Chapter 36

~~Mia~~

The horde of creatures screamed, and all sound disappeared under the silence, crushed by the void. Not real sound, but the hidden sound, the vibrating strings that permeated everything. For a second, they were gone, and Mia almost squealed with whiplash when the screams died, and the strings returned.

“W-What do we do?” Mia asked.

“You’re the one with special powers,” Julisa said, hissing as she drew her four blades. “Do something.”

“I can’t! I’m trying to play the strings, but it’s not working!” Her inner fingers ached, and every attempt to pluck a string failed. Worse, trying to hear and feel them was like trying to listen to music through a concrete wall with what the weird squid monsters were doing, drowning everything in ... nothing.

Adron brought out his sword. “Do we fight?”

Vin took a step forward toward the creatures, but Kas spun and hit the ragarin on the side with his tail.

“We run!” And with a heavy snort, like some sort of grunting starter’s pistol, Kas took off. If Kas wanted to run, then running was a good idea, and no one questioned it. Everyone turned and ran.

Problem. The new dog-like squid creatures were fast, and their weird hand-like paws didn’t sink into the muck more than a few inches with each bounding leap. They closed the distance, thick limbs growing thinner until they had the proportions of tailless wolves, and they didn’t hesitate to throw themselves at the group’s heels.

Adron jumped and spun, bringing his sword around and nailing the creature in the side. It split in half, and something white splattered over the sword, Adron’s body, and the black muck, only to disappear a moment later, along with the creature. Its skin shifted color, and drops of its own blood fell through its body before shifting into nothingness.

Another dove for Vin’s tail, and Mia squeaked as it got its tentacle mouth on the giant demon. From so close, the changing color was more clear, navy and dark green blending over black, with glistening skin like something that’d crawled out of the ocean. Pockets of see-through flesh remained, phasing in and out, colors bleeding over and off them, exposing the nothingness that lay beyond.

No, there was something in the nothingness of its flesh. White blood, pulsing, disappearing and reappearing, the same as the rest of it. And through the invisible, shifting parts of its flesh, Mia saw teeth hidden behind the tentacles, a beak with teeth, and they tore into Vin’s tail. Red blood poured into its mouth, some falling through the see-through parts of the creature, some going into its gullet.

Vin swung his tail and sent the creature into the air. It landed deep in the swamp, but the soft layer of black guts meant the impact was borderline harmless, and it resumed the chase a second later, along with a couple dozen of the strange, tailless, vaguely human-like creatures. They closed in on Vin, some going for Adron, some for Kas and Julisa, but the majority came for Vin.

Not Vin. They came for Mia, and their obsidian eyes stared at her with the vast emptiness of the void. Black holes.

“Maybe we should just give them the girl?” Julisa asked between her running pants. Before anyone could answer, she snorted. “I jest! But we need an answer to the situation and we need it now!”

One creature jumped, this time onto Kas. As big as the giant human-wolf-squids were, Kas was larger, and he spun and rolled with the monster. In the muck, he ripped his claws down through the creature’s guts, and sent the white blood across the black swamp. It had guts now, pieces of intestines coming into existence for only a moment, and only in random places, before disappearing again. The rest of the creature followed right behind it, fading away, along with the blood.

“We fight ghosts,” Kas said. “These are not creatures. Not hellbeasts, souls, demons, or angels!”

He was right; they weren’t normal living creatures. And if they came from the same place that thing in the canyon showed, the endless black oblivion, then ... then what? What the fuck were they? Why were they coming after Mia?

Right now, it didn’t matter. Swords and claws stopped them, and so did hellfire.

“Vin,” Mia yelled into her bodyguard’s ear. “Can you breathe more hellfire?”

“Yes, but it would hit nothing right now. They are fast.”

“Then we get them lined up and bottlenecked. Get them stuck! Get them—”

He turned his head enough to raise a dragon eyebrow, and Mia gestured at the giant trench beside them.

If Vin had one awesome, perfect, exemplary trait, it was his complete lack of hesitation. The moment he knew what she meant, he jumped into the trench, a mighty leap that sent Mia’s heart down into her stomach, and up into her throat on the way down. He landed in the ditch, and sure enough, the black muck of the swamp nearly reached his knees. It wasn’t enough to stop him from running forward, sheer weight and power enough to crush through the gore, but when everyone else followed them into the trench, they struggled, Julisa included.

