Chapter 45

~~Day 65~~

~~David~~

No sex that night. No one felt comfortable in the spire, locked in a room. Moriah could probably break them out like Azailia said, but they were still surrounded by potential enemies, and fighting their way out would be tough, maybe impossible.

Morning twilight came, and the group slowly got up from the pile of blankets. Dao and Jes had pulled the last shift, and they came over and joined them.

“Wakey wakey,” Jes said. “Let’s see what today holds. I’m gonna take a wild guess and say Azailia and Laoko are going to betray us. They’re gonna split us up and eat David and Moriah. Thoughts?”

Dao shoved Jes onto the pile, earned a squawk, and sat with David, clicking away.

“I hope not,” David said. “But uh, I do think—”

The door opened, teeth sliding up and down into the metal of the spire.

Azailia stood there with her tetrad buddy Silvain, Timaeus, a dozen other demons, and Laoko.

The group paused, waiting for the inevitable betrayal.

“Come,” Azailia said. “We spoke long and hard about your future.”

“Without us?” Jes asked, and gave her wings a small flap. “We know more about what’s going on than you.”

“Laoko was sure to be specific and give bias to your position.” Azailia nodded, and dragged a set of claws down the red silks running along her torso. “But I would be a fool if I didn’t at least take advantage of this opportunity a little. No harm will come to you, but I wish to bring the unmarked to the ceremony site of the spire.”

David tilted his head. “Why?”

“Because you can read the ancient language. Can you not?”

Caera snorted. “Why do you think that?”

“Because Laoko believes you can.”

David trades some glances with the girls and grimaced.

“And,” Azailia continued, “from your facial expressions, her guess is correct.”

Fuck. Learn to control your face, David.

“Laoko,” he said, squinting at her, “is too smart.”

Whatever memory he piqued, it made Azailia laugh, and Timaeus too. Silvain just glared.

“You may all come,” the spire ruler said, “but only the unmarked and I will enter the chamber. Agreed?”

David looked to the girls. Jes and Caera didn’t trust Azailia at all, and Dao was frowning. Moriah didn’t trust any of them, but that was hardly a change for her. The angel did give the spire ruler a few more glares than usual, though.

“You know I can defend myself,” David said. “I’ve fought off the rider himself, by myself.” Demons understood boasts of strength, and responded to threats with respect. The fact he didn’t think he could do shit to anyone while inside the spire was a problem, but if the threat worked, he wouldn’t have to.

Azailia’s face lit up. She had a softer face than Laoko, rounder, but her expressions were anything but. If anything, someone had carved Azailia’s expressions out of cold, hard steel, subtle but unbreakable, but she kept the small, perfect, deadly smile on David.

“I like you, little unmarked,” she said. David gulped, but said nothing, which just made Azailia chuckle. “Come. We will visit some chambers along the way.”

She stepped back, walked to the inner edge of the inner balcony, and jumped down the hole in the center of the spire. The hole went down, and down, all the way to the blackness below that, as far as David’s sixth sense could tell, went as deep into Hell as the spire stood tall. And his ass sucked up into his gut as he stared over the edge.

“Come on,” Jes said. “Pussy.”

She grabbed his shoulders and jumped after the spire ruler. Carried by Jes with a big black pit below. Déjà vu. Everyone else followed, David’s girls and a bunch of other demons in tow, a lot of them brutes, and a tiger. Muscle, in case they tried to escape. Were they prisoners? Had Laoko betrayed them, or Azailia? No way to tell yet, and that was the grain of sand in his shoe — sandal — that was going to drive him nuts.

But he had to look confident, like he could fight the whole spire if he had to. And it wasn’t like Azailia was his only concern. The last time an unmarked had been in a spire for a decent amount of time, the rider had come, and he’d brought a giant hellbeast no one had seen in ages, and a squadron of demons equipped with the best armor available. He might show up again. They knew he had to be nearby.

