Chapter 16

~~Mia~~

The two giant metal doors, decorated with skulls and chains, were closed. Mia wasn’t getting out of the dungeon unless she opened them, and sure enough, she wasn’t strong enough to do so. She pressed against them, and even with her bare feet getting a decent grip on the metal floor, they didn’t budge.

But maybe someone was waiting on the other side? Adron or Kas? If it was Adron, then maybe...

She knocked on the door, hard as she could, and tapped on the rhythm everyone knew. Shave and a Haircut.

She got a couple of knocks back. Slowly, the enormous doors opened, Mia stepped back, and Adron stood in the now open path to freedom.

“Mia? What happened? Where’s Zel?”

“Zel’s busy. We need to get to her throne room, now!”

“What?”

“We need to get to her throne room now!” Mia marched forward and shoved the demon in the stomach.

Adron stared at her, unmoving. “You can’t just—”

“Adron, please? I’ll explain everything after.”

After a slow frown and heavy sigh, Adron looked past her into the deep dungeon. There was no chance he’d see anything, this far from Vinicius’s cell, but the fact he couldn’t see Zel up and about was the problem.

“Alright.”

“Alright? Alright!” Oh thank god. Maybe there was a little more to Adron than the mask he wore, a little more to him than the playful, mischievous, conniving demon he enjoyed being. Maybe he felt a little connection to the young woman he’d deflowered? Maybe—Maybe Mia you’re being an idiot and you can psychoanalyze later.

They ran out to the balcony. Chaos. Normally there were big teeth doors around, like Mia’s, something that needed to be opened with the spire’s power. They were open, teeth pulled up and down out of the way into the skull archways. Betrayers, imps and grems, succubi and incubi, they all stepped out onto the balconies above and below, and the sound of panicked voices mixed with the screams of remnants.

“What’s ... going on?” she asked.

Adron knelt down, she slipped onto his back, and the demon wasted no time running to the balcony edge and jumping up to the next floor.

“The rider is attacking,” he said between grunts. Every few seconds, he grabbed a dangling chain, or a dangling cage, or the rim of the next balcony up the spire’s center, whatever allowed him to traverse as much distance as possible as quickly as possible.

“Zel said that, but I don’t know what that means.”

“Me neither. I’ve never seen him. But he’s come at the spire with a massive hellbeast, and what looks like a couple dozen demons armed from False Gate.”

“A couple dozen? How many demons are defending the spire?”

“Probably five or six hundred, and another five or six hundred demons in the mountains nearby.”

Mia jaw-dropped. “Against two dozen?”

“In aera armor, and that hellbeast is ... massive.” He shook his head, and focused on his breathing as he got faster. The higher they went up, the louder the noises got, and soon the sound of roars and metal hitting metal joined them.

They passed the ground floor, and Mia managed a quick peek out through the big hallway to the outside. It was like a battlefield. No, it was a battlefield. Adron didn’t give her time to get a good look, but a peek was enough to catch the sight of limbs flying, demons cut in half, and the legs of something that looked like Godzilla bred with an iguana and a demon.

Adron said no more. Demons didn’t sweat, but she felt the heat pour off his body as he pushed himself, and his breathing grew faster and ragged. It was hard holding onto him, especially with the black spikes on his back. Half the size of the one she’d stabbed Zel with, but still problematic, and she winced as a few of them scratched her skin. Her white silk wrap couldn’t protect her from a stiff breeze, let alone accidental stabbing.

The throne room wasn’t on the top floor, but it was a ways up. By the time they reached it, a couple minutes had passed, and that was enough to give Mia an eyeful of what else was going on. She was right. All the doors that’d been closed by teeth were open. Zel’s death, the way her extra amber horn had glowed and then died, it’d done something. Mia had half expected the tower to explode or light up with a big amber beacon or something, but nope, it was more like someone had flipped a switch to off mode.

How did someone become the new spire owner, anyway?

“Why are the sealed doors open?” Adron asked as he set her down.

“I ... um...” She took a step toward a nearby big doorway, Zel’s throne room, a giant black skull open mouth, with fire burning in its empty eyes. It was tall enough for even Vinicius to walk through.

She didn’t get far. Adron put a hand on her shoulder.