With silent howls, the creatures jumped into the trench with them. The black gore of the trench was thinner than on the flat ground, enough the alien creatures couldn’t walk on it with their weird half human, half paw hands and feet. They didn’t sink deep, but sinking up to their elbows and knees was enough to slow them down.

Vin turned, and again his spikes glowed.

“Everyone, get down!” Mia screamed.

Julisa, Adron, and Kas threw themselves face down into the gore, and Vin unleashed Hell. Again, as before, fire poured out of his mouth, but not regular fire. Hellfire. There was something special about hellfire, about the way flecks of amber danced in the orange, red, and yellow flames. The runes in her mind told her hellfire was some strange reaction between resonance and essence, something that didn’t fit everything else, where resonance and essence permeated the world. Hellfire had them rip each other apart, a fission reaction of pure destruction.

She’d summoned it before, the climax of her firestorm. And Vin summoned it inside him, only to unleash it as a wave of carnage that rushed down the trench and onto the creatures. They screamed as before, and the hellfire crashed against both them and their silent cries, as if a bubble enveloped and protected them. But it lasted only a second before crumbling, and all the creatures that’d jumped into the trench succumbed to the flame. Like the others, they fell to their wounds, some screaming, others shuddering, and they all melted from existence, leaving behind nothing, not even their corpses. Only hellfire.

Vin turned to face a few of the creatures that stood on the edge of the trench, looking down at him and Mia, but they turned and vanished, leaving Mia and her bodyguard standing in the burning muck, waiting for the next attack. But none came.

The others climbed up out of the black gore, and Julisa groaned like an indignant cat.

“You couldn’t wait four seconds, Vinicius?”

Vinicius grunted. Mia would have laughed at how gross Julisa looked, the pretty royal bitch now covered head to toe in black guts, but she couldn’t find any laughter to summon. Just panic.

“Adron! Kas!”

They climbed up out of the swamp, groaning, snarling, and Adron snapped a growl at some too-near hellfire still burning on the black muck. If it’d touched him, Mia would have jumped down and run to him, but the big vrat threw the muck away and joined them in seconds, Kas right beside him.

“Smart,” Kas said, and set his eyeless glare on Vinicius. “Asshole.”

Vin snarled down at the shark dinosaur, but turned and carried on as if he hadn’t just nearly killed Kas, and Adron, and even Julisa. Would he have cared if he did? God damn it, Vin.

“We can’t stay,” Julisa said. “Those creatures may find us again.”

“But, what about the Damall?” Mia asked. “Romakus, and Yosepha, and Faust and Oudoceus and—”

“Once they see we’re not here, they’ll do the only thing that makes sense. They’ll head toward the center point of the trench.”

“But that’s ... over a week away.”

“Two weeks,” Vinicius said. “The swamp slows all.”

Great. Fucking wonderful. Groaning, she half hung from Vin’s spikes and looked down at Adron and Kas.

“You two alright? Adron, you—”

“He didn’t get me this time,” he said, glaring at Vin. “I’m fine.”

Fine. He was fine, except he had that weird determined look again, a gritty and hard look that he’d never had before Hannah died. Before Vin had burned him.

“Hey.”

A new voice cut through the silence and distant screams of remnants, and everyone spun. But relief ran through Mia’s body as a shape came into view.

“Slow down,” Faust said, panting as he yanked his foot out of a deep section of muck.

“Faustinus,” Julisa said, turning. “You were supposed to stay in hiding.”

Mia snapped her glare at the tetrad.

“I thought only you stayed behind to watch us!”

“A foolish idea. I am but one, and there are three of you.”

Mia counted on her fingers. Three? Right, Mia didn’t count. What a bitch.

“So Faustinus—”

“And me,” another voice said, coming out of the black. “And—”

“Me,” another voice said.

“And me,” another voice said.

Mia threw up her hands as Faust, Gallius, Oudoceus, and Locutus all stepped out of the shadow.

“All four of you were watching us!?”

“It’s what we do,” Gallius said, joining them. “We knew you knew Romakus wouldn’t let you stay behind on your own while they go hunting, so Julisa stayed behind. But we knew you also might just ditch her, or eat her, so—”

“So you thought you could help her stop us?” Vin asked, giving the incubus the smallest, most evil smile ever.

