Chapter 37

~~David~~

Acelina was carrying him. Part of him was surprised it wasn’t Caera, but the tiger lady was faster on all fours, and she couldn’t carry him in her arms unless she went on two. Another part of him was surprised Acelina had bothered to come back and grab him at all. But those thoughts danced away on the surface of the currents, and while he could look up and see them above his consciousness, some other part of him yelling down at him through the surface of the ocean, David was too deep. They were distant. The ocean was not.

The forest was open, trees ripped apart, and a path cleared for his demons to run through, and Acelina’s hooves sent up black dirt and broken, sharp twigs into the air with each step of her hooves. David looked down from over her shoulder, the huge demoness holding his legs and back in a hug, like he was a child held to her armored chest. Somewhere ahead of her, the others had taken the path and were out of sight. But behind, the flame wings of the rider tore up the ground that trapped him.

David held out one hand over Acelina’s shoulder, and told Hell to entomb the rider. Bury him. Stop him. Sink him deep into the tunnels, lava, and guts of Hell. And she listened. With an invisible dance, Hell trembled, and the ground quaked. The trees were sturdy but brittle, and they shattered in a circle around the rider for a hundred meters in every direction, as if a cinder block had crashed into a glass wall.

Acelina almost tripped, but she spread her massive wings and caught herself. All movement David only noticed at the edge of his awareness. All that existed was Hell, the black dirt, the blackstone mixed within it, the strange black trees that were closer to glass than tree, the ground and lava veins below, and the fire sky above. They were the ocean currents that pulled him. They were the wave the rider fought against.

David played harder, and the hellquake reached further. Trees exploded, sending sharp branches into the sky and above the fog as David’s song turned the ground into a churning machine, vibrating and twisting, coiling stone pulling on the rider’s position. Down. Sink down into the dirt and die.

The rider’s burning wings flapped harder, still piercing up through the dirt, but gaining no altitude. David played harder again, and Acelina let out a shriek as the surrounding trees exploded, burying them both in their shards. But it wasn’t enough. The song drowned the area for kilometers in all directions, and soon Acelina’s hooves sank, too. But it wasn’t enough.

“David!”

“Keep running.” He didn’t look her way, eyes locked on the distant fog and the burning wings disappearing behind the veil of gray. He summoned more vibration, until Hell herself groaned with the effort, and the ground sank into a crater, ripping it out from under Acelina. Only her wings kept her from falling, and soon she was running up a slope instead of flat ground.

Hissing and panting, Acelina flapped hard and jumped, launching the two of them into the air and back up onto the lip of the crater. She didn’t look back, breaking into a run the moment her hooves hit the dirt, and she squeezed him tight to her chest as she leaned forward for balance. The feel of her chest armor pushing into his chest hurt, and the jolt of pain pulled his eyes to her, and past her to the black forest beyond.

The forest of black, glass-like trees was gone. And in the distant flog and crater below, the fire wings disappeared into the churning depths. Got him.

The hellquake continued. David stopped playing the strings, but they continued to vibrate, the presence in the ocean with him plucking the strings regardless of him.

“David! Stop this! You’ll kill us!”

Stop this? It was the song. Why would he stop the song?

A scream in the distance cut across his spine like a whip, and he snapped his head up and looked back. Somewhere in the fog, somewhere on the path he’d created for his friends to escape, someone was screaming.

He grabbed the strings inside him, and silenced them. The vibration tore into the fingers in his depths, like rope burn, but he held on, and crushed the vibration. The currents came to a harsh stop, and cruel reality ripped him from the ocean, the rope tearing non-existent skin from his non-existent inner fingers. But the hellquake stopped.

He looked at his real hands and bit down the urge to scream.

Whether Acelina looked his way with her featureless face, he couldn’t tell, but as a thousand little thoughts restarted in his brain like a PC reboot, he forced his eyes away from his fingers. A part of him was still convinced they’d been burned off. He looked at her, past her, and sucked in a breath. The forest really was gone.

Thirty seconds later, she found the group, all of them in a circle and working to dig someone out of the dirt. The path he’d created was gone, every tree reduced to shards, and sections of ground were raised or sunk, churned, or broken open into small ditches or large trenches. And one of the girls had gotten trapped, half sunk below the ground. Lasca.

