~~Author’s Note~~

Welcome. “A Taste of Hell” is a mini series of small novelettes, each told from a unique point of view of side characters in my upcoming main series “The Pleasures of Hell”, a fantasy adventure set in Hell. While the main series will have two PoVs, both human (brother and sister) and not featured in this series, these prologue/bonus chapters will give curious readers a taste of this setting from the view of the various angels and demons that populate it, and a taste of the erotic elements.

These chapters are entirely optional. No need to read them if you’d prefer to go into the main series blind.

Erotically, “A Taste of Hell”, and “The Pleasures of Hell”, will focus largely on monster girls and monster boys, usually paired with someone not monster-y. Expect lots of kinks to be explored, with exaggerated proportions, size difference, deep/large penetration, harems and/or reverse harems, and plenty of others. There’ll be fantasies for dominant and submissive readers alike. Erotic scenes that are particularly long and descriptive will be bracketed with ♥♥♥ /♥♥♥. If you’re not looking for a juicy scene, skim the dialog in these sections so you don’t miss anything important.

This chapter is heavy on setting exploration. If you’d prefer to not get spoiled about setting details, no need to read, or read this after having read a decent chunk of the main series. I’ll make sure to avoid spoiling anything major in these novelettes, but I know some readers prefer going into a series as a blank slate.

~~Three years before the Arrival~~

~~Janneke~~

She pulled against the cuffs around her wrists, but they held true. If it’d been a pair of meera cuffs, then maybe she could have broken free of them with great use of her grace. But they were aera. Humans called it Hell bronze. Angels called it frustratingly durable.

Her eyes followed the cuffs to the chain between them, and demon that held it. A devorjin, a large, hornless, tailless brute. Janneke was a mikalim, and more than capable of wrestling down most demons and killing them with her bare hands. But not a devorjin. The hulking creature held her chain and cuffs meant to bind the most powerful demons unlucky enough to be caught in them, and she could not so much as even attempt to wrestle herself free with her grace drained.

The cuffs were meant for wrists of her size, and no demon who could fit into cuffs this size would be strong enough to break meera with pure brute strength, let alone the far stronger aera metal. Which meant the cuffs were made to hold unusually dangerous demons of her size, or angels. Zelandariel had to trade — or fight or steal — to get aera metal, and it was likely she took it from False Gate. Quite the hassle, for such a specific purpose.

Zel was going to eat her.

Janneke glared at the back of the eight-foot beast before her, and reached into her self. Her grace was nothing more than quiet embers. She could not summon her batlam rune, so she had no armaments, and no armor. That left her in her white silk robes, bracelets and necklaces of gold, gold-colored sandals, and her face exposed. Vulnerable.

The creature took her through one of the many tunnels beneath the mountains of Death’s Grip. They’d been walking for two days, and had two days more before they reached the spire, and Zelandariel. Two days of hoping the devorjin would let his guard down. Two days of no such mistake. But two more days of hope, and attempts to escape.

The devorjin did not speak, even when she goaded and insulted him. So convinced of his loyalty to Zel, he would not even tell the angel his name. So devoted was he, he did not relieve his sexual hungers upon her. He’d been tempted, several times, and had once approached her with rage in his dark eyes deep within his skull-like face, enormous shaft dangling between his thighs, but had stopped himself. Lucky for him. Her hands were bound and held to a chain, but her feet were perfectly free, and she’d have been quite ready to remind the demon why it was better to keep his skin dark and hard, and his sensitive parts inside and safe.

It never came to it. Instead, whoever this devorjin was, he took her down into the canyons of Death’s Grip, deep between the sharp rocks, deep between the jagged cliffs, and deep into the bowels of Hell. The rock down here was hotter, and amber veins decorated many rock faces, some of them large enough they radiated with the heat of hellfire. Much of the rock showed obvious signs of melting, with dripping stalactites from curved rock walls threatening to fall on them in the canyon. The skies above, burning with flames of red, orange, and blood, darkened as night fell on them. But night mattered little in Hell when fire burned everywhere.

Janneke snarled as she looked around at the tightening walls. Impins and impas, gremlins and gremlas, they perched on the myriad of rock outcroppings in the small canyon, staring at her. Several of the short creatures openly masturbated, stroking their penises or penetrating themselves with their tails — claws were an issue — as they smiled at her, showing their many teeth.

