Chapter 10

~~Mia~~

“Bitch?” Mia said, and did her best righteous indignation expression.

Acelina laughed, a mean and sinister sound.

“The queen hasn’t visited today. Her mind is preoccupied, with you.”

Frowning, Mia tilted her head as she looked between the three super tall demon ladies. The two in the back continued to click and chirp at each other, while the one in front of her grinned a big, scary grin.

This was a new species of demon Mia hadn’t seen before. Nine feet tall, taller than Kas — since he never stood up straight — with very wide hips and an unusually tiny waist, topped with breasts so massive they were ridiculous. Her legs and arms were both long, too, giving her a shape similar to a tall runway fashion model, times a million. Even the hooves, when combined with her very upright posture, gave her the catwalk cat walk. Her tail was long but thin, no weight to it, and didn’t affect her movement at all, and her wings, while huge, seemed really thin and bony, with webbing that seemed awfully fragile. No chance she or the two other girls could glide with them.

It was the face and head that had Mia struggling to keep looking at her. She had no eyes, with a black forehead just like Kas and the satyr demons Mia had seen, which Mia had to assume were all bone hard like Kas’s head. But this woman’s face, her whole head, was completely black, scarily completely black. If Mia put a few white dots on it, it’d have looked like the night sky back on Earth. The four huge horns that came up from it were also very regal, very crown-like, not for fighting, all for posturing and showing off.

The scariest part was her mouth. Her mouth, somehow able to move the black skin, was really wide, and filled with really big scary sharp white teeth. Like Kas’s teeth, except hidden inside lips that, when closed, made it look like the woman had no facial features at all. Just a flat, featureless black mask, until she exposed her horror smile.

Then there was the fashion. All three tall demon ladies wore red silk, big scarf things that hung over their bodies, loose and carefree, just like Zel. They held their wings snug to their backs, with thumb claw hooked over their shoulders and around their necks, so they looked like big cloaks. All of them were bald, but considering the shape and size of the crown-like horns, bald worked well.

It was the jewelry that caught Mia’s eye. They had all sorts of jewelry, more than Zel, necklaces and belly chains and bracelets and anklets and nipple chains. Lots of nipple chains. Lots of skulls. All of it was a beautiful arrangement of black metal chains, with skulls hanging off their metal links. Small bones pierced their nipples, along with other piercings along their skin made of black metal. Piercings along their stomach. Piercings along their arms and legs. Piercings along their neck. All subtle, hidden things, tiny black dots in certain places, tiny loops in others. Beautiful, and terrifying, even more so than other demons.

It did get kind of annoying that every demon was so massive. Even the succubi and incubi were all tall. Only the imps and grems were actually shorter than Mia. This bitch was as tall as Diogo, meaning Mia’s head was literally at her waist.

Kas clicked a few times. Acelina clicked back a few more.

Grumbling, Mia backhanded Kas upside the arm. Which honestly surprised her. Was she that comfortable with him yet? Something about his asshole demeanor and willingness to be completely honest and brutal with her about whatever they talked about made it easier for her to relax with him. She couldn’t even give Zel an angry face without paralyzing with fear, but Kas she could apparently hit.

Kas grunted and shrugged.

“Acelina was wondering if your aura is real.”

“It is.” Wow. The lack of her own hesitation surprised her again.

The busty bitch nodded. With her mouth closed, her face was a completely black thing, and when she turned enough that Mia got a peek at her profile, the first thing she noticed was the strange similarities between her and Zel. Almost no nose. She had the mask-like face shape Zel had, and was utterly beautiful, even with all her facial features hidden in the obsidian darkness of her face’s skin color. It was unfair how hot she was, with tits that utterly defied reason, and ass and thighs to match.

“Show me,” Acelina said, and again her scary big smile emerged from the darkness of her face. Okay, yeah, super hot, but that smile was straight up horror material. It was like seeing a shark’s mouth in the dark.

“No.” Mia folded her arms across her chest.

Acelina clicked a few times in her throat before gesturing down to Mia with one of her long arms, and a set of long claws.

“If it weren’t for Zel’s interest in you, I would rip out your heart where you stand, meat.”

“Yeah, I’m getting that a lot, and I’m kind of tapped out on being afraid of everything all the time. Get back to me in a few days and try again.”