“Oh fuck, Lasca,” he said. Acelina set him down, and he got on his knees beside the little demon.

“David!” She reached out for him, and he got her hands in his. Caera and Dao were already digging her out, though, and Jes slapped David’s hands away and took Lasca’s hands instead. Stronger than him. It wasn’t long before the little lady was free.

She threw her arms around David and hugged him. If he hadn’t already been on his knees, he would have fallen over.

“What the fuck?” Jes said, flaring her wings. “Where’s my hug?”

Latia, Laria, and Laara all squealed, ran past Jes, and hugged David from all directions.

“So scary!”

“Rider scary!”

“Too scary!”

“David got him!”

“Killed him!”

“Big quake! David made the quake?”

“We saw him sink! Then we were too far, and—”

“Gone!”

Laara winced and held out her wing to David. It was torn and bleeding.

“Can you fix?” The way her big eyes looked at him, a mix of awe and sadness in her expression, yanked his feet out from under him.

“I ... can’t. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. David saved us.” She hugged him again and rubbed her forehead and horns against his shoulder.

He fucking melted.

“The rider isn’t dead. I buried him, but he’ll probably get out, and—” Stars danced in David’s vision, his head grew a thousand times heavier, and blackness drowned him. He fell, and all four Las fell with him, squashing him and squeaking as his back hit the dirt.

“David!?” Caera yelled, coming up behind him. Frowning down at him with her single eye, she pushed him back up to sitting. “What’s wrong?”

Acelina swept a wing out, nudging the Las aside, and they got off him and knelt around him, all with enormous eyes locked.

“I ... I ... I’m...” Fire surged through his chest. Energy drained out of him. Everything grew heavier, and he fell back again into Caera’s hand. “Holy shit.” He grabbed his half breastplate and held it as more pain pumped through his insides. His inner fingers screamed at him in protest, and his stomach shrieked with hunger.

Dao unleashed a flurry of clicks and squatted beside him, gently nudging the Las out of the way. Frowning, she undid the straps of his breastplate, tossed it aside, and pressed a palm to his chest.

He grabbed her hand and shook his head.

“It’s ... fine. It’s just the ... the strings. I played ... too hard, I guess.” Not very convincing. Every breath was a labored mess, and new beads of sweat dripped down his forehead. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t get enough air, and he squeezed Dao’s hand as tremors worked through his limbs.

“You’re not fine,” Jes said. “But if the rider’s still coming after us, we have to go. Now.”

“I’ll take him,” Caera said.

“We help!” the Las said, and too many hands helped him to his feet. He lasted a whole second before falling.

“Fools,” Acelina said. Hissing at the little ladies, she flapped her wings at them once, enough to nudge them back, and she picked David up by his wrists. For a moment, he thought she might treat him as gently as she had minutes before when she’d saved his ass, but nope. She dropped him onto Caera’s back, nearly crushing his balls, but at least she’d placed him so he didn’t get one of Caera’s spikes up his ass.

He leaned forward, grabbed Caera’s spikes as best he could, and held on.

They got ten feet before he fell off.

He woke up. It was a strange sensation, waking up during the day, when his ghost body told him sleeping was only meant for night. Instead of pulling up out of the depths of stasis like usual, a robotic but seamless and easy feeling, this felt like dragging himself up out of a swamp. He had to fight to wake up, eyelids refusing to listen, and limbs insisting they were anchored to the ground.

Where was he? The sensation was familiar. Oh, right, when Acelina had picked him and run away with him, away from the rider, his fire wings bursting up from the ground. That’s where he was, in Acelina’s arms, his chin over her shoulder, his body pressed to her breastplate.

Forest. Black trees that looked almost like glass. He’d destroyed the forest before, for kilometers, so the group must have covered a lot of ground while he was out. Groaning, he forced his head up off Acelina’s shoulder and looked behind him at the group. The trees were more spread out here, with some giant tombstones dotting the land and fog, and the group followed Vicus between them. No path.

“How long was I out?” he asked.

The Las all spun, cheered with squeals, and dashed back toward him, only for Acelina to brush them back with a wing. But the little critters would not be deterred, and they ran circles around the spire mother as she marched forward.

“A few hours,” she said. “I am guessing your use of your special strings proved too taxing?”

