climbing the throne of Hell.......badly

The insubstantiality was like walking through warm custard and it sucked Imogen back as she pushed her way through it until she was compelled to stop by a force akin to a solid wall. It turned out to be an actual solid wall compiled from a flat sheet of dark igneous rock. It stood just proud of the insubstantiality allowing only a meager distance to maneuver as Imogen shuffled sideways ever conscious of the form following too closely behind her. She did not want it pushing against her even now after all this time journeying beside her. Spurred on by the thought of the creature pressing against her she shuffled sideways and past the portal and into a narrow corridor. Immediately her heart thumped quicker and the panic of being trapped in a restricted tunnel once again, Imogen started slapping the wall ahead in the infancy of a blind panic. A heavy slap which stung her whole palm caused an involuntary jump back. She expected a thud into the wall behind her but Imogen found space. She felt foolish as the realisation that the obstruction was ahead of her only and as the nausea subsided the creature joined her and the chalk lines blew away on the breeze.

Behind them was nothing, an infinity of space stretching away over the distance immeasurable  with pin prick like dazzling grey stars carpeting the heavens in splatterings of random displays. Underfoot was a mirror of that above only more dense so with the grey stars lying like sand in an endless field. Where the horizon sat between the two there was a colossal swirl of dazzling gray particles, it looked for all the world like a titanic sun setting.

“I didn’t realise how much I missed it.” Imogen said staring upwards happily. “I feel so much centered stood under the sky. It's beautiful but I don’t recognise any constellations, are we on the other hemisphere?”

“No stars just souls. No sky, just what is there or could be there or what can never be there. Each one in its place and visible here. No sky, not here.”

Imogen continued to stare up. “It looks like a sky to me and I’m thankful for it, makes me feel human again.”

“You will see when you get to where we need you.”

The creature pushed on and touched the imposing wall in front of them and with deft movements started to climb upwards. Imogen stood back for a better view of what blocked her path. At first it appeared there were huge slates of stone randomly scattered across the vast savannah and were too huge to comprehend but a pattern emerged which formed a great range of cinereal mountains.

“You may begin your ascent at your leisure.” called the creature who was already several storeys high. “Remaining below will serve no purpose.”

“I’m not going anywhere matey, not until I’ve had a chance to see anything that is going to try and do things to me that I’m not going to enjoy before it can see me. I trust there are places to cower in fear between the rocks when it attacks.”

“No.”

“No? Come on I thought we had got over this, started to work if not as friends but as a team at least. You and me. I help you out and you don’t always stab me in the back. It's a classic combination of my looks and you’re definitely not looks. Now in words that have no double meaning and with more than one syllable can you please expand on that no or i’m going to come up there and explain it in more detail with the tip of my shoe placed at speed to the tip of your developing genitalia so you’ll wish you were back looking like you did when I first met you.”

“I shall retract my initial comment and expand for your pleasure. Nothing. There is nothing within this plain that even remotely resembles life, intelligent, biological, bacterial or any other scientific or religious definition that you care to refer to. This also includes any intelligent death, unlife or undead status your human mind could conjure. The creature rotated it's head so it could scan the forever. “I would even broach the subject that you my little Imogen comprise the total accumulation of intelligent life across the entire span of this realm.”

There was a moment that passed between the two of them, the creature looked down at Imogen and with the newly formed muscles under it's facial skin formed a wink and what could be described as a grin.

“You’re only 20 meters away from getting my boot you know.” replied Imogen. “But I’ll take that as a compliment, as back hand as it was. I notice you didn’t include yourself in that or are you saying this team has been getting by on my brains and your looks, because I think it explains a lot if you were.”

“I used the words intelligent life with care and accuracy.”