Chapter 43

~~Day 57~~

~~David~~

Waking up next to Caera had to be the best thing in the world. The fact she was naked and was the big spoon meant her huge breasts covered his back. Her right arm held him close, one knee raised and draped across his legs, her tail too, resting on the blankets in front of him.

Sometime during the night, Jeskura had slipped in, gotten between him and Dao, and had cozied up. It wasn’t easy for her with her giant wings in the way, but she found a position she could lie on her stomach while nuzzled into her, and Dao nuzzled her other side.

He slowly reached out and took her wing. It had an arm, like any mammal or bird wing, and ended in a big black claw. He pulled on it, gently moved it from side to side so the whole wing moved, and he tapped the claw on his teeth. Click click. The gargoyle groaned but didn’t move. He oh so very slowly moved the wing so it hooked snug to her back, and he reached over it and found her hair. Caera had short dreadlocks, but Jes’s were long, reaching past her shoulders, and he combed his fingers through them.

Jes sighed and melted into the blankets.

It was easy to forget sometimes that Dao and Jes were the reason he was alive, more than anyone else. And the angry, volatile gargoyle next to him had saved his life when he’d fallen into the canyon. With everything going on, maybe she felt like she was getting left out? Nah. If she thought she was getting left out, she’d speak up about it like she had last night.

He ran his hand down her back, between her wing arms and shoulder blades, down her spine, and down her tail. A long tail, with some short spikes along the top, but not many; winged demons didn’t seem to have many spikes, for obvious reasons. He pulled the tail up to his chest, ran the tip along his skin, and Jes grumbled at him. Weight on her elbows, she rolled her eyes and flicked her tail in his face.

“Play with your girlfriend’s tail. It’s bigger.”

Girlfriend. Heh. The word sent a tingle through him.

She was right about the tail, and Caera chuckled and squeezed him. Her tail half lay across his hips and curled so it hooked his waist and chest, and he had to be careful he didn’t rub his arm against its spikes. But with a little finagling, he brought Jes’s tail around it, threading Caera’s spikes, and tried to tie a knot. No good. Too thick and hard.

Jes pulled her tail free and stabbed him in the forehead with it.

“Go play with Acelina’s tail if you want to tie something.”

“Hey I would, if I didn’t think she’d hurt me.”

Acelina snorted from beside Dao. “I would, indeed.”

Dao clicked, sat up, and crawled back a bit and sat on Acelina’s legs. With Acelina on her stomach, breasts hidden inside the pocket she’d dug in the blankets, Dao was free to sit on the much larger demon’s curvy thighs, and grab her tail. Chirping, she ran her fingers down its long, thin length, and gave it several kisses. She liked the tail. Considering what Acelina had done to her with that tail, she probably liked it a lot.

“Yes ... well...” Acelina shrugged and rested her cheek on the blankets. “I know how to pleasure myself, of course. I knew it would work well on you too, riiva.”

Dao set the tail between her breasts, squeezed them together, and smiled at David. A not-so-subtle hint even he could pick up on.

“Uh, hey,” David said, gulping, “I thought we had to get going?”

“We do.” Another voice said. Right, Laoko was still here. The tetrad stood up, towered over them all, and did a morning twilight stretch. “But not quite yet. Twilight has another hour or so to pass before we leave for the spire, and I wish to discuss with Timaeus the details of our inevitable meeting with Azailia.”

Caera sat up and eyed the tetrad. “I’d like to hear that conversation.”

“Yes, I imagine you would.” Chuckling, Laoko scooped up pieces of her armor and got to work binding them to her curvy body with leather straps. “Get dressed then, tregeera. Are the rest of you coming?”

Caera shook her head. “The others can rest.” She kissed David, thudded his chest once with her hand — ow — and leaned in close to Jes. That was a whisper, but David didn’t catch it.

She got dressed, and the two strongest demons of the group left.

David sat up and watched, and chewed his lip and the inside of his cheek the moment Caera vanished from sight.

“She’ll be fine,” Jes said. “She’ll—hey, the angel bitch still there?”

She was. They all looked up, but the one-winged angel didn’t return the favor. She stayed sitting at the giant table on the platform above, in a chair that dwarfed even her great height, and sighed.

“Angel scary,” Lasca said, finally climbing out from under the blankets. “Did she sleep?”

