Shadsie
Sage of Tales
Disclaimer and Notes: The Kid Icarus game series belongs to Nintendo. No profit is sought with this story. This takes place in the original Kid Icarus game. I recently downloaded it and played it on my 3DS and beat it, curious about it after having played Uprising. Hard game is hard. Its difficulty and general setting (at least the Underworld part of it) gave me some very dark ideas.
AN ANGEL IN HELL
Shame. That was what he felt – more than the aches in his body and his head. Once he was awake enough to notice it, he choked on the dust of wherever he was. The boy was laying on his side, his dirty toga bunched up over him. He moved and heard the rattle of chains. His wrists and his ankles were heavy, clad in manacles. They were especially uncomfortable where they’d been buckled over his sandal-straps, pinching the leather against his skin. Everything was horribly dry. His tongue felt like chalk. It was too dark for him to tell where he was, though the smell of the place gave him a guess.
The boy blinked. He was in darkness, but it was not pure. There was just enough gloom for him to see his bruised hands in front of his face, with blood filming over the broken skin on the knuckles. His chest hurt. Some monster had shot him in the heart…right? At least that’s the last thing he remembered. No, not all. His name was being called.
“Pit! Pit, get out of here!”
The shame hit him again. Skyworld was under attack… yeah, he remembered that much. Palutena had marshaled her army to defend their home, meanwhile, she charged up her own power to fight Medusa and the forces of the Underworld. One of the centurions had told him to fall back and hide in one of the bath houses or in the barracks. Pit was a “hatchling,” a child – too young to be a soldier. What’s more was that everyone knew of his handicap. He was the little one with wings that didn’t work that everyone wanted to protect. He was the one that could not fight on his own.
Or so they thought. The elder angels never seemed to acknowledge how Pit had come by wounded wings in the first place. Characteristic of his reckless nature, he’d ignored orders and fought the smaller enemies that were sweeping over the main sky-island with whatever he could find, ultimately using his bare fists, which were about as effective as one would expect, which was not at all. He eventually fell back with a group of other young ones, all of them acknowledging a need to survive as their duty to Lady Palutena. When they’d reached a bath house, that’s when Pit saw the shadow-flash of a darkness-bolt and felt a pain in the center of his chest. Next came a dropping-sensation in his consciousness as his legs gave out from under him.
Now he was sitting in the gloom, a stench of ash up his nose, chained to the floor or a wall – he could not tell. His wings felt intact, though heavy with dirt. When he twitched them, he felt the unique small sharp pain of a few broken flight-feathers – their shafts twisted at odd angles in the skin that held them. Pit did not know where he was, but he knew that it couldn’t be anywhere in Skyworld. There were no dungeons there, and if there were, they would be better lighted than this place. The air didn’t smell right for anywhere even close to his home. There, the air was fresh, crisp and cool, not stagnant and as heavy as a sweat-soaked wool blanket. He supposed he could be on the surface-world, the place where the humans lived, but the air didn’t smell right for there, either.
Pit wondered where everyone else was. What had happened to the army? His friends? Where was Lady Palutena? He started to cry out for her, but his throat and his tongue were too dry for him to do much more than whisper. Why had he been captured? The Underworld forces – or Medusa herself – could have easily killed him, unless she was otherwise occupied. Pit did not think he was a disembodied soul. He didn’t think souls required chains. His body ached enough for him to be sure he’d still had one. Maybe he was slated for torture or was here because he’d been left to starve? Perhaps he’d been forgotten, or Medusa was just exercising her trademark cruelty. She enjoyed blighting crops just to watch villages of people starve to death slowly. Not even the indifferent Goddess of Nature took as much delight in such slow paths of “population control.”
In pain and tired, Pit had nothing better to do but to lay his tiny, abused body back down and stare into the inky abyss. Maybe one of the elder angels would rescue him? What if the whole of Skyworld had been taken? If only he hadn’t run… if he’d fought harder… Lady Palutena had needed him – all of them – and all he could do was run and hide because he was a useless… and flightless…little hatchling.
Shame. He was pathetic. Pitiful.
“Pit…”
Pit immediately shot upright. He knew that voice! It was like the tinkling of bells… The sweetest, kindest voice…
“Pit…”
It echoed through his head. Maybe it wasn’t even real. He searched for its source. He saw a glimmer of golden light appear in front of him. A faded, transparent image of his goddess appeared before him. It wavered, as if it were being filtered through water.
“Lady Palutena?” he asked. “Are you alright? Where are you?”
“Oh, they were so rough on you…” the image replied. Her eyes held a deeper sadness than Pit had ever seen in them. One of them looked bruised, too. “Skyworld has fallen. Medusa has me imprisoned. She has turned the centurions to stone and is keeping them in the fortresses she has built.”
“What?” Pit asked, his wings shooting stiff and straight. “You’ve been captured?”
“I’m afraid so. Pit, I need you to rescue me. Please hurry!”
“Why…why me? Just me? I’m so small… and I can’t fly…”
“I know, Pit,” Palutena’s image responded. “But I need you. You are… the only one left.”
“The only one l-”
The Goddess of Light held out her hands and in them materialized a small, golden bow and a tiny arrow that glowed with white light at its edges. “My strength is fading. This is all I can do. You are in the depths of the Underworld, Pit. I am being held in my own palace. You are going to have to reach the fortresses and defeat their guardians. They serve as gateways.”
“I’ll do it,” Pit said decisively as he reached for the bow. He found the manacles falling from his wrists and unbinding themselves from his ankles.
“I’m counting on you,” Palutena said as she faded off, leaving Pit, once again, alone in the deepest gray.
“Hey, wait!” the little angel called, “Lady Palutena? How do I get out of here?”