“I ... guess, yeah. My fingers are killing me.” As if someone had grown new limbs inside him, he was too acutely aware of invisible fingertips he could still flex and move, and that they were throbbing, sore, and if they’d been physical, bleeding. “Fuck ... I am starving.” And of course, his guts had become a black hole, content to eat him alive from the inside out.

Daoka joined them, clicking, chirping, and gesturing around and behind them. Jes joined her, and she smiled up at David as she motioned for the Las to take her place by Caera at the head of the group. They did, whining and sharing some pleading clicks with Dao, but the satyr ushered them toward Caera, probably so the tiger had some backup if Vicus betrayed them.

“We’ll get you some food,” Jes said. “Vicus knows a church around here. We can sleep, and maybe hunt if we’re lucky. He says there’s no food around here, but you never know.”

“Sounds ... like a dangerous place to sleep.”

“Yeah, could be. But he insists no one comes down this way.”

Acelina hissed quietly and whispered. “I do not trust Vicus. He will betray us.”

“Maybe,” Jes said, “but he needs us more than we need him.”

David wasn’t sure about that. Vicus knew the area, they didn’t, and he could just run if the rider showed up again while they were sleeping. The rider wasn’t dead. He’d get out sooner or later, and if they didn’t have any clue of how to get to Timaeus, they were going to have problems. The rider had tracked them down, just like he’d done Mia, which meant he had some way to follow David. Maybe not to his exact position, but to his general area, maybe.

But they were all exhausted and didn’t have a choice.

He tried to keep his head up and scan the fog for more threats, but everything felt heavy, especially his skull. It wasn’t long before his cheek was on Acelina’s shoulder, arms limp, and he relaxed as he listened to the movement of her body, ear against her neck. Clop. Clop. Hooves against the dirt. Eyes half closed, he kept them open, but the weight pulling on his limbs and the ache in his guts didn’t make it easy.

A few hours later, they arrived at a church.

“Here,” Acelina said, and she put him on Caera’s back again. “Hold on this time.”

“Thanks,” he said, body teetering a little, but he stayed upright, hands on Caera’s back spikes.

Acelina hissed and gestured forward. She might have saved his life and carried his ass, but she wasn’t willing to face-check a building for them.

Jes was. She and Daoka followed Vicus toward the church, and after a few clicks from Daoka, the little ladies ran off and flanked the building, checking for traps or ambushes.

“I wasn’t lying,” Vicus said. “And after seeing what the unmarked did, I’m glad I didn’t.”

David managed a weak smile for the vrat, almost slipped off Caera’s back, and almost squeaked as he grabbed her spikes.

“I ... yeah.” Admitting he still wasn’t entirely sure how to control his powers to a stranger was not a smart idea, but suppressing his reflex to say more than he should was a pain.

The church was something straight out of medieval fantasy, an old abandoned building made of gray stone, surrounded by a shallow metal fence. The windows were empty square holes, and the roof was made of slabs of black ... wood?

“I have seen churches in scrying pools,” Acelina said. “This hardly qualifies. This is what humans call a ... a...”

“Shack,” David said. “A large stone shack in the woods. Why are we calling it a church? I’m fully expecting an evil book with a cover made of human skin awaiting us in the basement.”

The demons raised their brows. Apparently, they hadn’t seen that one.

“Come on,” Vicus said. “We spent the day traveling inward. There’s nothing out here. No souls, no other demons.”

“So you say,” Caera said, slowly prowling toward the front door. A big wooden door, made of more of the black trees. It’d probably shatter like glass if someone hit it hard enough.

“Clear!” Lasca yelled. Everyone hissed; too loud. She squatted in an empty window, tail swaying behind her. Apparently she’d seen the scrying pool enough to know about the word ‘clear’, but not about the Necronomicon. Disappointing.

Vicus nodded, made a small, sarcastic bow, and pushed open the door. It turned on hinges. Hell had grown hinges?

“Oh,” David said once the inside came into view. “Yeah, church.”

Church it was. There were pews inside, made of more of the black wood; he didn’t need to sit to know they’d be uncomfortable as hell, in Hell. There was a pulpit at the end of the room, same material, and skull lanterns dangled from black rafters, fire burning in their eyes. It wouldn’t have been able to fit more than a hundred people, but that was plenty for them.

Lasca was right. It was empty.

