Chapter 35

~~Day 46~~

~~David~~

He sat up. Caera didn’t like that. She pulled him back down, and he again disappeared in a sea of boobage.

On his right was Caera, snuggling into his side. On his left, Jeskura. Both pressed their breasts into his shoulders and chest. And behind him sat Daoka, her legs spread around him, back to the cave wall, his head on her stomach. It was Heaven, and he very much didn’t want to leave. Leaving meant going on a hike, and he hated hiking; the girls hated it even more. And if they stayed here, they could have more sex, some more sex, maybe some more sex, and after that, some more sex.

“We have to get moving,” he said. The words tasted bitter. “Twilight’s almost over. The sun’s up.”

“No sun down here in Hell,” Caera said, and she leaned in so she could run her long tongue along his neck. Daoka’s huge breasts sat on his shoulders, though, so the tiger had to half bury her face against one to reach David. From the clicking sounds, Daoka didn’t mind at all.

“I agree with Caera,” Jes said. “We’ve been walking for so damn long. My feet hurt.”

Daoka clicked some more, and Acelina chuckled.

“Hooves are indeed the best,” the spire mother said. With a rather haughty laugh, she pulled a wing in front of her and ran her claws along its fingers, looking for dirt to discard.

She sat on the other side of the small cave, eyeless gaze aimed at them. But for all her desire to be left alone, she didn’t stop the four little bundles of chaos from snuggling up against her thighs, playing with her tail, or her enormous thin wings, or with Lasca, her breasts. Bravest of the Las indeed, the little critter sat sideways on Acelina’s lap, one cheek resting between the demon’s breasts, and judging from her tail and limp wings, she was asleep. And for some strange reason, Acelina combed the sleeping little demon’s dreadlocks with her claws.

The spire mother almost looked happy. Not that David could really tell, with the lack of any facial features, but normally Acelina’s body language seemed a little stand-off-ish; not that David could really read body language, either. Still, she seemed happier, and the Las weren’t terrified of her anymore. And if last night was any indication, they were also addicted to her breast milk.

It did taste oddly amazing, so he couldn’t blame them.

“We have no idea when the world will end,” he said. “We need to get moving.”

“I know,” Caera said. “Just ... five more minutes.”

“Five more minutes,” Jes said, nodding as she leaned in, copied Caera, and licked his cheek. Unlike Caera, she didn’t pull away, content to lean her cheek against Daoka’s tit and leave it there as she smiled at him. “You know, the stranger could have been lying. I vote we just give up the whole plan, go back to the temple, set up a defense there, and recruit all the imps and grems to work for us.” She walked her claws up his naked abs and chest. “I bet we could have a dozen impas and gremlas on your dick every night, and apparently you’d still have energy left over to fuck the rest of us. Think that’d be a nice arrangement.”

“Very nice!” Latia said. The tiniest of the Las joined them, sat on David’s shins facing him, and put her hooves on his stomach. “Big orgy! Impins and gremlins have big cocks, too! Not big like David, but still, big. Lots of sex for all of us. At the same time!” She flapped her wings, and David scrunched up his eyes at the impact of air. “Big pile of sex!”

“I wouldn’t mind that,” Caera said, grinning at David. “Five or six of those little guys trying to get their dicks in me all at the same time? I’d be so stuffed.”

He frowned at her, earned some laughs from her, and a kiss, but he would not be swayed. Groaning, he pushed himself back to sitting, picked Latia up, earned some laughs from her, too, and set her aside. Back on his feet, he got his leather skirt on, his heavy-ass half breastplate, and pointed at the rest of the lazy demons.

“We’re trying to save the world. Come on!”

They all groaned, but after some clicking, stretching, and hoof tapping, they got dressed in their armor, even Acelina. Caera still hadn’t mentioned that the spire mother was wearing the tregeera’s old friend’s armor, but it also didn’t seem to bother her. Demon etiquette.

Daoka got on the tiger’s back, and the group once again began the excursion. This time they’d slept in a hole not too deep in the ground, with only barely enough twist and turns they could hide in it. Not a great place to hide and sleep, but it was all they’d found.

“No hellbeasts, again,” he said. “That normal?”

“No,” Jes said, “it’s not. Something weird is going on. Remnants walking free was already weird, but now hellbeasts aren’t hunting at twilight?”