Acelina stared down at her — probably, hard to tell without eyes — and growled quietly, but a hint of a smile with some teeth showed through after a while.

“I can feel the aura regardless, meat. A quiet thing, barely there, but it is there. You do not know how to suppress it completely. For a soul to even have an aura is stranger than your lack of a mark.” Acelina talked with a bit of that regal sound, kinda like Zel did. It was annoying. “As much as it annoys me, I can understand why Zelandariel keeps you alive. You are a mystery.”

Kas clicked twice. “She’s a pain in the ass.”

“I can see that.” And of course the bitch with the face of tar pit grinned down at her.

“I’m showing her the hatchery so she leaves me alone,” Kas said.

Acelina went quiet, grin disappearing and face going full black hole mode again. But after a few seconds of odd silence, Acelina nodded and gestured to one of the huge flesh tunnels.

“Follow me, then.” And ahead she went, big butt on stilts swaying left and right with each step, tiny long tail slithering behind her, wings hanging with space between them so Mia’s eyes couldn’t help but be hypnotized by the way her curves moved.

Mia glanced over at the other two ladies. They watched her, clicking, talking to each other, and they both offered her some more of those evil smiles that sent a chill down her spine. As absurdly beautiful, scary, and sexy as these three ladies were, they were also kinda creepy. All demons were scary, but creepy was a different vibe, a ‘might crawl out of my TV set and kill me’ vibe. The fact Acelina was covered in chains and skulls along with her red silks only made the woman more scary.

But, Mia really was burnt out on being scared all the time. Fuck being scared. Plus she had a bodyguard now, and he’d been an enforcer at a dueling pit before that. Surely he’d be able to kick serious ass if he had to.

“Kasimiro is a sarkarin,” Mia said. Considering the breed name, and how Kas looked, she didn’t even have to guess that other humans probably called his race sharks. “What are you?”

Acelina clicked several times as she turned her head, and aimed her eyeless face over her shoulder back at her.

“If it weren’t for my love of Zel, I would punish you.”

“Yeah well, like you said, Zel wants to keep me around. Besides, not like I’m asking a horrible question.”

Acelina clicked once, hard and loud, as she looked back to the path.

“I am zotiva. But many call us spire mothers, or simply mothers.”

“Spire mothers?”

She didn’t answer. Mia was tempted to push her on it, but considering how much Acelina didn’t like her, getting one answer was pretty good.

But maybe she could go for two anyway?

“How do you know Diogo?” she asked.

Acelina stopped, half turned, and glared down at Mia. How she managed to do that so well with no eyes was a mystery.

“Do you know what I do to unruly children?”

“Uh...”

Kas clicked a few times, and gently tapped his much, much larger tail on the floor. Whatever he said, Acelina took it in stride, grumbling, and resumed the tour.

Remnants dangled from the walls of flesh and bone, groaning and screaming, but as they went deeper into the tunnel, the amount of remnants faded to almost nothing. A few still dangled from the giant rib bones ceiling, but it did seem like there were a lot less of them. But as if Hell couldn’t dare let Mia get comfortable, the floor she’d carefully been navigating, jumping from big bone to big bone, stopped having bones to walk on. All that remained, was a floor of flesh.

She sucked in a breath as she forced herself to look down. The floor wasn’t skin, but a giant slab of muscle, not bleeding but it still felt exactly like muscle, warm and pulsating. It was alive. God, every step she took really hammered her with that strange reality, that Hell was a-fucking-live.

And somehow, she still didn’t see the next room coming.

There were holes in the walls of varying sizes, all of them close to the ground—er, flesh floor. And the holes pulsated slowly, same as the floor did, just more obviously, more like an ... orifice, that wanted to push something out. And one of them did.

That was an egg.

“What the fuuuuck...” Mia took a small step forward, but froze as another demon moved around the room. A big room, like the others, but this one was covered in eggs. Dozens. Hundreds. Each egg sat on the floor in a groove in the muscle, varying shapes and sizes, with some eggs fighting for space. Some eggs were tiny, like a loaf of bread, others were a few feet tall, ovals.

They didn’t even have the courtesy to be white eggs, or maybe blue, or have colorful dots on them. Nope, all black, with some red blemishes on them. They looked moist, too, as if someone had dipped them in a blood bath.