It only grew worse as they continued, and the canyon’s walls merged into a ceiling before the canyon, now tunnel, spread wider. A cave that morphed into a tunnel, with stalagmites and stalactites its teeth. The heat increased, humidity drowning her, but at least there was space to move.

More grems and imps. Janneke growled at one of the nearby infernal creatures, an impa, and she chuckled maniacally as she licked her lips. But the impa knew to not touch her. It was Janneke’s only saving grace, that the imps and grems knew this devorjin and knew who he served. Or they knew the devorjin would happily kill and eat a dozen of them before they managed to steal Janneke away.

And they definitely wanted to. An angel would be quite the prize for any demon, hence the devorjin’s steel resolve in her capture, but many demons would have taken the opportunity to indulge in her beauty. Her radiant wings of white, her warm skin and dark lips, and long platinum blond hair drew the eyes of all the demons she past. Her white marble eyes glared death at any demon foolhardy enough to meet her gaze, but she was bound, and the demons lauded the opportunity to watch her with hungry interest. Not even her — according to her gabriem friends — ‘naturally angry face’, dissuaded the gawking creatures.

They went deeper. Noises echoed in the tunnel, chirping sounds, mixed with high pitched moans. Some burning bushes lit alcoves along the walls, amber veins flickering in the reflected firelight, and the swirling red danced along the cave stone as constructs of dark meera metal played with the light.

Statues. Statues of demons of old, and demons of now. Dozens of them, maybe even hundreds. She didn’t know when they were forged or who forged them. Perhaps Valzanal, ruler of Death’s Grip before Zelandariel. She’d been one of those theatrical ruler types, as far as Jann knew, with a habit of indulging in displays of violence, torture, and anything that inflated her ego.

Or Hell could have forged the statues herself. It wouldn’t have been the first time.

Many of the statues were sitting, backs to the walls of the tunnel, or backs to each other. Most had their arms out of the way of their bodies, with legs out to create a lap of some kind. And most of them had enormous, erect penises.

Metal likely did not make for comfortable penetration, but that didn’t stop half the statues from having one demon or another in their laps. Mostly demons of female tilt, but a few male types enjoyed some giant metal phalluses in their bodies as well. A strange orgy of casual reverence in the demons of old, demons like the tetrad, or even some of the great children like Belor or Camilla. Camilla was of female tilt, according to the records, but that didn’t stop the statue from having a very large penis. Artistic license, or Hell giving the demons what they wanted, Jann didn’t know. But swarms of the annoying imps and grems, and several succubi and incubi draped themselves over the titan woman of dark metal.

The children of the old ones were enormous, and the status reflected that, dwarfing her captor, and even the tetrad demon statues nearby. Jann had only ever seen Belor in person, and it was not an experience she longed to relive.

Her captor dragged her along, and she followed, distracted. Some of the demons were covered in blood, either blood of other demons they’d fought, or the damned. Likely the damned, considering several humans screamed in agony as their chests were torn open, hearts ripped out, and bodies strewn over the statues. Stone, metal, and blood. That was Death’s Grip.

Jann winced and looked away as a young man screamed. A tregeera had mounted the man, used her sin to dominate his mind, and was forcing his body to arousal. She was raping him. And then she would eat him.

Janneke closed her mind to it as best she could. They were damned for a reason, and no matter how much she wanted to save them, she couldn’t, demons or no demons.

She closed her eyes and covered her ears as they walked past the orgy and feast. A few shrieks managed to pierce her hands, and she ground her teeth as she pulled her wings closer around her. It was stupid to close her eyes. She needed to look for an opportunity to escape, and she couldn’t do that blinding herself. And worse, one of the damn creatures might jump her, and her devorjin captor might be a little slow saving her.

She needed resonance. Somehow, she needed to get resonance, or she’d be trapped until her fellow angels found her. Considering she was deep in a cave tunnel in the center of Death’s Grip, it was highly unlikely any of her brothers or sisters would find her. Without the waters of Heaven, her options were limited. No human of Hell would willingly part with their resonance, leaving her with few options.