“I slept,” Moriah said, “vermin.”

Lasca frowned, and Dao clicked up at the angel like an angry dolphin. But Moriah didn’t respond, and Dao sighed and shook her head. Yeah, there was no arguing with Moriah, not when she wasn’t willing to actually argue. To the angel, she spoke facts, and wasn’t interested in debating them.

David knew the feeling. Getting so caught up in your own ego and intelligence that you think you know something is correct, with no possibility of being wrong? He knew that feeling well. But something about getting introduced to the afterlife and having all understanding of existence shattered put a dent in that part of his ego.

“In the meantime,” Jes said, and she ran her tail along David’s chest. “Caera agrees you’ve been neglecting me. So y’all can go fuck yourselves, literally, because David’s going to fuck me for a while before we get moving.”

The Las whined. Dao giggled. Acelina turned her head and aimed her eyeless gaze at the gargoyle next to her.

“It hasn’t even been twelve hours, gorgala.”

“Hey, I’m horny, and it could be a while before we fuck again. Come on, David. Get to work.” She got cozy on the blankets on her stomach, and did it right next to Acelina, too, shoulder to shoulder. And because she was an evil gargoyle, she slapped her ass cheeks, and spread her legs. “We’re not stopping until I’m done. Now get over here.”

He blinked a few times, got between Jes’s legs, and smiled at Dao beside him.

Dao kissed his cheek, chirped, slapped Jes’s ass, and spread her cheeks. No translation needed.

It took time to get everyone ready. Not the getting dressed part; that didn’t take long. It was getting everyone used to being around a small army of demons again, and finding a formation. They settled on David and the girls taking the center, while the demon group surrounded them, with Timaeus at the front with Laoko.

The armed guard comprised a dozen demons, four brutes, four vrats, three gargoyles, and the tiger they met earlier. Either Timaeus didn’t think David and the wounded angel were all that dangerous, or he went with the angel’s advice and settled on a small group. Or maybe he just trusted Laoko that much. Timaeus was a little odd, or at least he seemed odd to David. Weren’t all demons like Acelina, angry and convinced everyone else was trying to backstab them? That’s how Moriah thought of them, and she’d been around a lot longer than David.

But Timaeus and Laoko marched on into the white fog, shared a few laughs, and not once did Timaeus sneak a peek behind him. He looked back a few times more overtly, a leader doing a check, but if he was worried, he didn’t show it, far as David could tell.

“Quiet now,” he said, after he laughed a little too hard. “If the rider is out there, I don’t want him finding us.”

“Remnants found us last time,” Laoko said, “and in the noise, angels found us. And in that noise, the rider found us.”

“The Grave Valley is not small, Laoko. How did angels find you in this fog?”

“My fault,” David said. “I caused a lot of damage, fighting the rider in a previous encounter. The angels followed the destruction, heard the noise, and came in.”

Timaeus looked back at him, eyebrow raised. “But you spared this one? Her ruby eyes are unsettling.”

“I—” He stopped and looked to Caera. She shrugged, angel on her back, and nodded toward him. Ball was in his court to talk, then. “I did.”

“Strange to not keep a prisoner on a leash.”

“She’s not...” He looked up and back at the angel. She met his eyes, glaring. “She’s not a prisoner.”

“I got that impression from the way she helped herself to my food. But why?”

“It’s complicated.”

The gorujin tetrad grinned and walked backward, literally, on the dirt and white stones. He had the feet claws and wings to keep balance easily enough.

“Heaven isn’t united anymore, is it?”

Moriah ground her teeth. “You know nothing.”

“Oh? I’ve seen more than a few angels spend their days in Hell, warrior of God. Laoko has done more than that. I’m sure all the spires know Heaven is not the great bastion of faith it pretends to be.” He slowed down until Caera caught up to him, but he continued walking backward, eyes on Moriah. “Ever fucked a demon, angel?”

“No.” No hesitation.

Timaeus smiled, showing off some of his big teeth. “I might not know the reason for Heaven’s discourse, but I know angels have been coming down from Heaven for decades, if not centuries, for no other reason than to spend time in Hell. But for weeks now, angels have swarmed the skies by the hundreds, thousands, tiny white dots.” He rubbed his hands together. “I have to wonder how many angels will end up fighting their own kind?”