They stopped on a floor with a wide archway door that opened to a huge room. The moans were loud, and the activity within lacked a defined shape. Bodies on top of bodies, demons big and small, souls and incubi and succubi and even grems and imps piled on each other in almost random arrangements.

The Las froze, stared, and pointed. One girl near the entrance had a couple impins and a couple gremlins penetrating her; the little guys had huge cocks, bigger than a human’s. More than a few ladies had a succubi mouthing parts of her body, and dudes getting the same. A couple incubi had a bigger demon’s cock inside their ass or mouth. A free-for-all, no one caring who did what to whom.

Timaeus walked past the group, stepped into the room, and gestured to one incubus.

“Sissius, come here,” he said.

Sissius climbed out from between a gargoyle’s legs, smiled up at the big tetrad, and undressed him. It wasn’t long before Timaeus was naked, sitting in the center of a mountain of action, and towering over everyone else as the only tetrad. An incubi got to work licking the giant demon’s emerging cock, while a vratorin came over, sat on the tetrad’s lap, and the incubus helped guide the growing shaft into the vratorin’s ass.

David looked around at the girls. None of them looked surprised. Well, if Mia had been around, she’d have been, and she’d have probably taken pictures if she’d had her phone.

“He’ll be ready for tomorrow,” Azailia said, and she jumped down another floor.

The group followed, down and down, until they crossed the widest floor, the first floor. The spire took them deeper, and they sank below the surface into the awaiting black where the amber veins and skull braziers of fire weren’t so bright.

“You wish to see Acelina’s new home?” Azailia asked. Silvain didn’t like that. He grunted and eyed the group, but Azailia chuckled and patted her fellow tetrad on the arm. “We must show our guests that we’re serious about aiding them, Silvain.”

“Agreed,” Laoko said.

Caera and Jes didn’t look convinced. The deeper they went into the spire, the more agitated the two demons grew, both scanning left and right like they might get jumped any moment. It was hard to tell with Dao, but from the little frowns he noticed, she didn’t like the spire. The Las just looked happy to be a part of something.

And then there was Moriah, who did not hide the fact she was ready to cut anyone down who got too close. More than a few demons stared at her and her rather sexy potram clothes, and once, an incubus dared approach. He got two steps toward her before she shot him a disintegrating glare, and the incubus walked backward, tracing his steps like a cat in the snow.

Laoko seemed to trust Azailia, though, and she’d pulled through for them.

“I’d like to give Acelina a proper goodbye,” he said. “Now’s a good time, if we’re leaving tomorrow.”

“Agreed.” Azailia nodded and gestured to the archway, one dripping blood from chunks of muscle growing around black metal spikes.

Azailia went first, Silvain last, and the demons he brought with him stayed outside. Azailia was awfully trusting to think David and his girls couldn’t just jump her and kill her. Sure, she was a tetrad, and could probably kill any of them in a straight fight, but she’d lose if Caera, Jes, and Dao all jumped her when she had her guard down, especially if the Las joined in and bit her ankles. Moriah could probably cut her in half without anyone’s help, if she got a sneak attack in.

What was her game? Either she was being overly trusting because she felt Laoko had read them right, assuming Laoko had said she trusted David, or she was tricking them, getting them to lower their guard. Which seemed pointless. They were already in the spire. The fuck could they do if Azailia turned on them?

The hallway turned from ribs of metal that circled the walls, floor, and ceiling, into circles of white bone. The floor, walls, and ceiling transformed from black metal with jagged spikes, to layers of skinless muscle, undulating, and wet with blood. They might as well have been walking down the inside of a snake.

The hallway opened into a colossal room, and David froze. The walls reached high, amber veins cutting along black metal sections, and flesh grew around them. Tunnels connected to the giant chamber, each lined with giant white rib bones. And four demons stood within, chatting. Four zotivas. Spire mothers. Nine-foot-tall demonesses, standing on hooves with small — relatively speaking — tails slowly wagging behind them.