Faust and the others were classically handsome, tall, muscular but lean men, while Gallius had a little more size to him, a little more height, and had a scar across his forehead and cheek. Incubi had a couple small horns, long, thin tails that ended in the classic devil spade, and short black claws, but were otherwise very human looking. Dark red skin aside, of course. They were handsome, and hot, but they weren’t exactly the deadly killing machines other demons were.

But Romakus had sent them to keep an eye on Mia and the group. Maybe they were deadlier with their swords than Mia knew.

“Not help,” Faust said, shrugging. “But follow.” Or that.

Kas snarled back at the incubi, but shrugged and continued on. Adron did the same. Even Vinicius only gave a small grunt and rumble before resuming the march. Only Mia had the audacity, the sheer nerve, to actually find it kind of offensive that Romakus had left a secret group to monitor her. To the demons, this was perfectly reasonable.

“So what now?” Gallius asked.

“What do you mean?” Mia said, gesturing to the trench. “We follow the trench back to the big trench. The ... Trench, right?”

Oudoceus shook his head. “That’s not one of the trench veins.”

“What?” Oh. Oh fucking fuck no.

“That’s not one of the trenches that connects to the main trench,” Locutus said. “It’s...” He slowly spun around. “Somewhere out there. When that thing attacked, you guys ran in a direction, and we followed as best we could; that monster was only interested in you guys, not us. But, uh, you didn’t follow the right trench.”

Clenching her eyes until she saw stars, Mia took a deep breath, and forced herself to look back out into the swamp. There were other ditches, too, long trenches that cut through the black gore in all directions, and she hadn’t even noticed them when Vin had turned — at her command — to attack the creature. And when they’d run in a panic when those smaller monsters had shown up, they’d followed this trench.

The wrong trench.

“Damn,” Julisa said, snarling and kicking at the muck.

“So, what do we do?” Mia asked.

Faust gestured out at the endless swamp around them, and the black fog that blocked their vision.

“The only thing we can do. We pick a direction and get walking. I think back this way is Death’s Grip.” He gestured behind him. “Anyone disagree?” No one said a thing. “Then I guess we keep going.”

“But we can’t see anything. We’ll start drifting and turning, if this is the wrong trench.” Just saying the words had her feeling heavier and heavier every second, and she buried her forehead against Vin’s back.

“It might be a vein that’ll connect us to the main trench. But probably not. All we can do is keep going, or maybe find some demons that know their way around.”

Right, other demons. She hadn’t seen any yet, or hellbeasts.

“We do not want to run into other demons,” Julisa said.

“No,” Adron said, wincing. “We don’t.”

~~David~~

An uneventful day was a good day in Hell.

“You know,” David said, voice low, “I’m kinda surprised.”

Dao clicked once, standing beside him.

“We haven’t run into a single demon. That’s kinda weird, right?”

Jes and Caera prowled ahead, leading the party, while Acelina walked in back. The imps and grems were out exploring the graveyard, the giant headstones, the empty graveyard plots — yes, it had those — and the strange soft ground that was nearly grass but not quite. Their first time out of Death’s Grip, the unfamiliar sights were interesting to them, and problematically, the little critters weren’t all that good at considering the future when making decisions. They were going to get caught at some point, drawn into some encounter by their curiosity. But then again, they’d survived the mountain tunnels full of Cainites for quite a while. Maybe he wasn’t giving them enough credit.

Shrugging, Dao touched shoulders with his and gestured out around at the spiky fences they walked by.

“She says demons are probably hiding,” Caera said. “She’s right. I smell them, but they’re not making themselves known.”

“I figured demons would try and eat strangers.”

“Unlikely,” Acelina said. She stomped a hoof and gave her massive wings a few flaps. “Any demon that sees me will immediately know we are important and not to be trifled with.”

“Then ... why haven’t any demons initiated contact, at least?”

“Scared we might eat them,” Caera said. “That is a problem with demons. We have a habit of getting into tussles and eating each other.”

“Cannibals.” His joke earned some small chuckles from the tiger lady. He loved the sound of her laughs. “But Alessio and Zel were on good terms, right? If any demons see us coming from Death’s Grip, wouldn’t they—”

The gargoyle shook her head and gave her wings a small flap.

