a blindfold out there would have no impact on anything going on in here. The most likely reason this happened was that I had no interest in the future, and that was the demon die's sole purpose . . . to provide the future to people who would kill to get it. If I didn’t want that, and I didn’t want to get wrapped up in all of this horror, then I suppose this is something I might come up with as a strategy on some level. I did have a tendency to go overboard on things. Of course I’d just go and make myself completely eyeless.
Okay, so how could I use this to my advantage? For one, it meant that I wasn’t necessarily bound by what you would consider normal. If I didn’t want to see, I could make myself blind. If I wanted to fly, I could probably do that too. Alec said the demon die had claimed me as its master, and I hadn’t understood what that meant. I’d mostly thought that it meant that when I died, this thing would bring me here, and I’d have no say in it, which didn't make me seem like much of a master, but maybe being its master literally meant that I was master over myself and my reality inside this world when I got here.
Did that mean that the people this thing killed didn’t have that luxury? Were they the screams I could hear? The voices had to come from somewhere. They weren’t just all in my head, and how many of them were there? The numbers I was hearing brought home that this was a lot worse than I'd thought it was, and they were real people. That could be what made this place so terrifying that you had no choice but to turn a blind eye to it and instead force yourself to watch what the future had in store for you. If you didn’t, then you’d be stuck facing a real hell with real people who were 100% innocent and still being tortured.
They hadn’t chosen to come here. They’d been snatched from their lives and brought here against their will . . . but the people who used the die knew what it did. They weren't here against their will. Why would they be so scared to see what was happening around them if they were willing to roll the die and put more people in its Hell? I suppose it was because the things being done to these people were pretty damn bad, as bad as the imaginations of a person could get, and humans had the capacity to imagine some pretty awful things. If you ever had any kind of a conscience in the first place, it probably eroded over time if you used the die enough times, and you stopped caring about what was happening to anyone else who was here. At that point you came here just to see what was happening in the future and ignored what was going on around you.
What happened when you died for good though? Did you still get master privileges for having brought however many souls here when you were alive, or did you become part of the screaming masses. That would put a whole new spin on why a person might be afraid to look anywhere but the future, because in a way, your real future was to be a part of the very thing you were trying to ignore, and that wasn’t a future anyone wanted to see.
If all that was true, then how did Alec’s Dad get free? It might be because he was a hunter and put the research in on it, so he knew a few loopholes, but maybe when he died before Alec came to Mystic Falls, his time hadn’t been as up as anyone thought. If he knew that when his body died because of something he saw in his future here, then he would've known he'd have a second chance, and maybe because he did, he’d been afforded a certain amount of freedom after his death, so he could be free to tag along when Jeremy came here. Oh god, Jeremy came here.
He didn’t seem to remember it, but I really needed to talk to that kid, and now his sister . . . our sister was dead. I didn’t know how to feel about that, but I couldn’t allow myself to feel much of anything at the moment. I had to prioritize, and right now, the priority was finding Alec and figuring out a way to bring this place down, so these poor souls could find peace somewhere else. Then I had to get back home to Damon.
I just had to figure out how to find Alec, or really where to go. Could I imagine myself being there and just show up wherever he was, or did it take a little more than that? I tried it, but nothing seemed to change, so I said it, “Take me to Alec,” and it’s not like I felt like I went anywhere that time either. The tenor of the screams around me didn’t change. There was a shrill one to my right that I was really focused on as a frame of reference, and it was still there. Maybe I needed to move?
I took a step, and something about the ground felt off. My head tilted to the side, while I tried to figure out what it was. I didn't know, but alarm bells were going off in my head. I was very grateful to be wearing my boots. Did I have any weapons? I felt around in my pockets, and I didn’t have a gun, not that I could’ve seen to use it accurately anyway, but I did appear to have some stakes and a couple of daggers. I guess my imagination brought me in here prepared. Now, I just needed to get it to take me to Alec.
I took another step, and hesitated once more at what felt like a crunch. It wasn’t a stone. What was it? Was the ground moving? It wasn’t quaking, but it did seem like it was vibrating. It almost felt like it was alive, like . . . maggots and worms. The moment I thought it, I couldn’t unthink it, but I was fairly certain that whoever created this landscape had been a fan of Dante. Luckily my Mom had The Divine Comedy in her syllabus the year we did mythology . . . was I where the Uncommitted souls go?
I hadn’t even made it to hell yet. I still had to cross the Acheron, and I had no idea how much time I had left. It’d be a lot quicker if I could just wish myself to Alec . . . To do that, maybe what I needed to do was figure out where he was first. People who divined the future were in 8th circle weren’t they. I bet that’s where most of the previous masters were, but he really hadn’t used the die for that purpose. This die might not care about where it put the innocent people it took, but it did get a pretty good idea of who its masters were and probably knew where to put them.
Where would I put Alec? I guess I’d put him in Limbo, because he did roll the die, but he hadn’t thought it would work, and Jeremy may have died, but Jeremy also came back, so it should go in Alec’s favor, and he’d sacrificed himself for other people. I’d start there.
If he wasn’t in Limbo, then I didn’t know if lust was his biggest sin, but I didn’t get the impression that it was, so I could check in the second circle, but I didn’t think he’d be there. Not gluttony or greed . . . maybe wrath. His Dad may be in the fifth circle too, but that’s where I was going next, if Alec wasn’t in Limbo, and if he wasn’t there, then I had no choice but to just keep going. I was going to be the Virgil to his Dante, and if I couldn’t figure out what kind of sacrifice it would take to destroy this world in the time I had, then even if I had to create it myself, I was going to at least get him to something that resembled Paradise.