He was answered with one last echo of her voice. “Oh, you’ll figure it out.”
“Greeeat,” he said, rolling his eyes. At least he was armed now, and he could move around. He groped around in the dark, finding a rocky wall. It rolled and undulated as if he were inside the petrified remains of a once-living creature. He felt a patch of wetness along the wall. Without a second thought, he started licking it furiously. At this point, he was so mind-numbingly thirsty that he didn’t think about a possible source or even what kind of moisture he was lapping up. A bit mossy tasting… maybe slightly metallic and mineral-ish, but it was water. Pit knew that it wasn’t blood because it tasted quite different than the taste that had been sticking to the roof of his mouth since he’d woken up. Likewise, he didn’t think the flavor was bad enough to be any other kind of fluid.
In fact, it actually tasted like hot spring water! It had gone lukewarm and most of a hot spring’s healing effects happened when the water surrounded a body, but this little drink was refreshing him nicely. Pit felt up the little rivulet, pawing until he came to what felt like a little crack in the earth. He began prying it and digging at it. The water had to have a source and the fact that it was coming in through this wall meant that the wall was weak.
The boy jumped back as the earth shifted and light shone through a hole just large enough for him to squeeze through. The light was not a bright light, more of a pale, grayish, reddish glow, but it still was a welcome contrast to the almost-pure-black of the “cell.” Pit, thankful for once that he was very small, wriggled through. Once his eyes adjusted, he took in strange sights. The earth was hard and cracked beneath his feet, like desert clay. There were ridges and platforms of stone everywhere, as well as broken pillars and grotesque statues. On the horizon there appeared to be waterfalls – or perhaps lava-falls, touched with angry red light.
Also, after he took a few steps, there were snakes falling on his head.
“Gaaarragh!” the angel yelped as he untangled himself from their slithering and shook one out of the front of his chifton. They sprang up, trying to bite him. They had little wings just behind their heads. Pit shot them, rapid fire; with the never-ending blessed arrows his dear goddess had granted him.
As he jumped up to the edge of a stone ridge, he felt a little woozy. He held out his right arm and examined the two neat little holes in his forearm. He’d been bitten. The poison left a burning sensation in his veins, but he wasn’t dead yet. He wondered if he’d died down here if he’d just stay, seeing as the Underworld was supposed to be the Land of the Dead. Pit soldiered on.
More snakes and a chubby monster that flattened itself to avoid his arrows came for him. The boy dodged, but earned another snakebite on his heel when he was not quick enough. Pit felt his muscles getting stiff. “No, not now,” he grumbled. “I’m barely even into my mission...”
He heard the whistling of what passed for wind through the heavy air and was sure he’d heard moaning. Was this the moaning of wandering souls? The waterfalls in the scenery beyond the ridges he was climbing… Pit realized that it must be the River Styx, tumbling down into the depths endlessly, souls drifting along its course. He could not see any souls if there were any around him. They were not the kind of thing people could usually see – not even angels. He wondered if that was why the air was so heavy. Was it thick with souls? A feeling of despair permeated the atmosphere. It was the utter opposite of the sky, beautiful and free.
Pit hopped up upon a steep ridge and froze when he heard a horrifying screech. A creature in black robes with a skull for a face came rushing for him, brandishing a farmer’s scythe. Before the little angel could get his bearings, he felt the scythe slick down into his shoulder and into his body, cleaving his spirit.
Wide-eyed and full of fear, he whispered “I’m finished!” to no one in particular.
The very next moment, a split-instant later, Pit was on the ground next to the hole he’d dug himself out of. He sat up and patted himself. He had no wounds. He hadn’t been cut in half and even the snakebite-wounds were gone. Strangely enough, he felt a lot better than he had a moment ago. The feeling of poison his veins had vanished. The bow Lady Palutena had given him lay at his side.
Pit stood up and looked at his hands and then at the bow as he picked it up. “Did I just die?” he asked himself. He flexed his wings and felt his arms and shoulders. He ran a hand through his hair. Pit still felt achey and very physical. He did not think that he had dreamed being killed by the Reaper. He trudged onward, taking the ledges again.
He avoided the snakes this time, destroying them expertly and taking a bounty from them in the form of an essence they left behind. Pit recognized these kinds of essences. The angels and centurions in Skyworld used them as a form of currency. It was a kind of pride in one’s kills of monsters. The richer you were, presumably, the greater a warrior you were – or at least it was a testament to how skilled you were as a merchant to the great warriors.
Pit ducked below the ledge that held the Reaper. He lobbed arrows into its back when it wasn’t paying attention. It was rather interesting to do a little stealth. Everything was going pretty well. He was climbing out of the Underworld environs at quite a clip. He was sure he’d reach the first gate-fortress in no-time.
He took a running leap onto a small ledge above him. Pit’s sandal slipped and he promptly fell. He unfurled his wings to try to catch himself, hoping to glide to safety, but he plummeted too quickly. The flightless angel slammed into hard stone and dust. The bones of his wings shattered as his back crushed them. His legs bent and twisted beneath him. The boy felt his lower spine snap. He screamed and moaned. When he opened his eyes, all he could see out of the corner of one of them was an arm and a twisted bit of wing. Both appendages were covered in blood. He’d fallen hard and was not getting up again.
He got up again. Pit stood up, puzzled at his sudden in-tact state and at being back at the place outside of his cell.
“I was finished again,” he said to himself as he frantically spun, twitching his wings. “Why am I alright?” He grabbed his hair in both fists. “This place is messing with my head!”
Again, Pit began to climb out of the pit. He shot enemies and avoided Reapers. The small angel ducked into a cave to take a rest. To his surprise, he found a man there, sitting before a blanket laden with curious items.
