The Last Hunter: Collected Edition (Antarktos Saga #1-5)

It would mean the end of all things.

Though I suspect the world might be doomed, anyway. If anyone could have challenged Nephil, it was me. I know that now. It took help, but I repelled Nephil from my mind and my body, and in a very real way, I defeated the powerful first Nephilim. It wasn’t the first time Nephil had tasted defeat, of course. Someone put him here, in Tartarus, to begin with.

My hope, my only hope, is that someone on the outside knows how to get me out the same way Nephil got out. I’m certain no one outside of the Nephilim inner circle—Enki, Enlil, Odin, Thor, Zeus and the other ancient gods—has a clue, though. So my hope’s eternal flame is more of a pitiful flicker. At best.

I realize I’ve been staring at the doors for some time now. How long, I really have no idea. Time seems irrelevant here. I could have been here a few seconds or a thousand years. I’m not sure. My world currently consists of the ground beneath my feet, the big black doors standing in front of me and the ever-biting cold that has now reached my bones.

Turn around, I tell myself.

But I can’t.

I’m terrified by what I might see, not because I know what it is, but because I have no clue. Tartarus is a land of eternal punishment, created expressly for the punishment of Nephilim. The Nephilim! They’re giants that delight in pain and heal instantaneously. Saying, “You want to go torture each other?” to a Nephilim is like if my friend Justin asked me to spend the night at the Museum of Science in Boston.

So how am I supposed to endure something the Nephilim find torturous?

I’m not.

I’m going to stand right here until the end of time and wait for this door to open.

Several minutes, or maybe years, later, my eyes drift. I see stone. Bleak, pale stone. But at least it’s recognizable. It’s something I can comprehend. Maybe this place isn’t as otherworldly as I expected.

A tick of stone on stone snaps my head to the side. The small pebble rolls and stops at my feet. The bitter sting of a breeze eats away at my back. I catch a glimpse of the barren, rocky world behind me, and turn forward as the wind cuts into my face and whips through my hair.

I should be dead, I realize. Hypothermic at the very least. I look at my fingers, expecting to see the onset of frostbite. My hands look normal. They just hurt.

Without a conscious decision to do so, I turn around. I’m at the bottom of a short stone hill. Average looking rocks cover the surface. If not for the swirling orange sky, the landscape, as far as I can see it, could be mistaken for the American southwest. Utah, I think. It looks like Arches National Monument.

Despite the cold, there is no snow. No moisture in the air at all, actually.

Thinking of water makes me thirsty. More thirsty than I thought possible. The sensation moves me forward, up the rise. As I move away from the door, I take in my surroundings. I can’t see far. More rocky terrain rises up to my left and right. And the gates of Tartarus are so large behind me that I can’t yet see around them.

A burst of frigid wind slams into my face as I clear the top of the rise. I push against the wind with my thoughts, but it’s no use. My link to the continent is gone. Unless, I realize, I am no longer on Antarctica. This is some kind of supernatural realm or alternate dimension, I think. It’s a ridiculous thought. Before returning to Antarctica, being kidnapped, broken and turned into Ull the hunter, I was a bookworm in love with science. There isn’t a single theory in the books I read that make a place like this possible.

Of course, they wouldn’t make sense of the Nephilim either and I have long since given up wondering how half-human, half-demons are even possible, never mind the supernatural forces that gave birth to them.

I wipe the wind-born tears from my eyes, tilt my head away from the wind and step over the top of the hill. The bitter wind tugs at my feeble clothing—just a belt and a Tarzan-like leather loincloth—and I realize I still have all of my belongings. Whipsnap is attached to my waist, though I don’t remember putting it there. I have a knife, telescope, sunglasses and a flint stone for starting fires—not that there is anything flammable here. In subterranean Antarctica, I would have used dried dung to create a fire. Here, in this barren place, I don’t even have that foul resource.