“There a lower floor?” Caera asked.

Vicus shook his head and stepped behind the large pulpit.

“No. If we’re attacked, it’s not exactly easy to defend this place.” He gestured to the windowless windows. “But we’re out of the way, here, still close to Death’s Grip, and a decent way closer to the river Styx. Souls rarely get dropped off here, so demons and hellbeasts don’t come here often.”

Nodding, Caera walked down the aisle between the pews, up to the pulpit, and leaned over a front pew. David took it, and groaned as his heavy body sank onto the hard, flat wood. Uncomfortable was fine when every finger weighed a hundred kilos.

“We need more than sleep,” she said. “We need food.”

David raised a hand. “I ... think I need food, too. A lot ... lot of food.”

Caera prowled up to him and pushed up between his legs, kinda like a dog that was the size of the biggest Siberian tiger. She set her head on his lap against his stomach, turned her head enough to aim her good eye up at him, and nudged her horns into his bare chest. Without his breastplate, she had to be gentle, and with a little work, she used a horn and pushed his hand until it was on her head.

He smiled down at her and combed her thick dreadlocks.

“You saved us,” she said.

“Saved us!” Laara said, hopping from pew to pew, perching on their backs and gripping them with claws and talons.

“Saved us!” Lasca joined her.

Latia and Laria had hooves and couldn’t balance on the backs of pews very well, but they tried, and giggled when they slipped and fell. Some giggles turned to sniffles though as Laara slipped as well, spread her wings wide, and fell on the pew beside David. Little whines filled the silence as she held out her wing to David and Caera again, little drops of blood lining the large tear in the red membrane.

“I’m sorry,” David said, and he stroked her wing’s arm with one hand, the other still combing Caera’s dreadlocks. “The rider is after me. Maybe you should have stayed back in your mountain, with Greg dead, and the other imps and grems alive and well.”

Gasping like he’d backhanded her, Laara snuggled into his side and rubbed her forehead against his shoulder.

“David doesn’t want Laara around anymore?”

“What? I didn’t—”

“David mean!” Lasca said, sitting beside Laara. “Cruel!”

“Cruel and mean!” Laria said, coming up around the pew and standing beside Caera.

“Mean and cruel!” Latia stood behind David’s pew and set her chin on his shoulder opposite Laara. “Why would David abandon us?”

Oh shit. David looked down at Caera for help, but she just smiled at him and let him stew in guilt he shouldn’t have been feeling.

“Sorry! I’m sorry. I don’t want to leave you.”

Laara beamed up at him and hugged him as best she could with the pew in the way and Caera’s head still on his lap. But it didn’t last, and the little lady squeaked and held her side where she’d been stabbed.

“Bloodgrip is nicer,” she said.

“Nicer.”

“Nicer!”

The Las chatted between themselves, all gathering on David’s pew but sitting beside him so they could chat with each other. Talk of bloodgrip vines, different caves they knew, different tunnels, and different imps and grems were the topic, and they spoke high speed, complete with lots of clicks. It wasn’t long before they sat in a circle on the stone floor, each facing each other’s backs so they could clean each other’s dreadlocks and damaged wings of a black wood shards.

He refrained from making any comment about them being a bunch of girly girls. Jeskura would have ripped his head off.

Jeskura and Dao were with Vicus, talking about the area, potential nearby threats, and Vicus was doing his best to convince them it was safe. They weren’t convinced. Acelina stood by the front door, giant axe still in hand.

In the peaceful moment, David took a deep breath, ignored the hunger in his guts, and smiled down at the wonderful tiger lady still resting her demon head on his lap. She had small cuts all over her, little things that must have bled, but small enough they healed quick, and Hell whisked away blood in a few hours. Still, she looked rough, and he stroked her horns and massaged her scalp, as if he could somehow soothe her wounds.

“You destroyed miles of the dead forest,” she said.

“Kilometers.”

“Whatever. Canadian.”

He smiled. “I ... I saw you girls getting hurt by the forest, you know? It was ... bad.” He gestured to the Las, and his voice dropped to a whisper. “They were really terrified, you know? I’ve never seen demons scared.”