“‘Good terms’ just means we don’t actively hunt and kill or eat each other. We’re not allies.”

Demons were assholes. And as awesome as Jes, Dao, Caera, and the rest of them were, they’d all killed plenty of demons and humans on the regular for food before meeting David. Did they prioritize not killing demons who didn’t deserve it? Was that something demons even considered? Dao had to, surely.

Remember, David. This is Hell. Different rules. Demons, from the moment they were born, were thrown into a pit where they had to fight each other for food, or literally eat each other. The only humans they ever met were horrible. They knew only the worst of ... everything.

But that wasn’t entirely true. Jes had told him that story of the gremla in the hatching pit who’d fallen in love with a human man she’d been watching in the scrying pool. And when he’d died, the little lady had been so broken, she’d let herself get eaten. Demons weren’t mindless creatures addicted to violence and their hungers, and that meant communication was always a possibility. If they ran into any, he’d try.

And be ready to kill them the moment they didn’t reciprocate.

They stepped around another giant tombstone, and instead of continuing on, Caera sat down and rested against the slab of white stone.

“We need to find a place to sleep. I don’t know this country well, and finding a place to rest will be tough.”

“Tough?” He sat down with her, back to the tombstone. Daoka sat with him.

“I’m not seeing a place to sleep,” Jes said, squatting in front of them, wings gently flapping. “No hole or anything.”

“Maybe we can find a building,” Caera said. “There are church ruins around, but I haven’t seen any. And if we find some, we might have to fight for a place to sleep.”

David raised a hand. “We can’t sleep out in the open? Take shifts?”

“We just might have to.”

Everyone groaned, even the Las as they came back to walk with the group. No one liked the idea of sleeping out in the open, even in a group big enough to have people on watch without issue. Everyone, David included, had grown quite fond of cave walls to cover their backs.

Funny. Grave Valley looked almost nice compared to Death’s Grip, but the more they explored, the more obvious it’d be a greater challenge staying alive here than there.

“Maybe we should head more toward the inner coast?” David asked. “Maybe if we had the middle sea on our right, we’d have one less direction to worry about.”

Daoka shook her head and clicked at him before rubbing a horn into his shoulder.

“Dao’s right,” Jes said. “There are more demons on the shoreline, and plenty of hellbeasts. More than a few of them live in the Styx, too.”

“Styx?”

“Yeah, Styx, the river that circles the Forgotten Place.”

“I ... thought it was more like an island in a sea.”

“It’s that, too.” Jes shrugged and sat down beside Daoka. “Lots of things from the surface kinda bleed down here through the scrying pools, so sometimes we pick up some names and they catch on, like the river Styx. And a lot of big, nasty hellbeasts swim in those waters, and attack the shores.”

“Hellbeasts. Bleh.” They hadn’t run into any hellbeasts for a bit, and he wanted to keep it that way.

In the end, they found a place to rest. They didn’t find any buildings, but the ground had enough dips and rises that they found something with a short cliff edge and some big rocks. A far cry from Death’s Grip, but still, it was a wall of rock that gave them a dip in the ground to hide in. If there’d been trees, it would have been just like a forest, the kind David saw as a kid in Canada. The fog fit, too, the kind you found on a cold morning, except the burning sky above was dimming, not brightening.

Tombstones stood on their left and right, high and almost connecting with the little cliff they hid against. The closest thing to shelter they’d find tonight. The fog had grown heavier, almost to the point they could barely see fifty meters, and each breath felt wet.

“Can anything even smell us in this?” he asked.

“They’ll have trouble,” Caera said. “Now sit down and sleep. I’ll take first watch.”

“Hard to sleep knowing we’re vulnerable.”

“That is life,” Acelina said. “Even in the spire, every night was a risk. Many demons hung chains over openings to their rooms for warning, or strung bones together to do the same.” She’d sat down first, back to the rocks. The mound of rocks wasn’t tall enough to hide the tip of her horns, and she grumbled as she scooted down.

“Sound traps.”

“Yes.”

“Imps and grems not like that,” Lasca said, and she climbed onto David’s lap, facing away from him. “We trust each other. Sleep in big piles. Someone always watching to keep us safe.”

“There is a word, I believe,” Acelina said, “for surface creatures that gather and do nothing but eat and watch the world. Humans raise them for food.”