She glared at the devorjin still pulling her chains. No, she would never be able to defeat a brute like him with her grace depleted. Even with her grace, a devorjin was a threat to any mikalem, and killing one was difficult. Killing one, and a hundred imps, grems, a handful of succubi and incubi, and several tregeeras and vratorins, would be impossible. She had to sneak away, not fight off a horde.

The tunnel only grew worse as they continued along. The perpetual orgy and feast faded, but never truly died. Even as the strange statues ceased to be, disappearing behind her as they followed twists and turns, still she occasionally spotted a demon or two enjoying their meals. Human hearts. The corpses were everywhere, many ripped in half, with limbs draped over stalagmites, guts strewn about. Blood flowed, dripping down over stone to the cave floor where Janneke walked, until her sandals made a small splash with each step. Many of the demons were covered in the blood of their kills, a few of the more aggressive ones eating the hearts of their kin rather than humans, but the result was the same. Corpses, everywhere.

A couple humans screamed as they were killed, some of them slowly by the more abhorrent demons. There was no reason for demons to torture or rape their prey before killing them. And yet, many did. Foul beasts. Abominations. If her grace had not been drained, she would have summoned her batlam rune out of sheer disgust, and killed as many demons as she could before the inevitable.

No. That wasn’t true. There was no helping the damned, and she knew it. Sacrificing herself to save them would be pointless. This was how it had been for thousands upon thousands of years, and her succumbing to rage and dying in a useless kamikaze would do nothing to change that. And as much as it sickened her, the Great Gate sent these souls to Hell for a reason. She was not witnessing the kind, giving, loving souls of Heaven be butchered. These souls were the rotting, twisted souls of Hell suffering their due punishment. God’s decree.

God was an asshole.

As if the Creator heard her thoughts and wanted to punish her for insubordination, the tunnel only grew worse. The blood under her sandaled feet grew higher and higher, until each step reached her knee. Soon it reached her hips. Eventually it reached her chest, and every step became a chore. It wasn’t red water, like the rivers of Hell, tainted with blood but still water. It was actual blood, fresh, thick, smelling of flesh and surface metals, and soaking through her white silks and coating the gold jewelry of her potram rune’s clothes.

The screams of dying humans were soon replaced with the screams of dying remnants. She braced herself for misery, but there was no growing accustomed to seeing remnants. Humans in agony, growing out of the walls, flesh mangled and broken by stone. Many of them were trapped between slabs of rock, skin perpetually split, sawed by rubbing against their prison. Some struggled under the surface of the blood river, near drowning, gargling the crimson liquid as they fought for every breath.

456. 142. 227. 541! How long would these poor souls suffer for their misdeeds?

A gremla perched upon one of the writhing remnants high above, and she tore the remnant open through the back, the only vantage point she could get from up there. The remnant screamed, begging for mercy, mangled words spoken from a destroyed mind. The gremla didn’t care, or at least showed no signs of caring. She ripped the remnant open, ripped out the heart, and ate it, silencing the woman. What little resonance was found in the heart of a remnant would be nothing more than a trace of what was once in the human before, but the gremla devoured it regardless, and the now dead remnant fell apart, limbs and skin and organs plummeting into the river of blood below. The blood splashed, and much of it fell over Janneke’s head, coating her hair and face in the vile liquid.

The gremla above burst into chittering laughter, before she glided to the side of the cave, perched upon another groaning, begging remnant, and resumed her scavenging. The new remnant’s cries doubled.

Soon the blood river’s depth grew so high, its surface reached Janneke’s neck. She was quite tall, but if the river grew any deeper, she would drown, same as any human or demon.

“Devorjin,” she said. The beast turned his thick skull to look at her with his black eyes. “If this keeps up, I’ll drown.”

“Fly.”

“I am not a humming bird!”

“Humming bird?”

She rolled her eyes. Demons had their own scrying pools. Surely he knew of creatures from the surface?

“I can’t hover in place for long, and flying in place is difficult.” Despite herself, she snickered. “Not that a demon would know what flying was like.”

Predictably, the gremla near her, now eating the second remnant’s heart, half squawked half roared at her, and fluttered her tiny wings. Envious, the creature was. But unfortunately for Janneke, she could do little to stop the gremla from throwing the limb of her remnant kill at her. She blocked the oncoming gore with a wing, but it mattered little. She was coated head to toe in blood, and that included her once white wings.