“We have everything,” the strange man said before explaining his prices. The heart-essences… that is what he took as payment, just like the denizens of Skyworld did. This was interesting to Pit, seeing as the man appeared to be a human.
“Why are you down here?” Pit asked. “You’re the first person I’ve seen in this horrible place. You’re a human, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” the man replied. “I’m human.”
“Why are you in the Underworld?” Pit ventured. “Are you a prisoner, too?”
“You can say that,” the merchant said. He refrained from giving his name. He shook his head when Pit asked for it.
“Do you want to come with me?” Pit offered.
“You are trying to escape?” the merchant said with a laugh. “You silly child… you actually think you can get out of here?”
“I’m an angel,” Pit replied. “I don’t belong here. Of course I’m gonna get out! I serve the Goddess Palutena and she needs me!”
“Hmm,” the man mused, scratching his beard. “Is that goddess in trouble? I was wondering why I’d been finding so many of these around.”
The shopkeeper reached into his cloak and pulled out a single, long white feather with a pale gray edge. Pit grabbed it and stared at it before the man snatched it back out of his hand. “Three-fifty,” he said, “no less.”
Pit’s lower lip started to quaver. “Do you know what this is, sir?” he asked.
“Of course. It’s an angel-feather. I’ve been finding them all over the places where I wander. They’re quite prized among damned souls. Supposedly, they can help one to fly. Some fools think they can use them to escape the Underworld, which is why I become rich whenever I find one.” The man laughed. “I don’t know why you would need one. You have a nice pair of wings full of ‘em. In fact, if you don’t buy something and get out quickly, I might just take your ‘inventory.”
Pit shivered at the greasy and violent smile the man was giving him. “You don’t want my wings, sir,” he replied quickly. “They don’t work.”
Pit wondered which of his friends that feather the man had re-pocketed had come from. He thought it resembled one of Hyoko’s. His wings were slightly gray at the edges. Hyoko was one of the senior angels, one with wings on his back – of Palutena’s “pure breed” as distinct from the centurions. Angels of Pit’s kind had more of a sense of free agency and were generally brighter than the centurions, which were grunt-soldiers.
“You said something about damned souls?” the angel asked.
“What do you think I am, boy?” the man replied, “Surely you did not think that I was an honest, living man, did you?”
“Lady Palutena says that souls are an essence, not really like a whole person. And, well, if you’re a ghost, you look too solid to be an apparition.”
“You’re pretty solid down here, angel-boy,” the merchant grunted. “Some souls feel physical enough that, at least in a place like this, they can be indistinguishable from the living. You can even feel physical pain, which you ain’t supposed to be able to without a body. It’s all about perceptions; you see… how strong your memory of pain is. Most souls just wander, but some of us are under judgment. The powers that be delight in giving the wicked their due – or in simply consuming our souls.” The man laughed darkly. “I’ve survived here for a long time, more than a century by my reckoning – for a given value of ‘survival.”
Pit considered a vial of what he was sure was a life-giving elixir of the kind Palutena’s soldiers healed their wounds with back in his home. “This place messes with your head,” he sighed. “I was pretty sure I’d died a couple of times before reaching this cave.”
“Died, you say?” the man said, his voice brightening with curiosity.
“Yeah,” Pit explained. “The first time, I was hurt by monsters and sliced up by one of those crazy Reapers. The next, I fell. I was broken on the rocks, but in an instant, I was fine. It hurt a lot – both times.”
The man laughed, hearty and loud. “An angel fell, oh, that’s rich!”
Pit furrowed his brow and narrowed his eyes. “I already told you… my wings don’t work. I’m not proud of it.”
“How pitiful!”
“Do all damned souls down here like rubbing salt in innocent people’s wounds?”
“Do you think I would be a damned soul, doomed to run a hole in the wall shop for eternity if I wasn’t a wicked man?”
“I think I have enough for this vial,” Pit said, pointing to the item.
“Perhaps you are also a damned soul,” the man suggested, taking Pit’s hearts and allowing him to take the bottle of bright red liquid.
“I was captured by Medusa’s forces while trying to defend my Goddess and my home,” Pit groused. “I am not like you.”
“Why do you keep coming back to life after you seemingly die then?” the man asked, cocking his head. “This is the Land of the Dead. Most souls just float around, migrating to the City of Souls to await reincarnation – unless, of course, Lady Medusa is feeling a mite peckish and catches them… or Thanatos, or Hades… or one of the more powerful monsters that spend their undeath here... What you’re going through, little angel, sounds a lot like what the ones they like to torture go through. You feel the pain of injury and dying over and over again, but you cannot move on. Not ever. It sounds to me like you’ve been doomed to wander the path of pain, your eyes set skyward, reaching for a sky you’ll never see again! I wonder what you did to piss off Medusa so badly!”
Having made his purchase, Pit balled up his fists and yelled at the shopkeeper. “I’m going to get out of here! You wait and see! I’m going to save Lady Palutena!”
“Keep dreaming!” the man laughed as Pit fled the cave and a magical door shut itself behind him, barring re-entry to that shop. He wandered on, shot a few more monsters, and found himself with just a moment’s peace in a little hollow. The boy sat down and draped his bow over his knees. He pressed his wings against his back tightly, trying to stifle a tremor that was running through them.
The hatchling wondered at the merchant’s cruel words. Of course he’d angered Medusa. All of the citizens of Skyworld had because they served Lady Palutena. She’d given Medusa a hideous form and had banished her from the living world long ago, not that she ever stayed to her own realm, anyway. Of course, Palutena was right in her judgment and had cursed Medusa for a good reason. Palutena had not truly taken away Medusa’s beauty so much as she’d revealed the monster inside. Pit knew this because what had happened was different than one of his Lady’s pranks. If she’d turned an angel into a monster as a joke, it was always temporary. Spells like that never stuck unless a person had a monstrous heart. Still, given her monstrous heart, Medusa did not repent her crimes and bore a fierce grudge against not only the Goddess of Light, but all who were connected to her.