Another one of the demons like Acelina, a spire mother, walked among the eggs, squatted down, adjusted them, and moved along to do the same to more. Just like Acelina, this one was ridiculously tall, ridiculously curvy with an extremely tiny waist, and all sorts of scary jewelry. Every step she took was the most exaggerated, sensual, beautiful thing, with a hip sway that was hypnotizing. Combined with the chains, especially the belly chain and the skulls dangling from it, it was practically a dance.

“Pavia,” Acelina said, strutted up to her fellow zotiva, and gestured back to Mia and Kas. “This is the little irka Zel told us about.” Irka?

Pavia looked past Acelina to Mia, and showed the exact same sort of crazy, scary smile that would have made Pennywise proud, in a black void face.

“She truly is unmarked.”

“Zel didn’t exaggerate,” Acelina said. “Unfortunately she didn’t mention the tiny ingrate has a tongue.”

Mia folded her arms and glared, which sent Pavia into a fit of laughter.

“Delightful,” Pavia said, and she and Acelina walked over to join them. “Have you tasted her yet, Kas? She is a tiny thing, and delicious looking. I bet she would squirm.”

Okay, so Acelina was a bitch, but Pavia seemed to be a flirty sort, and her grins looked somewhere between evil monster smile, and actually kinda seductive. It was hard to tell, considering all Mia could see of their mouths was the big white sharp teeth. But Pavia carried herself with a little less pompousness, and once she was close enough to Mia, she squatted down in front of her.

“I haven’t slept with any demon,” Mia said, doing her best to look at Pavia in her obsidian, featureless face, and not look down at her insane curves. Like Zel and Acelina, she had nipple piercings, and had three chains of different lengths connecting them. The red silk hanging over her tits was too see-through to hide any of it.

“Oh my. Not even Adron? I heard he helped escort you here. He is quite the mischievous fellow.” Pavia said ‘mischievous’ the same way a woman back on Earth would have said ‘fun and sexy’. And Adron was definitely that.

“Diogo wanted me unspoiled, for Zel.” It took effort to say that with the most deadpan, serious tone and facial expression Mia could muster. It was meant to sound like a bad thing, because being treated like some sort of prize, like a piece of meat, was finally starting to piss Mia off, now that the fear of being taken to some mysterious queen named ‘Zel’ was wearing off. And Mia mostly succeeded in making it sound like the horrible thing it was.

But Pavia just chuckled, nodded, and stood back up.

“You do have an aura, little Mia. I am sure Zel will find ways to exploit that.” Wonderful. “But,” Pavia continued, “you are in luck. Zel has been in a good mood, since your arrival. You are a puzzle piece she’s been missing.”

“I’m not a puzzle piece. I’m a person.”

The three demons looked between each other, and Acelina grumbled as she clicked a couple times, gesturing to Kas again.

Kas clicked back, slowly lifted his huge tail, put it between him and the two boob ladies, and gently pushed Mia away while taking a step forward. Okay, yeap, she’d crossed a line, having the nerve to say she was a human being. Pavia’s evil little grin was almost kinda cute, but Acelina’s was a full-on sneer.

Time to defuse the situation.

“So, uh, eggs. Coming out of ... the ... walls...” She gestured to the flesh walls, their orifices that were—yeap, those were moist orifices. And oh god, one of them was laying another egg right now, a small one.

Pavia clicked in her throat a few times, high pitched, maybe even excited, as she walked back into the room and its center.

“Yes yes. Come, see.”

Acelina eyelessly glared down at Mia and Kas, but after a while she stepped back and followed her fellow spire mother.

“I don’t understand,” Mia said. “Where are the eggs coming from? How did they get made?”

“Betrayers never understand. I suppose you wouldn’t either.” Acelina stood near Pavia, adjusted her wings, and gestured out to the walls. “Hell is alive.”

“I’m...” Mia gulped as she looked down at the muscle under her feet, the rib bones on the walls, and the slow, heavy, deep thud that accompanied each pulse and flex of the flesh walls. A heartbeat? “Like, alive alive?”

Pavia clicked once, nodding. “She is alive, and she births everything that lives within Hell.”

Mia rubbed her arms as she slowly looked at the eggs around her. “Can I ... touch one?”

Acelina grumbled, but both mothers eventually nodded.