“Then swim.”

“You bound my hands!”

The devorjin shrugged. “With your legs.”

“I can’t swim with just my legs! My wings do not allow it! I...” Her voice trailed off as she looked down the tunnel, over the river of blood, past the amber veins on the walls that lit the tunnel, and into the darkness beyond. Something was moving.

“Glor,” the voice called out, deep, guttural.

Janneke’s captor rumbled in his chest, a powerful vibration that bubbled the blood around him like a bellowing alligator from the surface.

“Merric.”

Merric, evidently, approached, blood splashing about his chest. Another devorjin. Heavy as he was, a huge monster of muscle and power, the blood had little choice but to break apart around him, doing nothing to slow him.

“Give me the angel, Glor.”

So her captor’s name was Glor, then.

Glor snarled, hints of rasp hidden by the booming depth of the creature’s growl. “She is for Zel.”

“Zel does not need her.” Merric came closer, posturing, puffing up his chest. It was a massive chest, the devorjin being nearly nine feet tall, with shoulders wide enough to give any angel pause. He was bigger than Glor, slightly.

“I will let Zel be the judge of that.”

“Glor. I want that angel.”

Glor glanced back and up at the only other demon that remained nearby, the gremla. A thousand remnants dangled from above, moaning, groaning, bleeding, but without a proper perch for bottom feeders like grems and imps to feast upon. This gremla, on the other hand, had followed Glor quite a ways regardless, using the writhing remnants themselves as perches. Resourceful.

Glor snarled. “Zel will learn of this. She—”

Giggling, the gremla glided from her perch, and landed on Merric’s shoulder.

Glor rumbled, angry, preparing for battle, and stepped back. Oh. Merric had recruited this gremla then, and had her following them. Intelligent plan, for a devorjin.

“If you give me the angel, you live,” Merric said. “We won’t speak of it, ever. Zel will kill me for taking her prize. She’ll kill you, for letting me take it.”

Glor looked back at Janneke. For a moment, she thought maybe the creature would release her, or maybe ask for her help. But after a few more seconds, and a few more growls, he looked back to Merric and the gremla perched on his enormous shoulder.

“No.”

Merric sighed and shook his head, dark eyes looking frustrated, but soon widened with hunger. “Tanita and I will feast on the two of you, then.”

Merric took one step forward, as did Glor, Janneke’s chain still in his hand. They were going to fight. How in God’s name did this devorjin think he could take on another devorjin, with a gremla to help him, and hold Janneke prisoner at the same time?

She braced for the inevitable battle, and the fact Glor still held her chain and was likely to drag her through the blood river in the fight. If ever there’d be an opportunity to escape, this would be it. But where would she go? If she could free her chain of Glor’s grip, she could fly, and return the way she came. No. Without her grace, she would be overtaken by the demons behind her. Go forward then? The blood river would be difficult to fly over, with how little space it left her between the liquid, and the screaming, clawing remnants above. Maybe—

Everyone stopped when the blood behind Merric stirred. The two growling devorjin went silent, and even the gremla shut up as she looked behind her down at the thick, crimson liquid. Everywhere else, the blood river was deathly still, more like a lake in the shape of a river, with the liquid unflowing. The surface was undisturbed everywhere, save for the small waves behind Merric.

Blood exploded outward, a geyser of absurd proportions that shot up and out from behind Merric, and it buried everyone in red. Jann threw up her hands to try and cover her face, but it was pointless. The waves crashed down on her, and she fell back, only managing to not fall and sink because her wings stabilized her against the blood behind her. But she still stumbled back, what little bit of her that stuck out from the blood river now also coated in thick layers of blood as the waves turned everything into chaos.

There was something in the blood.

It jumped out at Merric from behind him, and before Merric could so much as finish turning around, one of the newcomer’s enormous arms shot out for him. No, not him. The gremla Tanita. She managed a tiny squawk of surprise before a titanic hand encompassed her head, and half of her torso in its grip. And squeezed. Bones cracked, flesh tore, and the small creature’s head and upper torso imploded in a single second.