Pit knew that he was, perhaps, a special target. He’d lost his ability to fly when he’d snuck into a battle to defend humans from Medusa. He’d received wounds that some angels considered a worse fate than death, given the species’ natural love for flight. He had no doubt that his audacity had been remembered, however ineffectual it had been. That had to be the reason why he was chained up and not severed from life. He was meant to be a “toy,” a torture-victim for when Medusa got around to “playtime.”
No… Pit realized that it was potentially even worse. Like the merchant had said… this was the torture! He was doomed to keep climbing, forever and ever, toward some fortress that probably didn’t even exist! If he stayed still for too long, he’d only be attacked and eaten alive by monsters – only to come back and have it happen again! If he kept moving, the same fate, with the occasional fall to a broken body. This heavy air would press upon him forever… the air that smelled like funeral-pyre ashes… hoping to see the Light again and never reaching Her… never reaching Her…
And what if…
Pit tossed his bow away, watching it skid in the dust. That vision of Palutena he’d had in his cell…What if it was a fake? Did Medusa shape-shift to make herself look like Palutena to deceive him? To ferry him on this never-ending quest just to watch him squirm from whatever perch she was watching her realm from?
Pit stared at the bow. Tears spilled over his cheeks. No… it couldn’t be true. Deep in his heart, he knew that Palutena really needed him. He grabbed the bow, ashamed that he had, for just a moment, spurned her gift to him. “Forgive me, Lady Palutena,” he said to the air, not sure if his beloved goddess could hear him. “I’m so sorry!”
He jumped another ledge. That was when he came upon the cistern filled with blood.
Pit actually wasn’t sure what it was, at first. He thought he’d discovered water – dirty water, perhaps, and possibly poisoned. The surface was grimy and dark. The little angel had to adjust his eyes to the Underworld’s low light to see chunks of coagulation in it. Shivering, he bent low, dipped a finger in the substance, brought it up to his nose and sniffed it. The rusty scent of slaughter told him what he was looking at. Pit felt sick.
It was when a wing bobbed to the surface and floated past him that he actually let out a scream. He began to hyperventilate, and then got his bearings. “You’re a soldier,” he told himself. “You’re a solider, you’re a soldier…”
He stared morbidly at the pool. Yes, horribly enough, that was a severed angel-wing floating in it.
Pit jumped another ledge and avoided another well just like it. It took a great effort of strength and concentration to leap clear of the pool. He certainly did not want to land in…in…that! The toe of his sandal touched the upper pool to his resolute horror. Once he was clear and on a rocky outcrop, he tried to keep his bearings, but ended up getting very sick. His stomach was empty and he’d had little to drink, leaving him to suffer the most painful dry heaves he’d ever experienced in the whole of his memory.
Was it true that they were all… gone? The vision of Palutena had said as much and that nasty shopkeeper had spoken of finding angel feathers everywhere. He did not want to think of what kinds of tortures Medusa and her beasts had put his friends and mentors through. Was it at least all over for them? If they were finished, their tortures were, too.
Pit could have sworn that he felt voices around him – not heard, felt. Sentiments reverberated through his very being. They were encouraging words, cheering him on. Was he feeling the souls of the fallen of Skyworld? The air around him was ripe with one strong essence in particular: “Avenge us.”
Ducking into another cavern, Pit found a friendly face – for a given measure of “friendly.” Being a young angel and of a group solely dedicated to a single goddess, he did not know very much yet about his goddess’ relationships to other gods, save those that were antagonistic towards her and to the creatures she’d chosen to patron. Pit also didn’t know much about Lady Palutena’s family tree, but he’d heard somewhere that old Zeus was her father or grandfather, or something to that effect. He’d never expected “gramps” to show up in the Underworld, much less to give him a harsh training course. After proving his survival skills (or at least his ability to panic in the right direction), the old god granted Pit some increased strength.
Pit had the audacity to ask Zeus if he was real. After what he’d been going through, he wanted to do a little testing of his own.
“Don’t you think she has given you strength, young Pit?” he asked.
“I keep getting finished,” Pit complained. “Finished off, dead and alive over and over again. It feels like a punishment – like… pushing a rock up a hill, never getting there… except it’s even worse because the rock rolls over and crushes me sometimes.”
“When you come back to life, why do you assume it is a punishment?”
“Isn’t that just the kind of thing to happen to a damned soul? An eternity of suffering and despair? I hate reruns.”
“Don’t be so hopeless, Pit. Think about it. Don’t you think that Lady Palutena has given you the strength you need?”
Pit was ushered out upon his continued quest through the bowels of the Underworld. He fell from a platform and broke his wings again, and came back. He was getting ever closer, though. He didn’t always respawn in the same place now, but father up the path. Picking himself up out of the dust, he realized that the shopkeeper he’d met earlier was wrong.
“It’s not judgment… Lady Palutena must be doing this for me somehow! She’s lending me her strength so I can keep moving on! I wonder if this is the last of her strength…”
With the monsters besetting him and ledges up ahead of him, Pit had no time to morn or to despair any longer. It didn’t matter how many times he was “finished,” he never was completely and he was ever moving forward. He was alive and there was hope. Even in the ashes of the Underworld, there was hope.
Through the injuries and past the blood-pools, there was nothing to do but to keep moving, his gaze ever skyward even to a sky that was dust-red.