“That ... will not happen.” Whatever resolve Moriah had for the staring match, it broke, and she looked down.

He shrugged, turned, and joined Laoko. “Whatever is happening, I’ll leave it to Azailia to make a decision. But be wary, she’s not been ... happy, since learning Zelandariel died.”

~~Day 62~~

~~Mia~~

A week since the encounter with an Old One. A week of wandering a black swamp of remnant guts, and big churning bone towers with spikes that ground up remnants into muck. A week of not being able to see more than fifty meters. A week of dodging puffs of blue fire erupting from the ooze. A week of no sex.

She’d been excited for more sex, too, but the broken limbs and carting around two angels kinda put a delay on more orgies. Figured. The moment she’d grown comfortable with the orgy idea, getting passed around like a sex toy, squashed between a multitude of handsome bodies and whatnot, was when she upped and broke two limbs.

Then again, even if she hadn’t, orgies were probably still off the menu. She’d built a small cave for them every night, but she wasn’t strong enough to build some giant cavern. No space. And indulging in an orgy with two angels inches away wasn’t in the cards.

Or was it? They were both stupidly handsome, tall and muscular, and unless Mia was crazy, she’d noticed them notice her and her skimpy potram clothes a few times. Noah, with his piercing silver eyes, light skin, and long dirty blond hair, and Azreal with his amethyst eyes, medium, messy black hair, and tan skin. Noah had a short beard, barely longer than stubble, while Azreal was clean shaven, and both men looked like models who’d just stepped out of the barber’s. Every feature was perfectly symmetrical.

They almost looked too perfect, except for all the gross black muck on their wings and skin.

She peeked back at them, and imagined them without the muck. They’d be so glorious and pretty. And handsome. And sexy. Maybe they wouldn’t mind joining the orgy? Yosepha and Galon had told her Heaven leaned into sex quite a bit, orgies everywhere all the time. And considering you didn’t have to worry about getting killed and eaten in Heaven, or getting pregnant, the souls were quite willing to engage in sexy times as often as possible. That was life — er, the afterlife — in Heaven. Unending pleasure and bliss at the soul’s choosing. And the angels partook, or at least gabriem like Galon did.

Considering Yosepha and Romakus’s sex life, mikalim and rapholem probably partook, too. Which meant Noah and Azreal—

She grabbed the strings inside her before the aura got out. Okay, yes, imagining her body squashed between the two angels while a half dozen demons stood around her, waiting for their turn, was an enormous turn on, but sexy times had to wait. For now.

She sat up on Kas’s back and stretched out the bad arm and leg. Stiff and achy, but working. She definitely healed fast, about as fast as a demon or an angel.

“Azreal. Noah. Can you fly yet?”

Both angels stretched out their wings and flapped them a few times for good measure.

“Yes,” Noah said. “I believe we can.”

“Good. That’s good, right?”

He scooped up another black piece of guts and draped it over his wings. Gross, and necessary. Thick as the black fog was, all it’d take would be a hint of white shining in the black for someone nearby to come investigate.

“I told you, Mia. If I try and fly you somewhere, we will be found immediately. I worry for the group when we leave the Black Valley at all, where the fog will no longer hide us.”

Vinicius, leading the pack with Julisa at his side, grunted and grabbed their attention.

“Angel’s Spine has tunnels,” he said. “Large ones. Unusual ones. We can hide in those and make our way to False Gate through them.”

The two angels shared a glance. Something about what Vin said bothered them.

“You could leave?” Mia said. “I mean, you could leave right now, right? Leave us behind. Would the other angels know what you were up to?”

“No,” Azreal said, “they wouldn’t.”

“Not at first,” Noah said. “But we aren’t the only angels who’ve left Heaven on ... strange terms. They would question us eventually. If a battalion from Azoryev finds us first, they would interrogate us immediately.”

“How many angels have left Heaven?”

They watched her before squinting and aiming a few suspicious glances at the demons. Each incubus put up their hands in surrender. Adron laughed.

Noah sighed. “The legions of Heaven are vast. I don’t know how many angels have found issue with the council and have come to Hell, but it would hardly be a number that matters. A dozen. A thousand? Nothing compared to the millions of angels ready to fight, gabriem, mikalim, and rapholem alike.”

Vin snorted, the crocodile version of a scoff.

“You doubt me?” Noah asked.