Mia smiled as she squatted down in front of one of the smaller eggs. The walls hadn’t placed it there, the mothers had. Even as Mia touched it, and shivered at the wet, hot sensation of the weird bony texture, both mothers crouched down in front of some eggs of their own and rotated them. Others, they made sure got a little more contact with the fleshy floor, and others they moved closer or further from other eggs. Spire mothers. They took care of the eggs.

“What kind of demons are in here?” she asked.

“Most kinds,” Pavia said. She approached one of the orifices, and effortlessly slashed and killed a remnant who’d had the audacity to grow too close. As always, the remnant collapsed in a gory mess of soft flesh and easily broken bone, and Pavia used her wing to wipe it away. The blood soaked into the flesh floor even faster than it would have on Hell’s rock and stone surface outside.

“Most?”

“Older breeds,” Acelina said, and she gestured to herself, Pavia, and Kas, “they are birthed less often with each passing century, while the younger breeds forever spawn in greater numbers.” She gestured to the small egg Mia touched. “And the imp in that egg will join their ridiculous swarm.”

“You can tell it’s an imp?”

Grumbling all the more, Acelina shrugged. “I am a spire mother.” As if that explained everything.

“Uh, and they hatch here?”

“No,” Pavia said. “We move them to the hatching pit when it’s time.”

“Hatching pit?”

The egg room had been well cared for, with Pavia and Acelina, and probably the other two spire mothers, constantly walking around, killing remnants, and rotating the eggs to keep everything perfect. They wanted to make sure all the eggs hatched.

The hatching pit was completely different. It took them a little while to get to it, and the closer they got, the louder the background groans and screeches became. Screams, but not the scared kind. Moans, but not the sexy kind. Screams of fighting, moans of exertion.

It was a huge room. Beyond huge. Football stadium huge, a colossal room filled with enormous rocks, cages dangling from chains and filled with remnants, and enormous white spikes of bone that stuck out from the flesh walls. Movement was everywhere. Demons jumped from rock to rock, big and small, squeaking and yelling and roaring. Demons ran between the rocks, pushing each other out of the way.

The little demons fought, and ripped each other to pieces.

Mia covered her mouth, eyes wide, staring at the pit below her. It was like the fighting pit Zel had shown her yesterday, but so much bigger, much much deeper, and inside it were hundreds of demons and empty egg shells. Bones littered the floor, as did corpses, and tiny imps and grems chewed at the flesh of bigger, dead demons while young tiger ladies, vrats, succubi and incubi, brutes, gargoyles, and a few other kinds drifted around.

For some reason, it reminded Mia of high school, with cliques and stuff, except the cliques were a mix of demon types. Maybe hatchlings who’d hatched at similar times? However they came to form their groups, it wasn’t breed specific, and the imps and grems didn’t seem all that interested in following them. The little rascals hopped around, banging bones together like drum sticks sometimes, chuckling super evilly like anyone would expect from a stereotypical small demon troublemaker. The other demons were a lot more careful, but even they still roamed around, chatting, climbing on big rocks or bigger piles of empty egg shells and bones, before they got into fights with other demons.

Oh god it got worse. Mia stared down at the huge pit, and the shadows along the floor. They weren’t shadows. They were holes. There was a network of tunnels.

“How ... How big is this place?” she asked.

“Big,” Acelina said. “There’s at least a few miles of tunnel, though none of them lead to rooms as big as this one. This is the only entrance and exit to the hatching pit.”

“You put the eggs in here?”

“Yes.”

“And they hatch and ... and ... what? Demons just run around, killing each other?”

Acelina grinned at her with that big scary smile of hers. “Indeed. We might throw them a soul every so often, but for the most part, they kill each other to get their food.”

“Oh god. That’s fucking horrible.” Mia clutched her stomach. The floor of the pit was flesh, but all around the pit the enormous walls were made of metal, and were perfectly smooth. No one got out of the pit unless someone helped them out.

Kas shrugged, clicked once, and gestured down at the hundreds of demons wandering around, some going down into the tunnels, some coming out.

“It’s how we earn the right to be adults,” he said.

“It’s still fucking horrible. Why not just ... let them all out and do their thing out there?” Mia gestured back to the path they’d walked in from.

“That’s how things used to be done,” Acelina said, “and Hell was chaos, so the tale goes.”