Merric managed to come to his senses and jump back away from the monster. Two gigantic wings spread out from beneath the red, sending blood splattering everywhere as the gargantuan demon threw the gremla corpse to the side hard enough she crashed into the wall. The blood tunnel echoed with the sounds of more snapping bones.

Jann stared up at the demon, gulped, and took several more steps back until the chain in Glor’s hand went taught. Oh Lord, that was a tetrad demon. That was a gorujin.

The ten-foot-tall demon threw himself at Merric. No conversation, no warning growls, no challenges, nothing. Whoever this beast was, he meant business, and he sank gigantic claws into Merric’s shoulders as the devorjin fought back. The impact of their weights colliding was enough to have the blood river churning into rapids.

Glor threw himself at the gorujin as well. He might as well have been fighting a mountain. The titan was bigger than them, with a towering body of epic proportions. He was just as muscular as the devorjin, but easily twice as heavy considering how much taller he was. Four colossal horns raised high and coiled back over his head. Two colossal wings spread out, dwarfing Jann’s, black leathery things with claws on each finger. His tail whipped about in the blood, stirring up a frenzy and bubbling mess, creating only more chaos as the titan ripped into Merric.

Glor, one hand still holding Jann’s chain, crashed into the titan’s side hard enough to force him back several feet. The tetrad demon got one hand around Merric’s throat for balance, and as Merric tore at him, fighting to penetrate the layers of dark metal strapped to the invader’s arm, the newcomer ripped open Merric’s throat. His power was absurd, having done far more than simply cut Merric’s throat. He’d ripped the front half of Merric’s throat off.

But he was stumbling back from Glor’s attack. Even as Merric clutched at his throat futilely, stumbling back as well before falling into the river, waves of his blood pouring out from between his fingers, it looked like Glor had created an opening on the gorujin. He threw himself onto the stumbling giant, dragging Jann closer to the mayhem as he took advantage of the gorujin’s blunder.

The gorujin reached back, as if he were about to fall into the blood backward from Glor’s tackle. But he didn’t. His hand found something solid well before he fell back. And before Glor realized it, the gorujin’s wings snapped out, bracing him in the blood, as the gorujin’s hand pulled something out from under the blood river.

A giant sword, an ugly slab of metal that must have seen a hundred battles without ever being repaired — if such a hunk of metal could ever truly need repair — crashed down on Glor’s head. Onto, and through, splitting the large demon’s head in half before cutting down deeper, propelled by sheer mass and momentum, to cut down through Glor’s throat, and into his chest.

Glor fell to his knees, his chin ... chins now skirting the surface of the blood river. He didn’t fall over, not with the titan’s sword lodged in his chest. Everything went silent.

Jann stared up at the giant beast as he chuckled, reached for Glor with his free hand, reached down into the blood, and ripped the demon’s heart free. With another chuckle, he yanked his sword free of the devorjin, let Glor’s corpse disappear into the blood, and bit into his prize. Some of the blood within the heart squirted out from the monster’s mouth and into the endless red around them, but the flesh quickly disappeared behind the creature’s sharp teeth.

The gorujin nodded to Jann, a satisfying smirk on his demon face, as he set his sword behind his back between his wings. He’d attached it to something between his shoulder blades.

Whoever this gorujin was, he was smart, to feint a stumble, only to withdraw a blade he’d hidden in the blood ahead of time.

“I see I’m not too late,” the beast said, voice deep, rumbling. Almost pleasant, and mostly terrifying.

“T ... Too late?” A gorujin. One of the tetrad. She was looking at, and standing only ten feet away, from one of the demons of the old world.

For all her centuries of training, and even several encounters with demons, she knew she was afraid. Blood pumped through her, readying her for a battle she could not hope to win.

“I heard an angel had been captured, and was being carted to Zel. To get eaten, probably. Bitch really has high expectations, to actually have demons out hunting angels. I bet Zel’s just dying to get her hands on one.” The demon licked some of his fangs, and smiled at her.

Gorujin faces were, as the humans said, ‘demon’ faces. Skull-like, with flat noses that were almost non-existent, and defined eyebrow ridges that reminded onlookers of skulls. Alien and terrifying a face as it was, like many demons, it did have a strange attractiveness to it, a defined jaw that seemed strangely masculine, with deep black eyes with red irises.