“I’ve figured it out, Lady Palutena! I’m coming!”
END.
Shadsie, 2013
I am aware that the red pools in the game are supposed to be some kind of red, poisoned water, but… they’re red. I could not help but think of blood.
AN ANGEL IN HELL
Shame. That was what he felt – more than the aches in his body and his head. Once he was awake enough to notice it, he choked on the dust of wherever he was. The boy was laying on his side, his dirty toga bunched up over him. He moved and heard the rattle of chains. His wrists and his ankles were heavy, clad in manacles. They were especially uncomfortable where they’d been buckled over his sandal-straps, pinching the leather against his skin. Everything was horribly dry. His tongue felt like chalk. It was too dark for him to tell where he was, though the smell of the place gave him a guess.
The boy blinked. He was in darkness, but it was not pure. There was just enough gloom for him to see his bruised hands in front of his face, with blood filming over the broken skin on the knuckles. His chest hurt. Some monster had shot him in the heart…right? At least that’s the last thing he remembered. No, not all. His name was being called.
“Pit! Pit, get out of here!”
The shame hit him again. Skyworld was under attack… yeah, he remembered that much. Palutena had marshaled her army to defend their home, meanwhile, she charged up her own power to fight Medusa and the forces of the Underworld. One of the centurions had told him to fall back and hide in one of the bath houses or in the barracks. Pit was a “hatchling,” a child – too young to be a soldier. What’s more was that everyone knew of his handicap. He was the little one with wings that didn’t work that everyone wanted to protect. He was the one that could not fight on his own.
Or so they thought. The elder angels never seemed to acknowledge how Pit had come by wounded wings in the first place. Characteristic of his reckless nature, he’d ignored orders and fought the smaller enemies that were sweeping over the main sky-island with whatever he could find, ultimately using his bare fists, which were about as effective as one would expect, which was not at all. He eventually fell back with a group of other young ones, all of them acknowledging a need to survive as their duty to Lady Palutena. When they’d reached a bath house, that’s when Pit saw the shadow-flash of a darkness-bolt and felt a pain in the center of his chest. Next came a dropping-sensation in his consciousness as his legs gave out from under him.
Now he was sitting in the gloom, a stench of ash up his nose, chained to the floor or a wall – he could not tell. His wings felt intact, though heavy with dirt. When he twitched them, he felt the unique small sharp pain of a few broken flight-feathers – their shafts twisted at odd angles in the skin that held them. Pit did not know where he was, but he knew that it couldn’t be anywhere in Skyworld. There were no dungeons there, and if there were, they would be better lighted than this place. The air didn’t smell right for anywhere even close to his home. There, the air was fresh, crisp and cool, not stagnant and as heavy as a sweat-soaked wool blanket. He supposed he could be on the surface-world, the place where the humans lived, but the air didn’t smell right for there, either.
Pit wondered where everyone else was. What had happened to the army? His friends? Where was Lady Palutena? He started to cry out for her, but his throat and his tongue were too dry for him to do much more than whisper. Why had he been captured? The Underworld forces – or Medusa herself – could have easily killed him, unless she was otherwise occupied. Pit did not think he was a disembodied soul. He didn’t think souls required chains. His body ached enough for him to be sure he’d still had one. Maybe he was slated for torture or was here because he’d been left to starve? Perhaps he’d been forgotten, or Medusa was just exercising her trademark cruelty. She enjoyed blighting crops just to watch villages of people starve to death slowly. Not even the indifferent Goddess of Nature took as much delight in such slow paths of “population control.”
In pain and tired, Pit had nothing better to do but to lay his tiny, abused body back down and stare into the inky abyss. Maybe one of the elder angels would rescue him? What if the whole of Skyworld had been taken? If only he hadn’t run… if he’d fought harder… Lady Palutena had needed him – all of them – and all he could do was run and hide because he was a useless… and flightless…little hatchling.
Shame. He was pathetic. Pitiful.
“Pit…”
Pit immediately shot upright. He knew that voice! It was like the tinkling of bells… The sweetest, kindest voice…
“Pit…”
It echoed through his head. Maybe it wasn’t even real. He searched for its source. He saw a glimmer of golden light appear in front of him. A faded, transparent image of his goddess appeared before him. It wavered, as if it were being filtered through water.
“Lady Palutena?” he asked. “Are you alright? Where are you?”
“Oh, they were so rough on you…” the image replied. Her eyes held a deeper sadness than Pit had ever seen in them. One of them looked bruised, too. “Skyworld has fallen. Medusa has me imprisoned. She has turned the centurions to stone and is keeping them in the fortresses she has built.”
“What?” Pit asked, his wings shooting stiff and straight. “You’ve been captured?”
“I’m afraid so. Pit, I need you to rescue me. Please hurry!”
“Why…why me? Just me? I’m so small… and I can’t fly…”
“I know, Pit,” Palutena’s image responded. “But I need you. You are… the only one left.”
“The only one l-”
The Goddess of Light held out her hands and in them materialized a small, golden bow and a tiny arrow that glowed with white light at its edges. “My strength is fading. This is all I can do. You are in the depths of the Underworld, Pit. I am being held in my own palace. You are going to have to reach the fortresses and defeat their guardians. They serve as gateways.”
“I’ll do it,” Pit said decisively as he reached for the bow. He found the manacles falling from his wrists and unbinding themselves from his ankles.
“I’m counting on you,” Palutena said as she faded off, leaving Pit, once again, alone in the deepest gray.
“Hey, wait!” the little angel called, “Lady Palutena? How do I get out of here?”
He was answered with one last echo of her voice. “Oh, you’ll figure it out.”