“Imps and grems don’t normally get scared. Demons don’t, in general. We get caught up in the violence, and just give ourselves to it. But ... something about the rider, his aura, the ... presence.” Caera shivered. “We resisted him because he was at a distance, and being on the edge of that aura was ... terrifying. If he got close, it’d pull us in. It’d be ... just like with those hellhounds. We’d throw ourselves at him, and die.” She lifted her head, brought it close, and kissed him. “And I think some of us are a little more attached to living than some other demons. Maybe that’s why they ... why we got scared.”

“I’m glad you are. I mean, about getting attached to living.”

Smile growing, she licked his cheek.

“You did some crazy shit, back there. You broke all the trees in our way, and then destroyed the whole forest, anyway. And then you buried the rider. You create a hellquake.”

“I just played the song. Whatever it is that listens to me did the heavy lifting.” He whispered straight into Caera’s ear. Much as Vicus already knew a lot and was proving useful, it wasn’t a good idea to hand a stranger every secret they had.

“But you’re the one who passed out. You’re the one who drained yourself, and now you’re starving. And ... I don’t know if I’ll be able to find you any food. Hunting in the Grave Valley is hard, and Vicus says there’s no food around here. And—”

“I’ll be fine.” He summoned a smile, but his muscles weren’t happy about it, and he sagged in the pew. “Just tired. I won’t be playing the strings anytime soon, probably until I eat a ... few dozen hearts, but I’ll be fine. Just need sleep.” He kissed her cheek, and she rubbed her horn against the side of his head, like a house cat rubbing their cheeks on their owner. “And you need sleep.”

“Yeah, I know. We all do. But I’m taking first watch.”

“Want me to—”

Daoka hopped over to him, clicked rather loudly straight into his face, and kissed his forehead.

“She’s right. Sleep the night, the whole night, and we’ll figure out what to do in the morning.”

He wanted to argue. Taking shifts was done as a group, with a third of them watching for one third of the night, cycling between everyone. That included him. But guilt about going to sleep vanished under the heavy weight of his eyelids, and as much as the gnawing pain in his guts demanded food, it also sapped his energy. Before he was out, he had the distinct impression he was borderline comatose.

~~Mia~~

Evening twilight was coming. They’d avoided hellbeasts through sheer luck so far, but it wouldn’t last forever. Their group was pretty tough though, and could probably handle most hellbeast encounters, save for one very big problem: Vinicius was starving. He rumbled loud enough Mia borderline vibrated, still riding his back, and he looked around with the hunting eyes of a hungry predator.

“We need food,” she said.

Vinicius said nothing.

“I’m keeping an eye open,” Adron said. “But when I went through here last, I barely got a bite to eat. I avoided everything I ran into.”

“We don’t have that luxury,” Faust said, walking beside the vratorin. “We’re lost out here, and we have two big reasons we’re going to have trouble.” And because he enjoyed doing things in a grandiose way, the incubus did a small bow and flourish of his hand toward Vin and Mia.

“I’m not going to draw trouble,” she said. “I mean, demons won’t recognize me at a distance, right?”

“The clothes,” Kas said, marching behind. Much as the big guy usually walked on hands and feet, almost like a gorilla, he stayed more upright in the swamp. Less muck on his body that way.

“If it’s a big problem, then I guess I’ll go naked. But not yet. And something tells me the fact I’m wearing red silk and sandals isn’t going to be the deciding factor on whether we get into a fight.”

“Skimpy red silk,” Oudoceus said, finger raised, tail wagging.

“Shut up.” She glared back at the incubus and made sure the dangling silk covered her ass. “You’re sure this is the right way, Faust?”

All four incubi shrugged, and all four gestured back in the general direction they’d come from.

“Pretty sure Death’s Grip is back there, somewhere,” Locutus said. The other incubi nodded between themselves, sharing a thousand little ‘in the know’ gestures as subtle as a nod. They’d been together a long time.

“We push forward,” Vin said. “We kill whoever we find.”

This again. She bopped Vin on the shoulder, but he didn’t even glance her way.

“I’d prefer we didn’t kill everyone we come across. Allies can be useful, you know? Case in point, the Damall.”

Vinicius wasn’t convinced. With a grunt, he glanced around at the four incubi and the tetrad fujara, and then down at the vrat and sarkarin. Adron and Kas weren’t a part of the Damall, but they were still allies, and the reason Mia wasn’t dead. And if Mia had died, the rest of them would have died, too.