“I doubt Heaven’s strength.”

“What would a monster locked away for centuries know of it?”

Vin chuckled, but kept his dragon eyes pointed ahead. “Before Zelandariel and a thousand of her soldiers locked me away, Heaven already showed weakness. I had seen angels leave Heaven and find voices here in the fire, voices they could talk to, voices not beholden to the council.” He looked back and gave the angels an evil grin. “Your silent council.”

Both angels clenched their fists and glared at Vinicius. They were healed. It was probably tempting to summon batlam and try to kill the monster, and considering their history, Mia couldn’t blame them. But she waved a hand and played goalie.

“There’s something going on,” she said, “something bigger than we’re seeing. Heaven’s council has been silent for a bunch of centuries, right?”

Noah finally tore his eyes away from Vin. “Yes. The Spires War was the last most angels ever heard their voice, and that was about two thousand years ago. They have said but one thing since: kill the unmarked.”

“They just ... stopped talking, randomly for all that time? Any build up?” she asked. The angels shook their heads. “Then something happened around then? Maybe during the war?”

“Perhaps. The council’s final order was to keep the Spires War under control. Eventually, Belor took control of False Gate during this war, and when he was ready to march on the other spires and take control, we intervened with him directly.”

“We? Were you there?” she asked. The two angels nodded. Damn, they were old. “Think maybe he was actually going to march on the Forgotten Place instead?”

From the look on his face, she’d just thrown a wet blanket on him.

“That is a possibility, and one angels speak of in hushed words. It is better if the spires wage war with themselves, and Hell continues doing what it is meant to do.”

Meant to do. He meant cleansing damned souls with its brutal mark and remnant system.

Would he know about the Great Tower, what it even was, how Hell and Heaven and Earth interacted with it? Yosepha didn’t, but Noah and Azreal were super old. But, questions for another time.

“Two thousand years ago...” A pretty powerful reference to a certain time, for a lot of religions. “Something had to have happened.”

Azreal grunted.

“Yes,” Noah said, “but nothing special happened during the war that we know of. All spire rulers were slain, mostly by each other, and quickly found replacements. The ninth spire in the Forgotten Place remains untouched, and has for far longer than the time of the Spires War. A child of the Old Ones, Felezar, controlled it, but perished before Azreal or I were born.”

Slowly, things clicked into place in her mind. Everything was still a mystery, but at least she was understanding Hell’s history. Two thousand years ago, the eight provinces had a big war, and Belor was coming out on top. He was a big baddie, and probably wanted to do more than just rule the eight provinces. He wanted to reach the Forgotten Place, maybe, an event the council didn’t want to happen.

And then after the war, the council just stopped talking. Weird. Only the unmarked showing up earned another order.

“What was the war like?” she asked.

Azreal grunted again. “Slaughter, on a massive scale.”

“The records,” Noah said, “speak of three wars. The First War, between Lucifer and God. The Second War, Cain’s War, where the murderer — and supposedly his wife — united all nine spires, many tens of thousands of years ago. And the Third War, the Spires War, a war between demons, where we angels only intervened in certain locations. But even those small interferences cost many thousands of angel lives, and millions of demon lives. And yet, but a footnote compared to the wars before.”

Right, Noah had said Heaven stopping Belor had been more a police action, not a war.

“Heaven,” Vinicius said with a deep, quiet chuckle, “cannot muster the numbers they once had. Hell slowly recovers from the Spires War, while Heaven dwindles.”

Noah spread his wings, took a deep breath, and settled them.

“Last we heard,” Azreal said, “the provinces of Hell could only muster one, maybe two hundred thousand demons each. But ... I don’t think that’s true anymore.”

“No,” Noah said, sighing. “From what we heard of the battle in Death’s Grip, the province likely has far more than that, and Mia only scratched the surface of the demons she could have summoned.” Clenching his fists, he glared around, as if he could find a target for his frustration. “But the council says nothing. Remnants roam free. Unmarked souls fail to enter Heaven, and are whisked away to Hell from our doorstep. A crack has ripped Death’s Grip apart, exposing something sinister below. And now these ... monsters appear?” Again he spread his wings, clenched his teeth harder than his fists, and glared at the muck.

“I can understand why you came to me,” Mia said. “Looking for answers, I mean. Not that I have any to give, but yeah, that must be frustrating.”