“What did you do?”

“Umm ... I’ll tell you in the throne room, okay?” She gestured to the throne room entrance. “Come on. If that ... that rider person is here for me, we should do this quickly.” The rider and his assault were the only reason demons weren’t around to stop Mia, ironically enough. They were outside, fighting, and dying.

“The rider won’t be able to beat Zel and her strongest enforcers in a fight, not if they surround him.”

“About that.” She gulped and nodded toward the big skull door again.

The demon relented and followed her into the vast room.

The throne of metal and bone sat empty. Amber veins ran along the walls, still gently pulsing with the lifeblood of Hell. Whatever Zel’s death had done, it hadn’t undone the spire itself, just maybe the decisions she’d made with its power? It didn’t matter. Mia ran to the table of stone, climbed a big bone chair, and stood on it so she could look down at the table.

No luck.

“Keys! Where are the keys!?”

“Keys?”

“Keys! The keys to the dungeon. One of the demons down there told me they’d be up here. And I mean, it’s not like anyone would go around releasing prisoners under Zel’s nose, right? So she probably wouldn’t have hid them. Help me!” Maybe on the throne? On a wall somewhere? There were so many damn random metal spikes and chains hanging from the ceiling and shit, they could be right in front of her and she wouldn’t notice them.

Adron stared at her, eyes wide. It was a strange sight, seeing an eight-foot-tall demon man, all muscled and handsome, scary too with his demony face, big powerful jaw, skull-like eye sockets, big black horns, all of it absolutely paralyzed.

“What happened to Zelandariel?”

“She’s dead!” Mia ran up to the demon and slapped both her palms against his chest, the highest point she could reach. He wore some pieces of black armor, but that didn’t matter. She could have tackled him and it wouldn’t have moved him. “I killed her! She’s dead. She’s dead, her corpse is lying in Vinicius’s cell, and the only chance I have of surviving any of this insanity is grabbing Vinicius’s leash and making him protect me so I can get out of here!”

She pushed off him and got back to looking. On the back of the throne? No. On the walls? Hundreds of big black spikes, and plenty of them held dangling tiny chains, some tipped with amber stones like the one around Mia’s neck. No keys, though.

“You ... what? You ... Why?”

“Why kill her? Because she was going to torture me, break me, turn me into a slave, anything and everything she could to turn me into a tool! She’s worse than you know! Than Kas knows!” She ran around the throne twice. No luck. “Why leave? Because I have to find my brother! He’s out there and I have to find him! And I’m going to use Vinicius to do it!”

“Brother?”

“Yes!” She threw up her hands and glared at him as hard as she could. Now would be the perfect time for her to be able to control her aura, to push out what she felt into the air, and get Adron on the same wavelength as her. That only happened when she was horny. Now, the panic she felt, the need she had to get Adron to help her, none of that resonated on the strings inside her. All she could do was communicate her desperation with her eyes and her voice.

Adron, his own eyes still wide and locked on her, slowly walked toward the side of the room, and reached into an alcove in the wall.

“This is normally covered in closed teeth, like your bedroom door.”

“Oh. It’s ... yeah ... I guess maybe she did want to protect the keys, from being stolen or something.” With a heavy gulp, she held out her hand to Adron.

The look on his face said everything. He hadn’t believed her at first, but seeing Zel’s keys unguarded and unprotected sealed in the reality for him. His master was dead.

Slowly, he set the keys in her hand. That was a strange looking set of keys, very medieval, and heavy as hell. Each one was more like a big hammer, or axe, or something long with a square-ish blade at the end that, on closer inspection, wasn’t sharp. They were attached at the end of a chain like Mia’s necklace, each key as big as her whole hand, and one of them as big as her forearm. Definitely the key for Vinicius’s lock.

Mia’s gaze settled on the keys in her right hand before looking back up to Adron and his frozen expression. Nodding, she took her necklace off with her free hand, and threw it away as hard as she could, back toward the throne. It bounced off it and landed back on the floor with barely a noise. Not exactly the cathartic, climactic moment she wanted, but whatever, that could come later.

“Are you upset Zel’s dead?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Are you going to stop me?”

“I ... don’t know.”

“We can talk about it later, okay? I have to get back down there, now. You still going to help me?”