Much as it was sickening, watching young demons drift around in a giant pit, fighting each other and killing each other, Acelina made a point. How horribly chaotic would Hell be if there were even more demons everywhere, and they had to kill each other constantly just for an opportunity at a meal? It was still sickening, but it wasn’t hard to picture Hell so fucked up and horrible that the demons wouldn’t even have been capable of communication, regressed to nothing more than starving animals, forever fighting for food among waves and waves of newborns.

“How long ago did you start ... doing things like this?” She gestured down at a gargoyle girl who sat on a big rock by herself, half as tall as the gargoyles Mia had seen before. Half as tall, but she didn’t exactly look like a child, either. Proportionally she looked older than she must have been, almost like childhood was skipped? Or at least, partially skipped?

“Some time during the first age,” Acelina said, shrugging. “Hundreds of thousands of years ago.”

“Oh.” Well, shit. This was beyond normal for demons, then. It wasn’t some band-aid solution for their shitty circumstances, but an aspect of their civilization older than anything any human civilization considered integral to their culture. No wonder demons were all either really fucking nasty, had strange senses of humor, or were carved out of wood. Anyone who survived a childhood like this had to be strong, and twisted.

It was in a spire’s best interest to only let strong demon children survive, if the demon children were to grow up and defend the spire from other spires. That was a thing, according to Adron, that spires occasionally fought, and if they didn’t want to get destroyed, the spire ruler needed to be strong and summon a horde who could fight the invading force. Or, of course, be the invading force.

“So spire mothers help?”

Acelina shook her head. “Only until the egg has finished hatching. Otherwise it would defeat the purpose. They must reach maturity on their own.”

“Then what do mothers do? You just ... watch?”

“Watch, and once they reach maturity, we remove them, examine them, ensure they meet the standards we deem, and we explain the rules of Death’s Grip.”

Pavia joined Acelina’s side. “And treat them right, if they’re old enough and have done particularly well.”

Both ladies chuckled and grinned. Big, evil, scary smiles. But at least Pavia seemed a bit nicer.

Well, Mia had answers to her questions, they just weren’t very nice ones. For some stupid reason, that’d surprised her. Something about knowing demons had children, eggs, and they hatched and stuff, had given her weird mental images of demons ... not being horrible? Like maybe a weird little family, hatching eggs and hunting for their children and stuff, feeding the babies ... okay, feeding them human hearts, so still not the nicest image but damn well better than this. Even as she thought about it, she stared down over the wall at the demons, and a fight erupted deep in the pit. Seven young demons tore into each other. Only five walked away.

“Do hellbeasts spawn here?”

“No,” Pavia said. “Hellbeasts have their own hidden little dens where Hell births them. But the spires are the creations of Lucifer, so we are told. And we demons are Lucifer’s children.”

Right, Zel had said that. Demons were the children of Hell, and Lucifer. If Lucifer created the spires, and the spires grew — literally — out of Hell, then it all kinda made sense. Much as anything made sense in the afterlife anyway.

“Kas, I think I’m ready to go back to my room. I—” She blinked as she looked past the two tall ladies, and to the glowing runes written on the wall of bone in the back, high above the pit. Someone had somehow managed to write something with amber veins.

Slowly, she walked past the two demon ladies, and did her best to not notice how her head only reached their stomachs. She walked along the edge of the pit, and circled the giant hole until she reached the huge runes in the bone. How did you write runes with amber veins? She’d seen normal runes carved into stuff, etched, scratched, and all of them had been Estian. This wasn’t Estian.

“The ancient language,” Pavia said, coming up to stand beside her. “Written into the bones of Hell long ago. Probably when Lucifer created the spires.”

“Ancient language...” Was it ancient? It didn’t look worn down. It looked brand new. Probably because it was written in what was literal veins of lava encased in some sort of thin, impervious magical glass.

And she could read it.

“The bowels ... of Death’s Grip ... breeds the swarm of the mountain.” Mia looked up at Pavia. “Uh, what’s that mean? I mean, I guess Death’s Grip is a lot of mountains and ... and why are you looking at me like that?” Even without eyes, or any facial features really, Pavia’s slightly parted mouth looked very stunned.

Mia looked back at Acelina and Kas. Both of them had open mouths, too.

“You can read this?” Pavia asked.

“Yeah. It’s weird though. It’s not English—er, I mean, Estian. It’s some other language?”