Many demons were oddly attractive. The carnage and blood lust offset that.

“I ... see.”

Shrugging, the titan reached down into the blood, down, and down until his torso and face half submerged into it. He came back up with her chain in hand. She almost screamed in rage, but the painful truth quickly squashed the rising fury. Even if she had ran in that split moment Glor’s corpse had let go of her chain, this titan would have ran her down. That, or the hundred demons in the path behind her would have found her, raped her, and eaten her. And perhaps not in that order.

With another playful, deep chuckle, the titan licked some of the chunks of heart stuck in his teeth free, before he reached down for Merric’s corpse. One hand still held her chain, while the other tore at the corpse beneath the surface of the river, again hiding the tetrad demon’s face as he dipped below the surface. But soon he came back up, another demon heart in hand.

“I’m Romakus.”

“ ... Janneke.” Well, this was a first. A demon polite enough to introduce himself, unprompted.

He nodded, gently pulled on her chain, and walked toward the corpse of the gremla with her in tow. With a flick of the hand, he wrapped her chain around his enormous wrist, freeing his hand for use, and used both to surgically remove the gremla’s tiny heart with his claws.

“Hello Janneke. I suppose you think I’m here to rape and eat you, like Merric was.”

She shivered with the vulgar imagery.

“Disgusting. Abhorrent. Vile—”

“Agreed. Horrible behavior.”

“I—what?”

“Agreed. Never understood demons who feel the need to torture their meals.” Shrugging, Romakus started back into the river of blood, the way he came from. “And I’m not going to eat you, either.”

“You’re not?”

“No. But you are coming with me for a bit. Come on.”

“Why? So you can feed me to—”

“I’m not going to feed you to anyone, either. Come on.” He gave her chain a tug.

She almost argued. He wasn’t going to kill or, or get her killed. But, also wasn’t going to let her go? What then? She would not be his slave! She was no betrayer.

For the moment at least, it meant she had more time to look for an escape. And yet, while escaping from a devorjin brute would have been near impossible without being able to use her grace, escaping from a gorujin? One of the terrible four? Her chances had fallen from slim to none.

“How did you sneak up on them? How did you breathe?”

He grinned back to her, titanic horns turning like some sort of majestic, imposing crown. “I held my breath.”

This beast was difficult to read. He smiled constantly, playful, evil grins, and he tugged on her chain every so often just to see her stumble. But like him, her wings were vast, and more than capable of keeping her from falling, especially with them catching waves of blood instead of air. Unlike him, her wings were half submerged, and moving forward was difficult.

“Slow down. I’m ... I’m exhausted.”

“Yeah, thought so. How’d you drain your grace?”

“That is none of your—” He gave her chain another hard yank, this time almost sending her forward into the blood river, despite her wings bracing her. “Alright! I was scouting. I got too close to a mountain.”

“Death’s Grip is full of mountains. How stupid are you?”

She snarled and yanked on her chain, but the beast didn’t so much as budge.

“I am not stupid, gorujin. Some demons were expecting me.”

“Ah. I doubt they were expecting you specifically. Just that there’s been a few angel sightings lately, and they were hoping there’d be more.”

“And risk another confrontation? Just for the chance at a meal?”

He laughed and gave his giant wings a small shake. His long tail slithered behind him under the blood, occasionally brushing up against her leg, despite her attempts to avoid it.

“Heaven is weak, angel.”

“That is not true.”

“And yet you angels never make your presence known.”

“We have no reason to.”

“Uh huh.” He laughed again. Considering how often he laughed, and how merry a laugh it was, she almost suspected the gorujin was secretly a gremlin or impin. Maniacal, absurd creatures. But no, he truly was one of the terrible four, and he guided her down the blood river with a purpose.

“Here,” he said, ten minutes later.

“Here?”

“Yep.” He looked up. The cave roof twenty feet up was covered in remnants, pleading, crying, screaming, many of them tearing at each other as they struggled to pull their bodies free of the rock. It was pointless. Most remnants had no legs. Some had no arms. All of them pried at their tomb as if they could free themselves from the Hell that bound them.