He took a small step back, his tail dead weight between his legs. She didn’t need her limited education in psychology to see the demon’s world had been shattered. So much time working for Zel, to the point he was sort of her double agent, spying on the bailiff Diogo and his Gorzen Mountains district, and now all of that was gone. And not because of some big battle with a neighboring province.

She poked him in the stomach. “You could come with me, you know? You and Hannah, Kas too if he doesn’t hate me too much.”

“He won’t hate you. He will be ... confused. And ... I don’t...”

“Zel’s dead. I stabbed her, with one of Vinicius’s spikes. She’s not here, and—”

“One of his spikes?”

“He broke one off.”

It was Adron’s turn to gulp this time, and he rubbed one of the small spikes coming out of an elbow.

“She’s really dead?”

“Come with me and I’ll show you. Come with me, out of this place, and we can find my brother and ... and...” She punched him in the stomach. Of course it barely fazed him, but how else was she supposed to get across how she felt? Confession of attraction? Maybe a quick speech about how this asshole who’d taken her virginity owed it to her to help her? And maybe, just maybe, that she kind of liked him?

No, clearly not. Gut punching was better.

“I ... don’t know...”

“At least get me back down to the dungeon! I need to help Vinicius.”

“I told you about him, Mia.”

“I know. Zel’s got a leash on him, and if I use that, I can at least ... sorta ... maybe ... control him, a little?” If that’d been true, Zel wouldn’t have needed Mia to break him, or Valzanal’s tools, or any of that. The leash would hopefully be enough to at least stop Vinicius from killing her, and anyone else as long as she kept an eye on him. It was a pain leash, and that was all.

Adron took another deep breath, a resetting breath, one Mia had taken many times.

“Okay. After we get Vinicius, we get Hannah, maybe find Kas if he’s not dead out in that fight, and we ... figure something out?”

“Kas is out there?”

“He is, fighting near the entrance with the other enforcers. But with that giant lizard thing, it got pretty hectic.”

Oh god, Kas. If he died, she ... she wasn’t sure how she’d feel. Him and Adron, that first night, how much had it meant to Kas, compared to her? Probably not much. At least Adron seemed to have some emotional depth, enough that he liked Hannah more than he probably thought he did. And maybe Mia, too. Kas, she didn’t know. She wanted to know, but now she might not get to.

She squeezed the keys, looked back at the empty throne, back to her huge demon protector, and nodded as confidently and courageously as she could. Not very, but better than nothing.

“Let’s go.”

~~David~~

The inside of the spire was scarier than the outside, walls of metal and flesh, bone and teeth and everything between. Remnants grew out of them, poor souls trapped in unending pain, and they screamed as they reached out for him. He could never tell if they wanted his help pulling them out of whatever surface they were attached to or growing out of, or if they wanted him to kill them. And right now, all he could do was ignore them.

There were a lot more balconies on the inside of the tower, and a big hole between them that went up and up, and down and down. The spire looked to be as deep as it was tall.

“Fuck fuck fuck.” He walked to the edge, and his eyes locked onto the dangling chains and cages inside the hole. Remnants sat within, bound to the cages, some with metal bars penetrating their entire bodies without killing them, leaving them in agony. Their cries were quiet compared to the raging battle outside.

Doorways sat nearby. Some were made of metal. Some of flesh, like exposed muscle, ready to be cut open by a huge scalpel. A few looked like open mouths of big sharp teeth, complete with a giant skull and open jaw around them.

There were demons, but few. Most of them were outside, and the ones inside ran around, either on the way out, or up or down the tower. They didn’t take any stairs, if there were any. They jumped up the hole in the center, going from balcony to balcony, using chains and cages for landing points. Others jumped down, hopping from floor to floor. How the fuck would he get around?

One archway of flesh and bone showed stairs of white. A bone stairway. A few humans ran up it, a few ran down, each with 666 written on their forehead and every one of them in a panic. Betrayers, many followed by succubi and incubi. Okay, if he wanted to fit in, he had to hide his forehead. Thankfully, he had shaggy red hair.

He lifted his arm and—

“Fuck!” He fell to a knee, and that only made the pain worse as his dislocated arm flexed and pulled at the joint. All that did was grind the bone in the wrong spot, not in the socket.