“Azailia! Laoko!” a spire mother said, and she approached, huge hips swaying beneath her tiny waist. Spire mothers walked with a strut, the hooves working to give them the high heels look, but David was pretty sure they exaggerated it on purpose. Some red silks hung from her body, covering her enormous breasts, but not attached to her by any piercings, unlike Azailia. She looked so damn similar to Acelina, David squinted looking for differences.

“Octavia, Zulia, Tassilia,” Laoko and Azailia said together.

David and the girls watched as Azailia and Laoko joined the spire mothers, traded hugs and kisses, shared names, and kissed some more. All except for one.

Acelina joined them last. She had a few more necklaces on her body than the other spire mothers, armor gone, and had red silk draped over her breasts and around her hips. Beautiful. Ridiculously beautiful. Even the way her perfectly smooth, featureless, obsidian face had a slightly narrower edge on her jawline compared to the others, looked beautiful. The other spire mothers looked just like her, but there was something about Acelina that had an edge that left him staring.

The Las ran past everyone and hugged her legs.

“Acelina! We miss Acelina!” they said, jumping up and down at her hooves.

She aimed her eyeless gaze down at them, and the barest hint of a smile showed through on her mask-like face.

“Still here?”

“Until tomorrow,” Jes said, joining the little critters. “Azailia’s taking David down to the spire depths, but she’s been nice enough to give us a peek at the hatching pit.”

“I see.” Acelina nodded, used her long wings and patted the Las on their heads, and joined her fellow spire mothers by Azailia. All four were enormous, and still a foot shorter than the spire’s ruler. “You wish for the angel to see, as well?”

Moriah grunted and kicked a nearby remnant. Putting it out of its misery, or just letting out some of her anger, David couldn’t quite tell. Probably both.

“If the wounded angel,” Azailia said, “is joining the unmarked on his journey, then I see no harm. Do you agree?” The question was pointed at the other spire mothers.

The three spire mothers he didn’t know all got on their knees in front of David, and each one smiled, showing a hint of their shark teeth and wide mouths. Squatting like that, their massive breasts rested on their knees, silk pouring off them so they were no longer covered. Their necklaces hung between their cleavage and disappeared in the softness.

Each demoness reached out and ran their hands on his body, his forehead, his red silks similar to theirs, and his abs exposed by the loose clothing.

“Oh my,” one said. “Aren’t you a sexy little thing? Acelina mentioned your body has some unusual abilities, sexual ones. I don’t suppose you could ... share with us?”

“Yes, please. We never get to taste souls very often. We always give them to the hatching pit, and never indulge ourselves.”

“Oh yes. Acelina says you are quite delectable. I’d love to feel that girth of yours on my body. On our bodies.”

Oh god.

Caera sat behind David dog style, but instead of defending him from being accosted like he was a kid seeing a bunch of aunts for the first time, she laughed.

“Now ladies,” Azailia said, “perhaps if his owners are willing to share, then later. But for now, let us just show him the pits.”

The three women sighed but stood up. Not natural, normal standing. Sexy, exaggerated, slow standing, complete with chest jutting, half spins to show off their large asses, and a flick of their long, thin tails.

Daoka chirped into Jes’s ear, and the gargoyle laughed. A shaky laugh, though. The spire mothers were affecting her, too.

David gulped, again, and peeked past the three women to Acelina. She’d been talking about him to the other spire mothers? Whatever she’d said, they’d been complimentary, and he smiled. Acelina groaned.

“Come,” Azailia said. “I will show you the wonder that keeps the Grave Valley alive.”

The next room made the first room look small. A colossal cavern, walls lined with white ribs and red meat, floor and ceiling, too. A cave of flesh, with some dangling skull braziers of black metal to light the room. There were amber veins, too, but the flesh didn’t get along with it. Sometimes he could smell burning steak.