“Greeeat,” he said, rolling his eyes. At least he was armed now, and he could move around. He groped around in the dark, finding a rocky wall. It rolled and undulated as if he were inside the petrified remains of a once-living creature. He felt a patch of wetness along the wall. Without a second thought, he started licking it furiously. At this point, he was so mind-numbingly thirsty that he didn’t think about a possible source or even what kind of moisture he was lapping up. A bit mossy tasting… maybe slightly metallic and mineral-ish, but it was water. Pit knew that it wasn’t blood because it tasted quite different than the taste that had been sticking to the roof of his mouth since he’d woken up. Likewise, he didn’t think the flavor was bad enough to be any other kind of fluid.
In fact, it actually tasted like hot spring water! It had gone lukewarm and most of a hot spring’s healing effects happened when the water surrounded a body, but this little drink was refreshing him nicely. Pit felt up the little rivulet, pawing until he came to what felt like a little crack in the earth. He began prying it and digging at it. The water had to have a source and the fact that it was coming in through this wall meant that the wall was weak.
The boy jumped back as the earth shifted and light shone through a hole just large enough for him to squeeze through. The light was not a bright light, more of a pale, grayish, reddish glow, but it still was a welcome contrast to the almost-pure-black of the “cell.” Pit, thankful for once that he was very small, wriggled through. Once his eyes adjusted, he took in strange sights. The earth was hard and cracked beneath his feet, like desert clay. There were ridges and platforms of stone everywhere, as well as broken pillars and grotesque statues. On the horizon there appeared to be waterfalls – or perhaps lava-falls, touched with angry red light.
Also, after he took a few steps, there were snakes falling on his head.
“Gaaarragh!” the angel yelped as he untangled himself from their slithering and shook one out of the front of his chifton. They sprang up, trying to bite him. They had little wings just behind their heads. Pit shot them, rapid fire; with the never-ending blessed arrows his dear goddess had granted him.
As he jumped up to the edge of a stone ridge, he felt a little woozy. He held out his right arm and examined the two neat little holes in his forearm. He’d been bitten. The poison left a burning sensation in his veins, but he wasn’t dead yet. He wondered if he’d died down here if he’d just stay, seeing as the Underworld was supposed to be the Land of the Dead. Pit soldiered on.
More snakes and a chubby monster that flattened itself to avoid his arrows came for him. The boy dodged, but earned another snakebite on his heel when he was not quick enough. Pit felt his muscles getting stiff. “No, not now,” he grumbled. “I’m barely even into my mission...”
He heard the whistling of what passed for wind through the heavy air and was sure he’d heard moaning. Was this the moaning of wandering souls? The waterfalls in the scenery beyond the ridges he was climbing… Pit realized that it must be the River Styx, tumbling down into the depths endlessly, souls drifting along its course. He could not see any souls if there were any around him. They were not the kind of thing people could usually see – not even angels. He wondered if that was why the air was so heavy. Was it thick with souls? A feeling of despair permeated the atmosphere. It was the utter opposite of the sky, beautiful and free.
Pit hopped up upon a steep ridge and froze when he heard a horrifying screech. A creature in black robes with a skull for a face came rushing for him, brandishing a farmer’s scythe. Before the little angel could get his bearings, he felt the scythe slick down into his shoulder and into his body, cleaving his spirit.
Wide-eyed and full of fear, he whispered “I’m finished!” to no one in particular.
The very next moment, a split-instant later, Pit was on the ground next to the hole he’d dug himself out of. He sat up and patted himself. He had no wounds. He hadn’t been cut in half and even the snakebite-wounds were gone. Strangely enough, he felt a lot better than he had a moment ago. The feeling of poison his veins had vanished. The bow Lady Palutena had given him lay at his side.
Pit stood up and looked at his hands and then at the bow as he picked it up. “Did I just die?” he asked himself. He flexed his wings and felt his arms and shoulders. He ran a hand through his hair. Pit still felt achey and very physical. He did not think that he had dreamed being killed by the Reaper. He trudged onward, taking the ledges again.
He avoided the snakes this time, destroying them expertly and taking a bounty from them in the form of an essence they left behind. Pit recognized these kinds of essences. The angels and centurions in Skyworld used them as a form of currency. It was a kind of pride in one’s kills of monsters. The richer you were, presumably, the greater a warrior you were – or at least it was a testament to how skilled you were as a merchant to the great warriors.
Pit ducked below the ledge that held the Reaper. He lobbed arrows into its back when it wasn’t paying attention. It was rather interesting to do a little stealth. Everything was going pretty well. He was climbing out of the Underworld environs at quite a clip. He was sure he’d reach the first gate-fortress in no-time.
He took a running leap onto a small ledge above him. Pit’s sandal slipped and he promptly fell. He unfurled his wings to try to catch himself, hoping to glide to safety, but he plummeted too quickly. The flightless angel slammed into hard stone and dust. The bones of his wings shattered as his back crushed them. His legs bent and twisted beneath him. The boy felt his lower spine snap. He screamed and moaned. When he opened his eyes, all he could see out of the corner of one of them was an arm and a twisted bit of wing. Both appendages were covered in blood. He’d fallen hard and was not getting up again.
He got up again. Pit stood up, puzzled at his sudden in-tact state and at being back at the place outside of his cell.
“I was finished again,” he said to himself as he frantically spun, twitching his wings. “Why am I alright?” He grabbed his hair in both fists. “This place is messing with my head!”
Again, Pit began to climb out of the pit. He shot enemies and avoided Reapers. The small angel ducked into a cave to take a rest. To his surprise, he found a man there, sitting before a blanket laden with curious items.
“We have everything,” the strange man said before explaining his prices. The heart-essences… that is what he took as payment, just like the denizens of Skyworld did. This was interesting to Pit, seeing as the man appeared to be a human.