What to do what to do? He could grab one of the betrayers, and ask them about Mia. With how much panic was going on, they might just answer him. But he could barely move. Every breath was burning agony, and being on his knees for even just a few seconds was Heaven.

He pushed himself back up to his feet and backed up toward a wall. Sweat dripped down his body, and he slipped his broken weapon back into the waist of his leather skirt. How to fix your own dislocated shoulder? He’d looked it up once, on one of his random internet information rabbit holes. One method needed a table. No such luck. One needed him to lie on the floor on his back. Not a good idea. If he was strong enough, he could yank on the arm, forward away from his chest. That might work?

A demon in black armor ran past him, a brute. They ignored him. A few more vrats joined the brute, wearing more black armor than the demons outside. Honor guard, or elite soldiers, or something? Whoever they were, if they didn’t give a shit about a random human, even one apparently audacious enough to wear clothes, then maybe he could move around the tower without being bothered. Maybe—

The ground disappeared, sucked out from under him, and the wall he leaned back against lifted him up. No, wait, that was a gigantic hand lifting him by the throat, choking him, and pinning him against the wall a little too close to a remnant that grew from the ceiling.

“Who. Are. You?”

The demon came into view. Whoever they were, they’d been smart enough to grab David from the side around the entrance corner, and only now stepped into David’s line of sight. It was the shark dinosaur demon, the eyeless one with the flat head, dragon snout, and the two big horns that came out sideways. Whoever he was, he was drenched in blood, more than when David had run past him a whole two minutes ago.

“Uck ... uck...” Yeap, choking, not good. The demon loosened his grip. “I’m David! Just a ... just ... um...”

The nine-foot shark dinosaur clicked a few times in his throat. He sounded like Dao, except instead of sharp, pleasant clicks, it sounded more like a bass drum.

“You’re ... unmarked.”

Shit.

“I uh ... I’m...”

“You’re here looking for Mia.” He lowered David down to eye level, or snout to eye level, which still left David’s feet dangling high. “You smell like her. Look like her. Unmarked.” He snorted, and a hot gush of air smacked David in the face. “Brother.”

“I...” Oh shit what to say what to say. “Everyone outside is too caught up to notice or care that the rider’s in the spire! He’s here for her!” Probably here for her, but no point in muddying the point now.

The demon snarled, a few clicks slipping into an animal sorta sound.

“You approach the spire now, of all times?”

“I’ve been trying to figure out a way in for the past week! I—” David caught his throat halfway through a yelp as pain shot up from his arm.

The demon grunted, clicked once, grabbed David’s wrist, and yanked it forward, away from David’s chest. And just like the time Jes had fixed it, the bone went forward, slipped around the outer groove of the socket, and back into place. Relief flooded David, and he relaxed in the grip still borderline choking him.

“Thanks.”

The demon tilted his head at the word. The girls had done that a few times, whenever David said it. They weren’t used to hearing it.

“The rider is in the spire?”

“Yes! Did no one notice when the dragon stood up?”

Again the shark dinosaur growled, and tightened his grip a little more than was comfortable. Okay, don’t poke the bear.

“Auras. Distracting.”

“Okay!” He patted the demon’s wrist with his good hand. “Okay, I get it!” After a few more painful seconds, the demon loosened his grip again. “The rider is here, and probably for Mia! I—”

“How do you know?”

“Because a whole bunch of crazy shit has happened to me! I’ve had run-ins with an invisible monster trying to kill me, angels, and the rider, too. He’s here for unmarked souls, me or Mia, to kill us or kidnap us, and I can’t let that happen!”

It really would have been nice if whoever this demon was had had eyes. His shark dragon snout thing didn’t have lips, and any facial expressions David managed to pick up on were just frowns the demon made with his cheek muscles at the base of his mouth. He could read an alligator’s facial expressions better.

“Mia and Zelandariel are deep in the spire, in the dungeon.”

“Dungeon?” Because of course the scary spire would have a dungeon.

“If you go down there, Zel might capture you, too.”

Slowly, wincing and groaning as his shoulder screamed at him, he lifted his injured arm and squeezed the demons’ wrists with both hands as best he could. Might as well have been squeezing a steel beam.

