Dark Lord Rob's DarkForce

Keep Out!

     I stood there with my soul in my hands, startled almost into dropping it and watching its strange vessel shatter onto the floor. Okay, so I didn't really think that I was actually holding my soul in that lantern-like glass and iron box... well, maybe a little; when you're down under the ground in a spooky chamber like that it's easy to believe the craziest stuff.
     Nathan looked into the lantern. "So that's Twonky's soul, huh? Doesn't seem like much."
     "Thanks a lot," I said. "I suppose yours is big and thick and shines like the sun."
     "See for yourselves," Woodbine said, pulling another lantern off of the shelves. We looked inside and, truth to tell, didn't see anything much different from the first two: a shift in the light, moving, swirling.
     "Somehow I expected a little more from my immortal soul," Nathan said, that sarcastic edge bleeding through each word.
     "It's not the whole magilla," Woodbine said. "Just a taste. You see, boys, the house siphons off pieces of the mystic energy that comprises your inner essence. Strange as it seems. If you aren't aware of it, it'll suck the soul right out of you... that's what happened to the opera singer, the house just drained him, like a spider."
     He pulled a lantern off of a shelf and cradled it in his hand like Hamlet holding Yorick's skull. "Don't worry about that, though, boys. We've taken precautions. All it can get from you or me or anyone is this little taste, now. After you leave, the glow in here will fade to nothing as the house uses up its energy, and you'll never miss the bit it takes."
     "Precautions?" Nathan asked, always interested in nuts-n-bolts sort of stuff.
     "The Brethren spend time every day strengthening our souls... so that the house can take what it needs without leaving us weaker. Sort of a symbiotic relationship."
     "More like a parasite, seems to me," Nathan said. Woodbine chuckled.
     "So what protects us?" I asked. My soul never felt particularly strong to me, I mean, it never does push-ups or anything. It's a couch potato sort of soul, but I'm fond of it.
     "Well, to put it simply, we've got a sort of arrangement with the house. We keep it fed, it doesn't drain any visitors. Works out well all around."
     "So," Nathan said, still barely hiding an amusement at the size of this ever-growing yarn, "What do you get out of it?"
     "It's not what we get," he said, his mood suddenly somber and pious. "It's what the world receives." He placed the lantern he had been cradling back on the shelf, and I knew in a flash of insight that it contained ("to his mind", I qualified the thought) his own soul. "Follow me."
     We left the Gallery of Souls and walked down a long and seemingly quite old corridor, made of hand-layed stone and mortar. At the end was another of those huge doors. A sign on it clearly read: "Keep Out". We stopped there.
     "We're not going beyond this door, boys, but I wanted you to see it nonetheless. This is why we're here, why we must remain ever vigilant, what we're all about. We're the Brotherhood of Guardians, and this is what we're guarding.
     "This, boys, is the doorway to Hell."

Next: Stairway to Hell