“We’ll find something,” Julisa said. “I grow hungry, as well. I—”

Mia threw up a hand.

“Do you—”

“You dare interrupt me? I—”

“Julisa! I ... I feel something.”

Everyone froze. In the dead silence, all demons looked to her, waiting, and she stared down at the muck, waiting. There was something there, quiet and tickling. Did the others feel it? No. They all watched her, waiting for her to explain.

It was a buzzing sensation, like a vibration. Like a string vibration.

“That’s a—”

The swamp erupted into a boil. Dark gore shot up into the black fog and sky. Nearby mounds ripped apart, the twisting bones underneath scattering and plunging into the muck. The screams of distant remnants vanished under the rumbling of a hellquake, and everyone fell over, even Vin. Mia squeaked, tossed from Vin’s back, and landed on her side.

“What are you doing?” Julisa yelled, on her knees in the swamp with Mia.

“Me? I’m not doing this!” The egg? Where was the egg!? Mia spun, twisting in the black gore up to her hips. A lump sat on the swamp, and she scooped it up and set it in her sling. If that’d happened on hard ground, the egg might not have survived. Small blessings. “Faust? Adron? What’s going on? What’s—”

The ground opened up, and the swamp pulled out from under them. Like an avalanche, the black muck flowed and tumbled, twisting Mia until she sank beneath the ooze. Some small part of her brain screamed to keep the egg close to her chest, and she clutched it tight with one hand over her eyes as the swamp destroyed gravity and drowned her in an unending spin under its waves. Up and down disappeared, and the rumbling of the ground attacking the swamp above rose to a crescendo that buried the roars of the nearby demons.

The swamp sank underneath her. A break in the drowning gore enveloped her, and she opened her eyes. Gravity grabbed her again, and she spun in the air, twisting as waves of the black swamp fell with her into the darkness below.

A flash of blue light flew by, enough she figured out which way was down, and she turned to keep her back aimed that way, egg against her stomach. She landed a couple seconds later, onto more of the black muck, hard enough the wind rushed out of her lungs and her head sank back into the wet layer of swamp. But she was alive.

More of the black swamp rained on her, and blurry red shapes above followed it. With a loud squeak, she threw herself to the side as hard as her aching body could handle, landed on her back again, and hugged her egg snug to her belly. A splash of black gore fell on her, and she hid her face against her egg until it passed.

Vin, Julisa, and Kas landed on their feet, each earning giant splashes that hit Mia again, and again. Some of the other demons were already down with Mia, covering their faces from the splashes, and once the last incubus landed, that was everyone.

The unfelt, unheard, almost tickling vibration changed, the rumbling picked back up again, and everyone looked up as the raining black swamp came to a stop. Tiny blue light illuminated the roof of the cavern enough to see the dark ground closing in on itself, sealing what’d been a giant crack over their heads. A giant crack they’d fallen through.

They stared around at the enormous cavern, walls dripping with black ooze, the tiny blue lights that pulsed near the top, and ... amber flames that occasionally poked up from cracks in the ground underneath the group. The fires were tiny, seeping up along little cracks and holes in the new ground, and every so often they caught along cracks in the walls that seeped up to the cavern roof overhead. They lit blue flame, like fire hitting gas pockets, and some of the blue flame seeped up through more cracks above. That explained the bursts of blue flame above the swamp, then.

Black ooze dripped from thousands of cracks, millions of them. The group was now inside a cave, but it was raining, anyway.

No one said a thing, and from the dropped jaws, no one had seen this before. Might as well be Mia to break the silence.

“The fuck is going on?” Whining, she wiped some more muck off her body, her hair, her clothes, and kicked it off her sandals. All that time spent avoiding the muck and now she was covered in black grossness, just like everyone else.

Groaning, muscles and back aching, she slowly sat up and looked around. Everyone was here, clamoring to their feet, and standing in a foot of muck that coated the cavern floor. Mia quadruple checked her egg, and then started the rounds, checking anyone for injuries.

“Worry about yourself,” Julisa said, snarling and pushing Mia away with her tail.

Mia squeaked, again, landed on her ass, aimed an angry glare at the bitch, and gestured for Vin. Past Vin might have entertained Mia’s whining and pushed Julisa around in retribution, but ever since Kas and Adron showed up, he was being a right pain in the ass.