“If I don’t, the rider is going to get her. And I saw the rider kill a korgejin and a bunch of other demons, by himself, like they were nothing.”

Mentioning the korgejin was enough to earn another grunt from the demon, and he put David down. Or rather, let David fall to the floor, and David slumped to his ass with the impact.

“Alright.” And with that, the shark dinosaur walked to the edge of the balcony.

“Wait, what? Alright?”

“I’ll go to her.”

“Wait!”

The demon turned his head and aimed it over his shoulder at David, clicked once, and turned back toward the hole in the center of the spire. He had no intention of waiting.

David forced himself to his feet, and threw himself at the demon’s back. Spiky, but he was used to dealing with spikes now, and he quickly found a groove between them where he could hold on to the giant demon by a couple of his shoulder spikes. And the demon had already been in the process of jumping down. Risky, jumping him like this. If the demon had fallen straight down the hole, it’d have probably spelled the death of both of them, but this demon knew where Mia was. By the sounds he’d made, he probably knew Mia herself. He was David’s only hope of finding her.

“You—”

“Just get me down there!”

Not like the demon had a choice, already on the way down. But when they arrived at the next floor, the big dinosaur didn’t throw David off. Any other demon would have, but whoever this demon was, they definitely knew Mia.

Miraculously, they didn’t go full speed, either. David had seen his girls jump and move around with some pretty extreme velocity, more than enough to fuck up David’s bad shoulder holding on. This demon hopped onto a chain, held his titanic weight with one hand, hopped down onto a cage, ignored the remnants inside, and hopped down to the next balcony, all just barely slowly enough that David didn’t fall.

They got down ten floors before the demon stopped, just as David was about to ask for his name. But David’s throat closed up, his breathing stopped, and his eyes locked onto the man standing in front of them.

The rider. He stood before them, small compared to the demon David held onto, but giant compared to David himself. A towering man, his armor must have weighed a hundred pounds, more, thick and solid gold and bronze, with red tint all over. His skull-like helmet pointed straight at them, and even this close, David still couldn’t see through the T-slit opening.

He held his axes out at his sides, and they dripped with blood that popped, sizzled, and burned. The surrounding corpses burned, too, several demons, and a few souls.

David hopped off the demon’s back, stood beside him, and stared at the rider. The rider stared back at him, skull helmet pointed straight at him, as if the massive demon dinosaur beside David didn’t exist.

It was like standing in front of raging rapids. It poured over David, heat, rage, an aura of pure hate and desire to destroy. It boiled his blood. His hands shook with fear, and excitement. Adrenaline, or whatever the afterlife had, coursed through his limbs. The rider, silent as death, might as well have been an erupting volcano, an endless flowing river of pure ruination, completely at odds with the cold body language. Even as the battle above went on, noises so loud the roars and thundering footsteps reached the depths of the tower, they were nothing compared to being only fifteen feet away from the rider. A monolith of murder, anger, hate, who didn’t even bother showing it in his demeanor, as if the concepts were so deep and ingrained into him, simply existing was enough to exude them.

He wasn’t human.

“Boy,” the demon said, “you said you were here for Mia?”

“Y-Yeah.” David forced his eyes toward the demon, if only for a second. He was struggling, too, whole body flexing, tail quivering, claws twitching. The aura this rider put out felt so different to David’s, but it didn’t feel quite like the aura of a demon, either; David was pretty familiar with those now, after having run past a thousand of them.

“Stairs, down thirty more layers.” The demon nodded toward one of the nearby archways in the wall.

“What?”

“Go. Warn her and Zel.”

“Uh...” With a heavy gulp, David took a step toward the big hole in the wall. The archway above it was made of bone, and getting a little closer exposed the bone stairs going up and down. Thirty more floors? Going up that’d have been pure pain. Going down, no problem.

But he couldn’t go. The rider took one more step, and that was enough to put him in David’s path.

The demon mirrored the rider. He came closer, one step forward too, and put his big arm between David and the rider.

“Be careful,” David said. “Remember what I said this guy did to—”

“I remember,” the demon said, and he clicked once in his throat before he thudded his tail on the floor.