“They’re hunting,” Caera said, sniffing the air. “I can smell them. They’re just not hunting when they usually do.”

“Question,” David said, raising a finger. “If every hellbeast in an area fought every demon, what would happen?”

The Las all gasped and shared scared looks. Jes and Caera shook their heads, and Daoka clicked a few times as she gestured out at the opening mountain terrain ahead of them.

“We’d probably lose,” Caera said. “Some hellbeasts are pretty nuts. You saw that dragon creature the rider had.”

“Oh, right.” Fucking christ that thing had been huge. “You’re sure it’s still alive?”

Daoka clicked and pointed behind them, back toward the canyon, but stopped mid click. Her arm lowered, and with dropped jaw, she clicked once more.

Everyone turned, and everyone froze.

The path to the Grave Valley was some pretty rough mountain range, but behind them, back toward Death’s Grip, a break had opened in the mountains over Domicela’s valley so they could see all the way back to the spire. From here, it was just a tiny black vertical line, and beyond it, fire. The sky swirled on itself and joined a tornado of fire and lava. Too far to tell exactly how big, but it had to be almost as big as the spire itself.

“What the fuck,” Jes said. “I haven’t seen a tornado that big in ages.”

“That’s a thing?” David asked.

“Yeah, but that thing is huge.”

“Too huge,” Caera said. “No way that just happened randomly.”

David held up a hand, and everyone grew quiet. He hadn’t meant to shush them with a gesture, but apparently he had. Much as he would have turned around and apologized for it, he needed the silence.

“I can ... hear it,” he said.

Daoka clicked once.

“Hear ... the song.” He leaned toward the distant firestorm and aimed his ear at it. No change. It wasn’t something he heard with his ears, but his insides, like a vibration that was so deep and low, it had to be felt, not heard. “It sounds like ... frustration, and rage, and ... a dance?”

Caera joined him, Dao still on her back, and the satyr nudged his shoulder as she clicked at him.

“You didn’t dream about Mia, right?” the tiger asked.

“No, I didn’t.”

“If you really keep dreaming about other unmarked when they die, then Mia’s still alive.”

“Yeah, but—wait, you think she did that?”

“It’s on the other side of the canyon, and you said yourself you can hear it. I hear nothing.” Caera looked back at the others.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing,” they all said.

He gulped. Spinning up some blackstone spikes and walls, and cracking a cave like plastic, had been a weird, difficult, and had left him hungry. Hell, he was still hungry, and he’d eaten twice since the incident. Humans could go months without eating, but not him. If Mia had created that tornado, she was probably starving.

“David’s sister did that?” Lasca asked. “Strong! David do hellfire, too?”

He looked back at the crowd. “That’s ... Is that hellfire?”

“Hard to tell from here,” Jes said. “Hellfire kinda looks like fire, until you get close and you see the amber in it. The lava.”

Hellfire was, as far as the runes in his mind could figure, some sort of destructive force created by essence and resonance ripping into each other and creating a cycle, almost like a fission reaction. The runes showed him it was Hell’s form of annihilation, as if it embodied it, represented it. As if it was existentially important, and the runes showed it side by side with the flowing waters of Heaven.

Water for healing, and fire for destruction. It was very ... traditional.

“You want to go back?” Caera asked. “Maybe see if there’s a way across the canyon?”

“Nah. You know that’ll never work. Huge waste of time, we might not find a way across, we might never catch up to her, and even if we did us just being near each other causes problems. No, let’s just ... keep going.” He turned, checked back to see if the insane display was real and not his imagination, and continued on the journey.

~~Day 51~~

They walked. They walked. They walked some more. His feet were iron by this point, but the demons weren’t so lucky. Daoka felt fine enough to walk on her own again, and Caera was thankful to be free of the extra weight, but demons were strong and she hadn’t really been weighed down. No, it was just the distance that was the problem, kilometers upon kilometers, miles upon miles.

They went slow, but there was no avoiding how worn down they were all getting. Even Acelina, Laria, and Latia grew tired, their hooves unable to withstand the rock and stone for so long.

“I’m telling you,” David said, falling back a bit so he could chat with the two little gremlas, “you should get horseshoes.”

“Do not be ridiculous,” Acelina said, walking in the back.

“It might help?”

Latia whined up at him and tugged on his arm.

“Carry me.”