“Why are you down here?” Pit asked. “You’re the first person I’ve seen in this horrible place. You’re a human, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” the man replied. “I’m human.”
“Why are you in the Underworld?” Pit ventured. “Are you a prisoner, too?”
“You can say that,” the merchant said. He refrained from giving his name. He shook his head when Pit asked for it.
“Do you want to come with me?” Pit offered.
“You are trying to escape?” the merchant said with a laugh. “You silly child… you actually think you can get out of here?”
“I’m an angel,” Pit replied. “I don’t belong here. Of course I’m gonna get out! I serve the Goddess Palutena and she needs me!”
“Hmm,” the man mused, scratching his beard. “Is that goddess in trouble? I was wondering why I’d been finding so many of these around.”
The shopkeeper reached into his cloak and pulled out a single, long white feather with a pale gray edge. Pit grabbed it and stared at it before the man snatched it back out of his hand. “Three-fifty,” he said, “no less.”
Pit’s lower lip started to quaver. “Do you know what this is, sir?” he asked.
“Of course. It’s an angel-feather. I’ve been finding them all over the places where I wander. They’re quite prized among damned souls. Supposedly, they can help one to fly. Some fools think they can use them to escape the Underworld, which is why I become rich whenever I find one.” The man laughed. “I don’t know why you would need one. You have a nice pair of wings full of ‘em. In fact, if you don’t buy something and get out quickly, I might just take your ‘inventory.”
Pit shivered at the greasy and violent smile the man was giving him. “You don’t want my wings, sir,” he replied quickly. “They don’t work.”
Pit wondered which of his friends that feather the man had re-pocketed had come from. He thought it resembled one of Hyoko’s. His wings were slightly gray at the edges. Hyoko was one of the senior angels, one with wings on his back – of Palutena’s “pure breed” as distinct from the centurions. Angels of Pit’s kind had more of a sense of free agency and were generally brighter than the centurions, which were grunt-soldiers.
“You said something about damned souls?” the angel asked.
“What do you think I am, boy?” the man replied, “Surely you did not think that I was an honest, living man, did you?”
“Lady Palutena says that souls are an essence, not really like a whole person. And, well, if you’re a ghost, you look too solid to be an apparition.”
“You’re pretty solid down here, angel-boy,” the merchant grunted. “Some souls feel physical enough that, at least in a place like this, they can be indistinguishable from the living. You can even feel physical pain, which you ain’t supposed to be able to without a body. It’s all about perceptions; you see… how strong your memory of pain is. Most souls just wander, but some of us are under judgment. The powers that be delight in giving the wicked their due – or in simply consuming our souls.” The man laughed darkly. “I’ve survived here for a long time, more than a century by my reckoning – for a given value of ‘survival.”
Pit considered a vial of what he was sure was a life-giving elixir of the kind Palutena’s soldiers healed their wounds with back in his home. “This place messes with your head,” he sighed. “I was pretty sure I’d died a couple of times before reaching this cave.”
“Died, you say?” the man said, his voice brightening with curiosity.
“Yeah,” Pit explained. “The first time, I was hurt by monsters and sliced up by one of those crazy Reapers. The next, I fell. I was broken on the rocks, but in an instant, I was fine. It hurt a lot – both times.”
The man laughed, hearty and loud. “An angel fell, oh, that’s rich!”
Pit furrowed his brow and narrowed his eyes. “I already told you… my wings don’t work. I’m not proud of it.”
“How pitiful!”
“Do all damned souls down here like rubbing salt in innocent people’s wounds?”
“Do you think I would be a damned soul, doomed to run a hole in the wall shop for eternity if I wasn’t a wicked man?”
“I think I have enough for this vial,” Pit said, pointing to the item.
“Perhaps you are also a damned soul,” the man suggested, taking Pit’s hearts and allowing him to take the bottle of bright red liquid.
“I was captured by Medusa’s forces while trying to defend my Goddess and my home,” Pit groused. “I am not like you.”
“Why do you keep coming back to life after you seemingly die then?” the man asked, cocking his head. “This is the Land of the Dead. Most souls just float around, migrating to the City of Souls to await reincarnation – unless, of course, Lady Medusa is feeling a mite peckish and catches them… or Thanatos, or Hades… or one of the more powerful monsters that spend their undeath here... What you’re going through, little angel, sounds a lot like what the ones they like to torture go through. You feel the pain of injury and dying over and over again, but you cannot move on. Not ever. It sounds to me like you’ve been doomed to wander the path of pain, your eyes set skyward, reaching for a sky you’ll never see again! I wonder what you did to piss off Medusa so badly!”
Having made his purchase, Pit balled up his fists and yelled at the shopkeeper. “I’m going to get out of here! You wait and see! I’m going to save Lady Palutena!”
“Keep dreaming!” the man laughed as Pit fled the cave and a magical door shut itself behind him, barring re-entry to that shop. He wandered on, shot a few more monsters, and found himself with just a moment’s peace in a little hollow. The boy sat down and draped his bow over his knees. He pressed his wings against his back tightly, trying to stifle a tremor that was running through them.
The hatchling wondered at the merchant’s cruel words. Of course he’d angered Medusa. All of the citizens of Skyworld had because they served Lady Palutena. She’d given Medusa a hideous form and had banished her from the living world long ago, not that she ever stayed to her own realm, anyway. Of course, Palutena was right in her judgment and had cursed Medusa for a good reason. Palutena had not truly taken away Medusa’s beauty so much as she’d revealed the monster inside. Pit knew this because what had happened was different than one of his Lady’s pranks. If she’d turned an angel into a monster as a joke, it was always temporary. Spells like that never stuck unless a person had a monstrous heart. Still, given her monstrous heart, Medusa did not repent her crimes and bore a fierce grudge against not only the Goddess of Light, but all who were connected to her.