David wasn’t so sure the demon remembered. He was caught up in the rider’s aura, and ready to suicide against him, fight to the death, what all demons apparently loved doing.

“Why are you chasing us?” David risked a question. He needed answers almost as much as he needed to rescue his sister.

The rider said nothing.

“What’s going on? You have to know something! Why did Mia and me get sent to Hell?”

The rider said nothing.

“Why ... just, why?”

Again, the rider said nothing. The rider didn’t move, either. The silence went long past the appropriate amount of time for a classic movie dialog exchange, and dipped into awkward territory. Was the rider confused, or shocked? Zero body language of any kind to read, not with all that armor, his almost statuesque posture, and the two axes unmoving at his sides.

But David couldn’t get to the stairway either.

A roar shattered the growing silence, and David covered his ears as the heavy sound ripped through the walls. It was enough to grab the nearby demon’s attention, and David’s, and even the riders.

A brute ran down the stairs, out from the archway opening, and straight toward the rider. A big brute. A big big brute, bigger than any brute David had seen yet, one with almost pure black skin. A juggernaut, no spikes or tail or wings, all claws and muscle, humanoid and almost grotesque with how thick, leathery, and demony his skin and face were.

Diogo. It had to be Diogo, the one Jes wanted dead. No wonder he was in charge of the Gorzen Mountains. The creature was as big as the demon David had just been riding, but the power that came out of him, the sheer aggression, it was enough to have even the rider shocked. For a whole half a second. But, half a second was enough time for the titan to charge into the rider straight on, and crash into him.

Big and heavy as the rider looked, Diogo’s weight hit him hard enough to send him flying. The colossal man and his heavy armor smashed into the metal and flesh of the floor, rolled over the burning corpses, and collided hard with a distance bone wall. Diogo chased after him.

The rider got back up. He’d rolled hard enough David would have broken each limb, but the rider got up calmly and swiftly, and swung both axes down at the floor where Diogo’s momentum was about to land him. But Diogo dug his talons in and jumped away at the last moment.

Jes was right. Brutes were absolute morons, but this Diogo demon, the biggest brute around, was smart enough to live where other brutes died. The rider came at him, swinging his big gold axes in almost an artful dance, and Diogo continued to back away, narrowly dodging each one as he looked for an opening. No need for David to explain, those axes set anything they hit on fire, and the burning corpses around them proved it.

“Go,” the shark demon said.

“Wh—”

The demon leapt across the hole, a massive jump that almost smacked his head into the balcony above. Unlike Diogo, the shark dinosaur was perfectly comfortable moving on four limbs, and got behind the rider with the same sort of animal swiftness Caera used. He landed, used his momentum to keep going, pounced against the wall, and pounced off it straight at the rider’s back.

The rider turned and swung an axe down, clean and fast, with zero hesitation. A giant demon much bigger than him jumping off walls didn’t so much as warrant a flinch. And the only reason his axe didn’t meet the shark on top of his flat, black bone head, was Diogo charging in again.

David didn’t see what happened. Something new fell down the hole in the spire center, and a high-pitched squeak tore his eyes away from the fight.

“Mia?” He ran to the edge of the balcony and looked down. It couldn’t have been Mia. The shark demon was sure she was already downstairs, and—

A woman, clutching a vrat’s back, peeked up as the vrat took her down fast, hopping from chain to chain, balcony to balcony. Whoever she was, she was small, had long red hair, and wore some sort of white clothing. But the vrat went down multiple floors almost as fast as gravity would take him, and became a blur in a second.

But David recognized that squeak.

He looked back to Diogo and the shark. They were both still alive, but the shark’s right arm bled, and now Diogo was on the defensive again, stepping back and back as the rider came at him. The only reason Diogo was still alive was the rider wasn’t exactly a bullet train. He didn’t need to be, with an aura like that, demanding all inside it fight. All he had to do was slowly walk toward his target — or jog — and they’d throw themselves at him.

Not Diogo, though. He had enough presence of mind to keep from getting butchered, at least so far. No wonder Jes feared him.

David bolted for the stairs, and didn’t look back. Thirty floors down? The shark demon had assumed Mia was down there, but she hadn’t been. Maybe now, on the way down, she was going to where the shark demon thought she’d been?