“Uh, aren’t you the demon? Super strong? You should be carrying me.”

“Latia is tiny!” After a few more whines, she threw herself at his back.

He almost toppled, but sure enough, Latia was a tiny thing, and once she was on his back, it wasn’t much trouble to hold her thighs. He’d held her horizontally and fucked her like a toy just a week ago, that’s how light she was. They’d all had sex a few times since then, but never with the same energy since everyone was exhausted all the time.

The little devil critter flapped her wings a few times, snuggled to his back, and buried her chin over his shoulder. Okay, yeap, still light, but she had chunks of meera metal for armor, and his ego quickly proved his downfall as he tried to walk the next kilometer. Her armor was probably as heavy as all of her.

“You’re killing him,” Caera said, one very painful half hour later.

“David is strong!”

“David is a small human man who can barely lift a pebble.”

He winced, but the sweat beading down his forehead didn’t lie.

“Fiiiine.” Latia hopped off and immediately began whining again. Literally, whining noises, like a dog or annoyed cat, and it wasn’t long before the other little critters mirrored her. Four little ladies teetered side to side as they walked, knocking shoulders, unable to stay upright.

“You four,” Acelina said with a hiss, “weigh almost nothing. I weigh more than ten of you. Stop complaining.”

“Butt too big,” Lasca said.

“Thighs too big,” Laara said.

“Boobs too big,” Laria said, which made David laugh. The little gremla was a busty creature.

With a heavy snort, Acelina stomped forward, and the four Las scattered, chirping and clicking and squealing. She didn’t chase them, satisfied, and hit David in the back with one of her long wings.

“Annoying as the little creatures are, they have a point. It would be easier to run than to walk this distance.”

“Really?” David asked.

“No, but regardless, if this trek does not end sometime soon, we may have to stop for several days.”

“Agreed,” Caera said. “I know you wanna just go go go, David, but if this keeps up, we’ll break.”

He raised an eyebrow down at the tiger prowling beside him.

“Really?”

She laughed. “No, but it’s definitely harder on us than you. We might need a few days to sit and hunt.”

Daoka clicked and gestured around at the mountains.

“Right,” Jes said. “Demons want to hunt! We want to sneak around, track down some souls, and eat them. And then laze about doing nothing for hours. Days.”

Demons were predators, and the more he learned about them, the more they seemed like classic surface big cat predators. They didn’t go on journeys. They set up a territory, marked it, patrolled it, hunted in it, and didn’t get along with potential competitors.

“We need a car,” he said, looking down as he went into think mode. “We’re almost at the Grave Valley, right? Then we cross the Scar, the Red Pits, and the Navameere Fields. We’re crossing over half of Hell.”

All the demons, save Acelina, groaned.

“Don’t remind us,” Jes said. “We agreed to help ‘cause we’d prefer the world didn’t end, you know? Doesn’t mean we have to like the trip.”

“Maybe ... Maybe we can recruit some hellbeasts? You said demons sometimes ride goorts, right?”

“I did,” Caera said. “But it’d have to be a damn big goort to handle me or Acelina. And you can’t tame a wild goort, not easily. You have to raise it from an egg, and even then they can be dangerous.”

Jes came up beside him. “I wonder how the rider tamed that dragon. I’ve never seen a hellbeast like that, so it has to be rare. Probably something from Angel’s Spine. Think you can tame that?”

“I don’t know how to tame a hellbeast! What makes you think I can?”

“The rider. You both got some crazy auras. So ... maybe you can, too?”

“They’re not the same,” Caera said. “The rider’s aura isn’t like a demon’s, or David’s.”

Mysteries on top of mysteries.

“I mean, find me a hellbeast and I’ll try?” David said. “I think—”

The group grew silent as they crested a hill, and the Grave Valley lay before them.

It had no mountains. A long, long valley, hundreds of kilometers long, with gentle hills along both edges of the Hell donut. At least the valley didn’t seem to sink deep, so it wouldn’t take any effort at all to walk down into it. And hey, no mountains! No more scaling deadly cliffs. No more climbing rocks, rocks, and more rocks. The valley looked, for the most part, flat.

Flat, and dotted with lots of tiny white things poking up from the fog, or at least at a distance they looked like tiny white things. The closer ones had just enough shape to look like something familiar.

“Tombstones,” he said.