“Uh, farm animals?” David asked. “Sheep. Cows.”

“Yes, those creatures. We are being followed by cows.”

“I uh ... don’t think imps and grems are really like cows.”

Daoka chirped as she giggled, sat between Acelina and David, and snuggled into his arm.

“Not cow!” Laara said, and she sat on Dao’s lap. “Cows not sexy. Laara sexy.” With a devious grin showing off her huge shark smile, she snuggled against Dao’s chest, but armor-on-armor made it difficult for the impa to enjoy the satyr’s breasts.

Jeskura made it harder. She grabbed the little lady and tossed her aside, literally, and Laara squeaked as she landed on talon and claw.

“You, Laria, and Caera are taking first watch.”

Laria stomped a hoof, but helped up her fellow La, and the two little ladies scrunched up their noses at Jes and joined Caera. Lasca rubbed her face into David’s neck, Latia climbed onto Acelina’s lap, and Jes groaned as she sat across from them, back to a tombstone. A big, happy family, ready to fall asleep now that twilight was coming.

It was the creepiest, weirdest place to sleep. He’d never felt so exposed, even with all these beautiful and deadly women protecting him. But one of the strangest things about Hell, and one of its greatest kindnesses, was how sleep became so mechanical. No dreams. No thoughts running through his mind a million kilometers an hour.

Come the night, all he had to do was think ‘sleep’, and he—

~~Day 52~~

His eyes snapped open. He swung his arms out, and they collided with something hard and warm. A demon was in his face. A demon missing an eye.

Caera?

“Shh,” she whispered, so quiet his heartbeat was louder. She lowered her hand, and crept back out around the surrounding tombstones, body low. All the demons had already woken up, and all of them were in stealth mode, prowling, wings low, tails down. Even Acelina, who looked like she’d never gotten on her hands and knees in her life, had somehow squashed herself low to the soft, black dirt.

Someone was coming.

He bit down the urge to groan. Whatever it was about the night and day cycles in Hell, his body just knew it was still the middle of the night, and he needed sleep. Why he did, considering he wasn’t made of flesh and blood anymore, who the fuck knew. Same reason he still needed to breathe. If he didn’t get sleep, he’d spend the whole day miserable, and unable to sleep because it wasn’t night.

Better that than dead. The quiet clink clink of metal told him who it was before David saw him.

The rider.

In the distance, the fog was heavy but not heavy enough to block vision of the man, riding on his giant goort, the two of them covered in bronze and red armor with gold lining its edges. His skull mask, shining and ornate, had a T-slit through it, but there was no seeing anything in the darkness within. All you could see was the skull shape of the visor, as cold and ruthless as the rider himself.

God damn, that armor looked cool, and heavy. The goort wore it, too, ridiculously heavy gear that looked like someone had taken bronze and gold plate armor, and beautifully painted sections of it blood red. And of course, two axes were hooked to the rider’s back, their edges glowing soft amber with hellfire.

Slowly, as if he had all the time in the world, the rider trotted along on his goort mount, and the huge horse-like creature kept its dark eyes pointed forward, uncaring about the world around it. Just a casual stroll through a graveyard, surrounded by tombstones that made the larger man and enormous horse look small. If there were any demons or hellbeasts around, he wasn’t worried about them.

No one said a word. Everyone held perfectly still and watched the man ride by. In the dead silence, there was nothing to distract them, and the rider’s aura fell on them like hail. Burning cold, indifferent, and impossible to hide from out in the open.

The girls were right. His aura was different from David’s, and from demons’. A demon aura stabbed you through the chest. David’s aura was like vibration in the ground and air, unavoidable. The rider’s aura was like deadly weather. You could withstand it, resist it, block it, but it was constant and powerful.

David dug his fingers into the dirt, ground his teeth, and watched.

The rider stopped and looked their way. No one moved. No one breathed. It was dark, the burning sky dimmed for the night, and the mist had grown thicker, wetter, and all-around more uncomfortable. Thank god it did, because it was the only thing that let them blend well enough in the dirt, while the rider’s armor highlighted him. He wasn’t hiding.

The aura buried them in murder. Cold, heat, deadly murder, death, everything that told David’s brain he was staring at the literal Grim Reaper, and the feeling plunged straight into his guts. Icy sweat dripped down his skin, and his insides clenched until his abs ached. It made him want to fight. It made him want to die.