Nearer the floor, along the sloped walls of flesh, were holes. Some as small as his head, some as big as his body, the orifices slowly pulsed, squeezed on nothing, relaxed, and repeated, just like a stomach’s sphincter might. And he stared, unable to look away from how the flesh was squeezing, wet, as if ready to pop out an egg.

And then, of course, there were the eggs. Thousands of them. Like the holes, some were big, some were small, and all were black and leathery, with hints of dark red. The holes must have squeezed eggs out regularly, and the soft flesh floor and its rib-like indents gave the eggs places to rest and pile up. The eggs were partially see-through in some places, and he risked squatting over one and peeking down at it from up close. Something moved within.

“Lucifer’s children,” a spire mother said, and she squatted next to him and gently rotated and nudged the egg to the side. “A devorjin.”

“You can tell?”

“Of course. We do not choose what eggs the spire births, but we choose which eggs survive. To do that, we must know our craft intimately.”

Which eggs survived. Infanticide. Cruel, but crushing an unhatched egg seemed like a mercy compared to everything else Hell could do to a weak demon.

Another spire mother squatted beside him, made no effort to not accidentally press a huge breast to his shoulder, picked up the egg, and set it beside another, cozy against the flesh wall. She grinned at him, wide mouth and shark teeth a sharp contrast to her smooth, onyx face, and she moved to another egg and did the same. Mothers, tending eggs. A strange sight in Hell, more than giant walls of flesh.

“That’s a lot of eggs,” Caera said. “A lot more than the last time I saw a hatching pit, decades ago. Isn’t this a bit much? We only get so many souls to eat.” Right, if there were too many demons, then the demons would spend all their time killing each other for food, more than they already did.

“Changes are happening,” Azailia said, and she squatted down by one of the larger eggs. “I must be prepared. More demons will survive the hatching pits, and more will join my armies.”

“Armies?” David asked, standing up. “I thought the Grave Valley had factions.”

“The factions war among themselves, yes, but all bow to the spire. And all kneel before the call of the horde.” She grinned at him and tapped a claw against the amber jewel horn on her forehead. “Come.” She nodded to the spire mothers, got nods in return, and she moved to the next big room.

Another big cave, shorter, and wider. It was all underground, walls of flesh, and in the center of the room, was a giant pit.

“That brings back memories,” Jes said, leaning over the edge with wings spread. She gestured to some of the giant rocks deep below, and the grems and imps sitting on it, looking up at them from the pit.

There were broken eggs everywhere. The spire mothers must have put the eggs in the pit once they were ready, let them hatch surrounded by hungry demons and limited food, and let them scurry about in the tunnels. Lots of tunnels, judging from how many caves he could see connecting to the pit. But even the tallest rock or tallest, alien bone, wasn’t tall enough for any demon to jump to the edge and climb out without help.

So the spire mothers chose the eggs they liked, put them in the pit somehow, and then helped the demons out of the pit when they were old enough?

Some brutes and gargoyles moved along below, looked up, but shrugged and continued along, prowling around the rocks, pillars of stone, and giant bones that looked grown by the pit. Some imps and grems skittered by. Some incubi and succubi did the same. The floor of the pit was covered in some kind of gray dirt; the trodden remains of black egg shells and white demon bones.

On the wall, above the edge where David and the ladies stood, a slab of bone cut across, tall and wide, almost like a mural. And runes were written on it in amber. The ancient language.

“You didn’t take me here to show off your hatching pit,” David said. “You want me to read that.”

Azailia chuckled and tapped her claws together, all four hands. “If you would be so kind?”

Kind. Azailia had been kind, nothing but kind. Something was definitely up. She was trying to get on his good side, so he’d read ancient runes for her.

“The bowels of the Grave Valley breeds the swarm of the graveyard.”

Azailia smiled in approved. The spire mothers shivered and smiled too, much bigger, scarier smiles.

“Good, good,” Azailia said, and motioned for him to come back the way they came.