“Tombstones,” Caera said, sitting beside him. The other demons did the same, everyone taking the hill’s top as a moment to rest.

“Are there ... people in them? In the graves, I mean.”

“They’re not really graves,” she said. “You think anyone in Hell buries their dead?”

“I suppose not. But, then, why tombstones?”

Caera gestured back to the dozens of giant mountains behind them.

“The same reason you found lots of statues. Hell grew them.”

Daoka clicked a few times, came in behind David, and hugged him to her chest so her eyeless gaze went over him. With another weak click, she set her chin on his skull and shook her head.

Jes laughed. “What do you mean, creepy?”

“I am getting Halloween vibes,” David said. “I see a lot of shadow, lot of fog, and a lot of tombstones, and uh ... some buildings in the distance. White?”

“Stone,” Caera said. “You’ll see.”

“Right. Uh, anything we should know before we just ... start walking down there?”

She shrugged and began a slow walk down the gentle slope. David glanced back at the rest of them, but they all shrugged, too, and followed her. The lack of planning was going to give him an aneurysm, but that was what demons did, even ones like Caera. He scampered after them.

“Seriously, what’re we gonna run into?” He raised a hand and counted fingers. “You told me there’s four areas. The Border Stones right in front of us, then there’s the Black Mausoleum and the Dead Lands, and past them there’s the Amisius Forest. Assuming those names are descriptive, Dao is right, and this is going to be creepy.” After a long sigh, he threw up his hands. “And who thought up these names!? Who’s Amisius?”

“Demons aren’t imaginative,” Caera said. “Far as I know, we either name things the most obvious thing, or name them after some big demon or battle or whatnot, millions of years ago.” She flicked her tail back the way they came. “Geeraz Tombs, Gorzen Mountains, Gazra Crag? I found one record that mentioned Geeraz, Gorzen, and Gazra, a trio of angels who died fighting demons. It could be wrong, of course.”

He was betting on wrong. Much as the girls were all awesome, and Caera had an eye for history, she was definitely an exception. Demons didn’t give a shit about the past, didn’t care to record it, didn’t care to know it, and after a million years, it made perfect sense for names to evolve.

The runes in his head didn’t say anything about the names of places inside the provinces of Hell, and most of the provinces still had their real name. The Grave Valley was really the Grave Valley, which meant whoever created the rune knew what graves were.

He stopped and stared at the ground as the gears in his brain went into overdrive. If God was the one who made the runes that named a bunch of things, did God know about the concept of graves millions of years before they’d exist? It fit the whole omnipotent, omniscient thing, but that made no sense, either. Nothing was omnipotent, or omniscient. They were paradoxical and flawed ideas. Maybe the rune word for grave also meant any place where dead things were? Maybe the runes evolved as the surface evolved? Maybe—

Daoka looked back, clicked up at him, and held out her hand. Analysis paralysis was a bitch. He took her hand, and everyone walked into a completely new section of Hell.

The environment didn’t transition smoothly like it would on the surface. Over a course of maybe a quarter kilometer, the ground went from brown, with specs of red and black, to just black. The dirt grew softer, and compared to the hundreds of kilometers he’d walked barefoot on rock and pebbles, the softer dirt felt like grass. The air grew darker, too, with a thick fog that blocked out some of the light, just enough for evening darkness to settle on them.

There were metal gates.

“What the fuck?” With a shaking hand, he touched the first metal gate, and yanked his hand back. Not actually metal, but blackstone, except it was in the perfect shape of a short fence that only reached his waist and went kilometers in both directions toward the inner and outer edges of Hell. It had spiked tips, too.

“What?” Jes asked, and she hopped over it like it was no big deal.

“This is ... a metal fence.” He pushed the gate open. It squeaked, slid open, and he stepped through. “This is the exact sort of fence and gate you’d find outside a graveyard on the surface.”

“You’ve seen a lot of the stuff Hell has grown,” Caera said, and she followed him in. “This surprises you?”

“Yes! The other stuff looked crazy and surreal. The skull braziers, giant black spikes, the statues, all that shit looked ... not normal, and perfect for Hell. This looks normal.”

“You would prefer it look unnatural?” Acelina asked. Tall as she was, she stepped over the fence like it wasn’t even there.

“Kinda, yeah. At least when shit looks weird, it fits. When shit looks normal, and then you start seeing the creepy shit that—” There was creepy shit.