Adron laughed. “I think your life might be a little more frustrating, Mia.”

She smiled and petted her egg. “Kinda yes, kinda no. I mean—”

They all froze. The black fog parted ahead, and the group threw themselves to the ground. Mia held onto her egg, rolled off Kas’s back, and sank into the muck. A little forethought kept her head above the grossness.

A familiar roaring, screaming sound cut through the silence. Mia rolled onto her knees and stared up at the portal, and ice shot through her veins. It was like a lamprey’s mouth, filled with sharp spikes that pointed inward, but the mouth was connected to nothing. It was like someone had cut through the air with a scalpel, cut it open, and exposed the lamprey creature hiding behind reality.

The memory stabbed Mia in the chest, and she clutched her leash necklace. It was the last time she’d seen David, except for when he rescued her at the spire. The two of them had fallen down a vortex of stone walls covered in spikes, screaming remnants, and fellow souls fell with them. The air had burned, and being surrounded by so many screaming people had turned the noise into scratching madness in her ears. And now it was happening to a fresh batch of poor sods.

She sucked in a breath and forced herself to watch. The portal was enormous. A hundred meters across? She couldn’t tell. But its existence churned the air, sent hot wind across the fog, scattering it, and exposed the Black Valley in all directions, including up.

Souls fell from the lamprey mouth, and slowed on their descent, some magical force making sure they didn’t die from impact, same as it had Mia and David. A dozen. A hundred. A thousand bodies were dropped off in a matter of seconds, and each of them screamed all the way down until they fell into the muck.

Mia looked back at the demons and angels. Noah and Azreal looked away, wincing. The demons watched, licking their lips.

Julisa was ahead of her, and the four-armed woman got to a knee, leaned forward, and got into a sprinter’s starting stance. Mia grabbed the demon’s ankle. Maybe a mistake. Julisa snapped her head back and glared, but Mia glared right back. The demons were all well fed thanks to her. They didn’t need to go on a killing spree, slaughtering souls for hearts they’d probably struggle to fit in their full bellies.

But demons were like cats. If they didn’t hunt frequently, they went stir crazy and got stressed. Unfortunately, Mia didn’t have a giant string and stick for them to chase.

She kept her glare on Julisa and pointed up. The black fog had spread and opened, revealing the fire sky behind the veil of black. Enough fog for them to stay hidden, but not enough fog they could go causing a ruckus and inviting whatever angels circled above, too high for them to see.

The portal closed. The humans dumped in the swamp screamed and wailed up at the sky. But the sky didn’t care. And slowly, taking its sweet time, the fog closed around them again.

A roar yanked Mia’s eyes away. The muck churned, erupted, and dark skin pounced from the black and onto the scattering souls. A demon. A vratorin? He was almost as big as Adron, a tail, no wings, walking upright, and with foot claws and plenty of black back spikes. Covered in the tainted innards of the remnants of the black swamp, he blended right in even better than Mia and the group did.

More demons exploded from the swamp. A few gargoyles. A satyr. A tiger. A half dozen brutes. A dozen of the little imps and grems. All coated in black gunk, they fell upon the souls, and the screams of distant remnants sounded tame compared to the madness. The souls couldn’t run very fast, each step sinking them into the swamp, and the demons tore after them like a train smashing through snow.

Mia wished the afterlife allowed puking. It might have made her feel better.

Some souls came their way. The group didn’t move. One woman got within fifty meters before a gargoyle pounced her back and ripped her apart. At least the demons didn’t torture their prey. Swift kills. The demons were hungry.

There were too many souls, and many disappeared into the black fog out of sight. The smart ones stopped screaming. Smarter ones even covered themselves in the muck, or dove into the swamp and spread out their limbs. They crawled, and blended into the fog and muck, the same way Mia and her group did. Hard to smell someone who’d just covered themselves in tainted remnant guts.

The fog thickened, and the demons slowly disappeared behind it, out of sight of the group.

Vinicius got up and sprinted forward. Without a growl, roar, or grunt, the titan ripped through the swamp, and it broke around him like the Red Sea. The fog swirled around him, and the demons in the distance froze. How could something that big could move that fast? That was what they were thinking. Mia had thought it before.