The rider disappeared into the fog. A minute later, the quiet clink of his armor vanished. No one so much as shifted their tail for another ten minutes.

“He followed me,” David whispered. In the silence, his voice was almost thunder, and the Las all twitched.

“Yeah,” Caera said. “But he doesn’t know where you are.”

“Or he cannot sense your exact location,” Acelina said. “He knew your sister was at the spire, but that does not mean he knew where within.”

“Maybe.”

They waited another ten minutes. Nothing. Safe.

“What do we do now?” Jes asked.

Dao clicked several times and gestured back the way they came.

“No time,” Caera said. “We got one option. We stay awake and keep going. Around the rider.”

Staying awake. They’d never done that. No matter what happened, the group had always found a way to get half a night’s sleep, and even then, they’d paid for it the following day. The afterlife was strict about its sleep schedule.

“There’s no way he’s not suffering, too,” David said. “Staying awake all night, hunting me?”

The demons all frowned, thinking the same thing he was, but no one dared say it. If the rider didn’t need to sleep, they had a problem.

Silently, everyone got their weapons, got into position, and resumed the march. Eight demons, one human, creeping ahead in the fog, and what’d once been a casual stroll speed slowed to a near crawl. They hid behind the giant tombstones, crouched low, leaned low, did everything they could to hide their bodies, but unlike Death’s Grip, they didn’t have ditches, trenches, tunnels, holes, giant boulders, or much of anything to stay hidden behind. Every step was exposed, with only the fog and occasional tombstone protecting them.

Someone had roped an anchor around David’s ankles, turning every step into a giant pain in the ass. Limbs, heavy. Head, heavy. His eyes refused to focus, and his eyelids fought against him. He wouldn’t fall asleep by accident; that just wasn’t a thing in Hell. But not getting eight hours of sleep meant he and the girls would be stuck in this shitty, exhausted state until they did finally get some sleep. And it’d only get worse each night they didn’t sleep.

Caera knew the way, and they followed her, tails dragging and wings drooping. Even the Las had lost all energy, no more running around or jumping or squeaking or clicking, just slow walking. A bunch of zombies.

Hours later, a shape on the soft, dark ground awaited them. Caera froze, and the group did the same. Everyone traded confused looks, and the tiger prowled ahead, each step slow and deadly silent. They held their breath, and Caera motioned for them to come closer.

A dead gorgala, cleaved in half, body burned.

With a quiet growl, Jes squatted beside the corpse and plucked at it, lifted the wing, the tail, until she finally gestured to the fact the woman was in literally two pieces.

“Can’t even eat her heart,” she said. “Burned.”

David gulped down the urge to gag. Seeing bodies cleaved in two had become almost blasé, but a burned body? Burned flesh was something entirely different, and he forced his eyes away from the charred skin. Even the meera metal armor looked melted in some places.

“What happened?” Lasca asked.

Caera gestured to the corpse, but moved on, too, and everyone fell in line.

“The rider happened. He’s got hellfire imbued weapons, like some of those Cainites did. Except stronger, I bet. Aera armor, aera weapons.”

The Las gasped.

It didn’t take long for things to get worse.

“More bodies,” Caera whispered, failing to suppress a growl as she pushed over the charred remains of a tregeera.

David stepped around a giant tombstone and froze.

“There’s more,” he said, and the demons came and joined him.

The open ground, dotted with more tombstones and metal fences, was covered in bodies. No imps or grems, but another gargoyle, a few vrats, a couple brutes, and a few others the charred and mangled flesh left unrecognizable.

“We’re following him,” Caera said. “I ... didn’t mean to do that. I can’t smell him in this damn fog.”

Daoka clicked as she squatted down beside the corpse of a destroyed body with hooves. Another riiva, a satyr like her.

“He’s going toward Timaeus, too?” David asked.

Caera nodded. “He must be. Timaeus lives in a building a few days from here.”

“Then we follow the rider,” Acelina said. “We cannot hope to beat him to Timaeus, but what choice do we have?”

“We can hope the rider gets into a fight that slows him down?” Jes said. “Morning twilight will be here soon. Demons are waking up. It’s not like the rider can just—”