A giant tombstone sat before them, white stone stained with black dirt and worn with time. It was twelve feet tall, nearly as wide, and thick enough if it fell on him it’d have squashed him like a tomato. It had no adornments, no letters, but the shape was a classic tombstone, complete with the curved top.

“This!” He gestured to it. “This is what I’m talking about!”

“You saw the tombstones,” Caera said, “back on the hill.”

“I thought they’d be normal size!” His brain had tagged them at a certain height, and it hadn’t even dawned on him to reevaluate until he’d gotten close enough. Mental whiplash.

“This is normal size.”

“No, it’s not! Normal size is as tall as the fence!”

The demons looked between each other, shrugged like he was crazy, and moved on. Jes climbed up one tombstone, perched, and Daoka jumped up after her, clearing the twelve-foot jump and landing in a squat.

“If you fall and spill your guts,” Jes said, “I’m not helping you.”

Daoka chirped at her lover, stood up tall, and scanned ahead like a meerkat. After a few seconds, she shrugged and clicked down at the rest of them. She didn’t see anything.

David couldn’t see shit, either, now that he was in the valley. The hint of fog around them didn’t stop their vision of things nearby, but they couldn’t see anymore than half a kilometer out before it grew too dark. Even the burning sky above looked darker. And with the huge tombstones everywhere, vision was definitely going to be a problem, especially with them so exposed.

Never in his life did he think he would, but damn, he missed the tunnels. Walking through the dark, avoiding bloodgrip vines, hellbeast spiders, possible remnant patches or Cainite ambushes, all of that was horrible, but better than being out in the open, with no roof or walls to hide under or behind. If another group of angels found them now, the fuck were they supposed to do?

“We stay low,” Caera said, and she thumped Dao and Jes’s tombstone with her huge tail. “Dumbasses.”

Dao and Jes groaned, but hopped down and fell in line. Like a well-oiled machine, they slipped into their usual positions, Caera at the front with Jes and Dao behind her, David in the middle with the Las around him, and Acelina in the rear. Except the Las lingered on the fence and tombstones, big eyes wide and looking the structures up and down with wonder, at least until Acelina gave them a whip crack with her thin tail.

“Never seen,” Lasca said, gesturing around at the faux graveyard.

“Never seen,” the other three said in tandem.

“Neither have I,” the giant demoness said, and she ushered the little ladies forward with her hands and wings. “But I’m not foolish enough to stop and admire. We must reach Timaeus, and he will escort us to Azailia. Then we part ways.”

“Nooo,” Laria said, and she tugged on Acelina’s hand. “Stay.”

“I will not stay. I am a zotiva and belong in a spire.”

“Nooo,” the other Las said, in tandem.

“Silence. You miscreants will get no more milk from me.”

David peeked back at the spire mother, but looked away once she realized. Much as Acelina constantly complained about her circumstances, a lot, he knew he’d miss it. Maybe it was because he was so used to being alone, and for the first time in his life — second life — he had people around him, talking to him, penetrating his anti-social bubble he’d been so attached to. He’d gotten kinda used to them, even the spire mother. The sex helped, definitely, but he also kinda liked Acelina, too. Something about her being an annoying, grumpy bitch tickled his brain.

Daoka clicked a few times, glancing back, too.

Acelina shook her head. “Do not be ridiculous. You will not miss me.”

“I won’t,” Jes said, raising a hand, only for Daoka to slap it down.

Clicking up a storm, Daoka turned around and walked backward long enough to gesture at Acelina and then out at Death’s Grip behind them.

“I did what I had to do in order to survive,” Acelina said. “Do not read more into than that.”

Dao didn’t look convinced. Shrugging, she hopped back up to join Jes, and chirped a few whispers in her ear, earning some groans from the gargoyle.

“I’ll miss you,” David said back to the spire mother. Never in a million years would old David actually say something like that, and he knew it. It sounded alien being honest like that, and forthcoming, and emotionally vulnerable, and every reflex he had told him to not say it. But he did.

The group went silent.

~~Mia~~

A week of walking across Death’s Grip sucked. She spent most of it on Vin’s back, but holding onto his spikes and making sure her egg stayed in its sling proved tiring after twelve hours. And twelve hours it was, an extreme amount of walking to do in a single day, every day. The demons hated it, but Romakus insisted. They had to get away from Death’s Grip before the bailiff Tacitus found them, and more importantly, before a thousand angels found them.