The demons scattered, but Vinicius got a pair of hands on a gargoyle, and another pair on a vrat. Both were covered in fresh blood, and both hissed and snarled at Vinicius as they struggled. But he got his hands around their throats and silenced them.

“No noise,” he said, and looked back at the group.

God damn it.

Sighing, Mia got back up and crawled onto Kas’s back. He waited for her, grunted, and trudged after the child of Belial, along with Julisa. The rest of the group took a few seconds longer, scanning the disappearing sky. No angels. The patrols above probably didn’t care about a typical soul drop off, and the frenzy that came with it.

“Vin!” Mia whispered as loudly as she could. “What’re you doing?”

“Getting directions.” The titan held out both demons in front of him, and the vrat and gargoyle flicked panicked, angry eyes between him and the approaching group. “Speak. Where are we?”

The vrat stared at the group. Seeing a child of the Old Ones was probably scary enough, but a tetrad, and two angels, and an unmarked? With the way his eyes settled on Mia and froze there, demons knew about the unmarked, too.

“The Black Valley,” the vrat said.

Vinicius growled down at the creature and brought him in close. “I only need one of you for answers. Do not try my patience.”

“Inner edge!” the gargoyle said. “We’re closer to the inner edge of Hell.”

“And what is the fastest way to the Trench line that would lead us to Angel’s Spine?”

The gargoyle, holding Vin’s wrists with both her hands, pointed behind her with her tail.

“That way! Just ... keep walking in that direction until you hit a deep trench, then go left.”

“You’ll hit the Trench center that way,” the vrat said.

Vinicius brought both demons in close. The vrat was well over seven feet tall, and looked like a child in Vin’s hands. The gargoyle looked like a toy.

“Vicente?” Vin asked.

The gargoyle hissed. “He runs the Trench line!”

“And what do he and Alessio know about the unmarked?”

The gargoyle and vrat traded glances.

“They want the unmarked,” the vrat said. “Who doesn’t?”

“Anything else I should know?” Vinicius asked, and a dark little chuckle vibrated through his thick throat.

The two demons again traded glances.

The gargoyle raised a claw. “There’s a rumor Xela found an unmarked!”

“Another unmarked?” Mia asked. Kas came closer for her. “Xela is in charge of the Mound, right? A section of this province?” From what the Damall told her of the Mound, it was the number one dump site for portals. That meant a lot of demons.

“Yes,” the vrat said. “Follow the main Trench line and you’ll see the Mound before you reach the center.”

“Why,” Vinicius said, growling at his two victims, “hasn’t Xela given Alessio that unmarked?”

Both demons shrugged. The question wasn’t needed. Xela had an unmarked because she thought they might be a tool to gain power.

“How many days to reach Vicente from here?” Julisa asked.

“A week!” the vrat said between gasps.

Vinicius looked back at the group and waited. Any more questions? Didn’t seem like it.

Vin snapped their necks and threw both bodies to the ground. They twitched several times, and went still.

“Vin!” Mia glared up at the bastard. “What the fuck?”

He turned and faced her, short dragon snout in a sneer. “What?”

“You killed them!”

“Of course I killed them.” He gestured to their corpses. “Are you hungry?”

“No!” Yelling and whispering at the same time wasn’t easy. “You could have let them go.”

He tilted his head and looked at Julisa. As if she caught the ball, Julisa looked at Mia with a raised brow.

“They would have said something to someone, and word would have spread.” Julisa set a clawed foot on the corpses, and pushed each one down. They disappeared under the muck. “Or would you prefer to let everyone know about our journey?”

“Other demons saw us!”

The tetrad shook her head and folded her four arms across her chest. “Other demons saw Vinicius and scattered. They did not see us.” Growling, she gestured in the direction the gorgala had pointed. “If killing a couple demons is such trouble, how do you expect to fare when demons and angels routinely block our path?”

“We’re going to avoid them, remember?”

She laughed. “We can’t avoid them forever. No matter how hard we try to avoid conflict, it will drown us. Or did you not notice that you have killed more angels than any demon alive, except for perhaps Vinicius?”

Mia opened her mouth, but the sucker punch ripped the air from her. Her angel body count was high, and so was her demon body count, all from one battle. But that wasn’t the same as killing in close quarters, and killing when it wasn’t necessary. Except, it was necessary, and she was just being a baby. That’s what David would have said, but he’d have been nicer about it.