Kas came up to her, grabbed her arm, and pulled her toward the exit.

“Come with me.”

“W-What? Hey, ow! Jesus, let go! I’m coming already!”

He let go, and she rubbed her wrist as she stumbled after her big dinosaur bodyguard. A quick glance back showed Pavia and Acelina, still staring at her with mouths open.

“She can read the ancient runes,” Kasimiro said.

Zelandariel, standing by a big stone table in her throne room, turned and faced them, one eyebrow raised.

“Excuse me?”

Kas gestured to Mia. “She can read the ancient runes. Unless she was lying, she read the ancient runes over the hatching pit.”

The demon queen’s eyes lit up, and her smile turned absolutely evil, and excited, the sort of smile a dominatrix would wear when successfully getting their sub off. It was unnerving.

“Did you now, little soul.” Zel sauntered up to her, and squatted down in front of her so they could be face to face. Two of her arms rested on her knees, but the other two reached out, and gently held Mia’s shoulders. Intense, disturbing eye contact, the black sclera of Zel’s eyes fully circling her red irises as she opened her eyes wider.

“I wasn’t lying. I ... didn’t think that’d be such a big deal.”

“It is another piece of the puzzle. An important one. An essential one.” Nodding, Zel leaned in closer. The woman was literally over twice as tall as Mia, and proportional; her head was twice as tall as Mia’s, too, twice as wide, twice as deep. It was like being inches away from the face of a goddess alien cosmic horror creature, happy to bite her face off, or her entire head off, if she said the wrong thing.

“I ... didn’t realize,” she said.

“I am sure you’ve realized by our reactions the we can neither speak nor read the ancient language.”

Holy shit.

“No, I hadn’t realized that.”

“You would have learned sooner or later. It is no secret.” Nodding, Zel stood up and looked to Kas. “Fetch me Adron.”

Kas clicked once, and left, walking off a little faster than he normally did, on all fours with his big tail slowly swaying behind him.

“I was busy,” Zel said, “if you were wondering why I had not come to visit you. But this is more important. You will be coming with me, now.”

Mia shivered, rubbed her arms, and nodded. Not like she could deny Zel, but the evil smile the spire ruler had worn a moment before hadn’t exactly filled Mia with comfort.

“Alright. And, why fetch Adron?”

That might have been a bit too far. She could get lippy with other demons because Zel had declared Mia off limits, but getting mouthy with Zel herself was playing with fire. But thankfully Zel thought her attitude was cute, and she giggled as she grinned at her.

“Because Adron, the sneaky little devil, is someone I can trust, both in talent and in loyalty. I did not know what use you could provide me before this discovery, save for one to be explored later. But now, I have many ideas, and I will not risk your death. I am doubling your guard.”

“Oh.” Oh god, Adron, and Kas? “And ... Hannah?”

Zel shrugged. “She is Adron’s pet. I see no issue if she joins him.”

Mia squirmed. Adron and Hannah, two people she’d gotten very close to, sexually speaking, in just several days at that. The feel of Adron’s huge cock underneath her, spreading her slit’s lips apart, pulsing as it poured cum up onto Adron’s chest, the memory sent heat through Mia’s body instantly. It only got worse, remembering the feel of his body against hers, his cock in her hand, while Hannah sank her fist deep into Mia’s body. So much for being in a bad mood.

Oh god, Kas had said he’d had sex with Hannah before, and Adron, at the same time. Images flooded Mia’s mind, of little her between the two huge men, stuffed to the gills and squirming and wriggling, while four huge hands held her down, and—

Zel licked her lips. “You do like him.”

“I ... I mean...”

“I have but to say his name and your aura rekindles, like a spark on kindling.” With a playful wink, Zel walked back to her throne, sat down, and motioned for Mia to join her. It was such a big chair of curvy, elegant bones, but Zel and her huge form filled it well, despite how thin she was compared to someone like Diogo or Kas.

There really wasn’t any point in lying about this. Apparently Mia had a damn aura that told everyone nearby if she was horny, and worse than that, Zel was smart. Lying to her was dangerous.

“First day I arrived in Hell, I was horrified. And I still am. But every day here, I’m surrounded by so much sex, it’s really starting to get to me.”

“Diogo showed much restraint, not indulging himself of your small body.” Zel pointed beside the throne.