Pit knew that he was, perhaps, a special target. He’d lost his ability to fly when he’d snuck into a battle to defend humans from Medusa. He’d received wounds that some angels considered a worse fate than death, given the species’ natural love for flight. He had no doubt that his audacity had been remembered, however ineffectual it had been. That had to be the reason why he was chained up and not severed from life. He was meant to be a “toy,” a torture-victim for when Medusa got around to “playtime.”
No… Pit realized that it was potentially even worse. Like the merchant had said… this was the torture! He was doomed to keep climbing, forever and ever, toward some fortress that probably didn’t even exist! If he stayed still for too long, he’d only be attacked and eaten alive by monsters – only to come back and have it happen again! If he kept moving, the same fate, with the occasional fall to a broken body. This heavy air would press upon him forever… the air that smelled like funeral-pyre ashes… hoping to see the Light again and never reaching Her… never reaching Her…
And what if…
Pit tossed his bow away, watching it skid in the dust. That vision of Palutena he’d had in his cell…What if it was a fake? Did Medusa shape-shift to make herself look like Palutena to deceive him? To ferry him on this never-ending quest just to watch him squirm from whatever perch she was watching her realm from?
Pit stared at the bow. Tears spilled over his cheeks. No… it couldn’t be true. Deep in his heart, he knew that Palutena really needed him. He grabbed the bow, ashamed that he had, for just a moment, spurned her gift to him. “Forgive me, Lady Palutena,” he said to the air, not sure if his beloved goddess could hear him. “I’m so sorry!”
He jumped another ledge. That was when he came upon the cistern filled with blood.
Pit actually wasn’t sure what it was, at first. He thought he’d discovered water – dirty water, perhaps, and possibly poisoned. The surface was grimy and dark. The little angel had to adjust his eyes to the Underworld’s low light to see chunks of coagulation in it. Shivering, he bent low, dipped a finger in the substance, brought it up to his nose and sniffed it. The rusty scent of slaughter told him what he was looking at. Pit felt sick.
It was when a wing bobbed to the surface and floated past him that he actually let out a scream. He began to hyperventilate, and then got his bearings. “You’re a soldier,” he told himself. “You’re a solider, you’re a soldier…”
He stared morbidly at the pool. Yes, horribly enough, that was a severed angel-wing floating in it.
Pit jumped another ledge and avoided another well just like it. It took a great effort of strength and concentration to leap clear of the pool. He certainly did not want to land in…in…that! The toe of his sandal touched the upper pool to his resolute horror. Once he was clear and on a rocky outcrop, he tried to keep his bearings, but ended up getting very sick. His stomach was empty and he’d had little to drink, leaving him to suffer the most painful dry heaves he’d ever experienced in the whole of his memory.
Was it true that they were all… gone? The vision of Palutena had said as much and that nasty shopkeeper had spoken of finding angel feathers everywhere. He did not want to think of what kinds of tortures Medusa and her beasts had put his friends and mentors through. Was it at least all over for them? If they were finished, their tortures were, too.
Pit could have sworn that he felt voices around him – not heard, felt. Sentiments reverberated through his very being. They were encouraging words, cheering him on. Was he feeling the souls of the fallen of Skyworld? The air around him was ripe with one strong essence in particular: “Avenge us.”
Ducking into another cavern, Pit found a friendly face – for a given measure of “friendly.” Being a young angel and of a group solely dedicated to a single goddess, he did not know very much yet about his goddess’ relationships to other gods, save those that were antagonistic towards her and to the creatures she’d chosen to patron. Pit also didn’t know much about Lady Palutena’s family tree, but he’d heard somewhere that old Zeus was her father or grandfather, or something to that effect. He’d never expected “gramps” to show up in the Underworld, much less to give him a harsh training course. After proving his survival skills (or at least his ability to panic in the right direction), the old god granted Pit some increased strength.
Pit had the audacity to ask Zeus if he was real. After what he’d been going through, he wanted to do a little testing of his own.
“Don’t you think she has given you strength, young Pit?” he asked.
“I keep getting finished,” Pit complained. “Finished off, dead and alive over and over again. It feels like a punishment – like… pushing a rock up a hill, never getting there… except it’s even worse because the rock rolls over and crushes me sometimes.”
“When you come back to life, why do you assume it is a punishment?”
“Isn’t that just the kind of thing to happen to a damned soul? An eternity of suffering and despair? I hate reruns.”
“Don’t be so hopeless, Pit. Think about it. Don’t you think that Lady Palutena has given you the strength you need?”
Pit was ushered out upon his continued quest through the bowels of the Underworld. He fell from a platform and broke his wings again, and came back. He was getting ever closer, though. He didn’t always respawn in the same place now, but father up the path. Picking himself up out of the dust, he realized that the shopkeeper he’d met earlier was wrong.
“It’s not judgment… Lady Palutena must be doing this for me somehow! She’s lending me her strength so I can keep moving on! I wonder if this is the last of her strength…”
With the monsters besetting him and ledges up ahead of him, Pit had no time to morn or to despair any longer. It didn’t matter how many times he was “finished,” he never was completely and he was ever moving forward. He was alive and there was hope. Even in the ashes of the Underworld, there was hope.
Through the injuries and past the blood-pools, there was nothing to do but to keep moving, his gaze ever skyward even to a sky that was dust-red.
“I’ve figured it out, Lady Palutena! I’m coming!”
END.
Shadsie, 2013
I am aware that the red pools in the game are supposed to be some kind of red, poisoned water, but… they’re red. I could not help but think of blood.