Whatever Mia had done to play her inner strings so loudly, it wasn’t working anymore. She could still feel the strings, but playing them was difficult, like someone trying a guitar for the first time. Sore fingers. She tried to play them, but even crafting a simple aura was too hard, and hurt. A tiny sex aura, or a little peace aura, or a minuscule cheerful aura, she couldn’t craft any of them, and every time she tried, hunger shot through her.

She was starving.

“Here,” Adron said, and he handed her another heart. “Eat.” He walked beside her and Vin, the group working their way up and around the last mountain between them and the Black Valley. Vin ignored him.

“I don’t want another heart,” she said. “I’ve eaten ten in the past week! That’s not normal, right?”

“It is not,” Kasimiro said, walking on Vin’s other side. Vin ignored him.

“I don’t want any more bad memories.” What few demons who’d died but hadn’t burned to ash in the firestorm, the demons had fed on, but had also made sure Mia got to eat. Romakus had ensured she’d had her fill. Problem: she couldn’t get full, and the hunger wasn’t going away.

They’d found no angel corpses, or at least not in good enough condition for a heart to eat. The ones that had been intact had either been barely alive enough to escape, or their bodies had been grabbed by their fleeing kin. Angels didn’t leave a man, or woman, behind.

“I don’t know what’s up with your appetite,” Adron said, “but I do know you’re still hungry. Eat.”

Groaning, she scooped up the heart, and glared at the warm, wet thing in her hand. The fact she knew it wasn’t a demon heart, but a human heart, with just a glance, was seriously fucked up.

“You found a human nearby?”

“Hiding in a little cave, yeah.”

“What was their number?”

“What?”

She glared down at the vratorin.

“What was their number?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t really paying attention? I think I remember seeing a four?”

Sighing, she buried her forehead against Vin’s back, and watched the dead flesh sit in her palm. The higher the number, the less guilty she felt about Adron killing the soul, but the worst the new memories would be. The lower the number, the memories might not be so bad, but then she’d feel horrible that someone who was only maybe a 3 or 4 had to die like prey to a predator.

She bit into the heart. A murderer. A woman who’d poisoned her husband, and judging from the memory, the man did not deserve it. A classic story, something so cliché it was hard to believe it’d actually happened. But it had.

Of all the new memories she’d gained, a man going to sleep peacefully and never waking up ranked pretty low on the fucked-up list. Worst of all, the fucked up shit some demons did, the ones who enjoyed torture and rape, their memories weren’t the worst, and the only reason Mia’s brain wasn’t ripped to mulch by the human memories was its strange ability to file the new memories away like books in a library. She only had to see them once, and once she had, they were locked up, and she was happy to leave them locked up.

“We’re almost there,” Livian said. The four-armed ten-foot demon slowed until she stood near Adron, and she looked at Mia as she gestured forward. “The Black Valley will be rough going.”

Groaning, Mia stepped off Vin’s back spikes and walked beside him instead; her weight didn’t mean much to Vin, but still. She patted her egg, checked it for any scratches or dents, and looked back up at the Zel look-alike. That wasn’t really a fair comparison. Livian and Zel were both bolstara tetrads, so they both had four arms, hooves, no tail, a quartet of righteous horns, and the only obvious difference was Livian had short dreadlocks and no piercings. There were more, subtle differences in the shape of their faces just likes humans would have, but they were hard to notice when red eyes, black horns, and dark red skin were still so novel.

She definitely like Livian more than Zel, though, for sure.

“Rough?” Mia asked. “Rougher than Death’s Grip?”

“It’s flatter,” Adron said. “There’s that.”

“That vision of another unmarked dying showed a bit of the place. It looked ... gross. It looked like a swamp, and there were trenches with guts in them, and everything looked super dark, and...” Her voice trailed off as they stepped around the base of the last mountain of Death’s Grip.

Black Valley. Yeah, it was definitely a black valley, a dip in the ground that raised only just slightly on the inner and outer edges of Hell; it was so damn flat she could see all the way to both sides. It didn’t look like it’d be hard to get into, just a casual walk down a gentle slope, but the black fog was so thick, it looked disturbingly close to one of those pictures of underwater lakes, brine pools.