“And if I hadn’t read it, or couldn’t read it?”

“I’d have probably eaten you.”

Okay, so, nice, but not that nice.

The bottom of the spire was dark. All flesh and bone, no amber veins, and thousands of remnants. He covered his ears, but their screams were relentless, and their desperate cries punched through his skin into his skull, sometimes with words. ‘Help’, ‘kill’, ‘me’, a mesh of noises that made his empty stomach churn. Just when he thought he’d gotten used to remnants, Hell threw him a new curve: thousands of them jammed so close together they looked like living wallpaper.

“Come,” Azailia said, marching across the flesh floor. They did. Acelina had stayed with the spire mothers, and Timaeus was probably still enjoying his orgy, so David and the girls followed the spire ruler, while Silvain and his demons followed in the back. Laoko walked beside Azailia, and occasionally glanced back and smiled at David.

Were they gonna try and recruit him into a cult? It felt suspiciously like that.

The tunnel had the same shape as the tunnel leading to the hatching pits, almost circular, covered in flesh and bone, but this tunnel was dark and drowning in remnants. Azailia didn’t slow down, used her four sets of claws, and effortlessly ripped apart remnants in her path. Any that reached out from the ceiling lost their heads. Any on the floor where she walked imploded under her weight.

They came to a door, wide, black, with an endless flow of blood dripping down its face. Skulls. The wide double door was covered in black skulls, of all shapes and sizes. A skull in the center of the door dwarfed them all, but its shape was beyond alien. It didn’t look like the weird eldritch monsters from the canyon, and more like something that’d come out of a twisted dream of demons that defied reason, coming to kill you in your nightmares. Horns coming out of weird places and in strange shapes. Eye sockets in weird places, and an odd number, too.

Azailia’s horn pulsed amber, the eyes of the door pulsed amber in kind, and she pushed the titanic doors open. Heavy, sliding, grinding metal on the flesh floor cut up muscle and splattered the demon’s feet in fresh gore.

A colossal room awaited, and David covered his eyes against new sources of light. Hanging skull braziers lit the cavern, three of them, each titanic in proportion. A tetrad could fit in one of those skulls, and the fires inside burned as bright as a bonfire. More than enough light for the giant room big enough to hold a small army.

“Come,” Azailia said. She stepped in, the group followed, and Silvain closed the doors behind them.

There was a cathedral.

David gulped and glanced back at the girls. It wasn’t unlike the cathedral they found the Cainite Greg in, something built into the cavern wall, but it made Greg’s cathedral look like a hovel.

“How the fuck?” David asked, gesturing to the giant walls made of black metal and skull carvings. No, not skull carvings. Black metal didn’t have pores, or other subtle textures only bone had. And the closer he got to the colossal wall, the more his stomach sank into his guts. The wall was made of skulls, real skulls, charred black. Not just skulls, but other bones between and behind them, holding together a structure that looked more like a castle than a cathedral.

The floor was black bones. The walls were black bones. Not a single remnant grew nearby, and the silence was deafening.

“Come, unmarked. I will only allow you within the cathedral.”

Jes snarled. “I don’t—”

“Do not worry for the boy,” Laoko said. “This place is sacred.”

Sacred, right. Sacred didn’t mean ‘no violence allowed’ to a demon. If anything, it probably encouraged it. Would there be a giant bowl inside, meant for people to be sacrificed into?

He sucked in a breath and followed Azailia. If it weren’t for the rider and the angels on their ass, David would have dropped Acelina off at the border and run back into the fog. But they needed help, and Laoko was confident Azailia would give it to them. So he sucked down his fear and walked with Azailia up to the colossal wall of black skulls. Thousands. Millions.

Azailia’s extra horn glowed, and the double doors in front of her let out a loud, angry click, angry at her for disturbing their hundreds of years of slumber. She grinned at David and pushed the doors open, each slab a giant wall of black bones that creaked and ground against the bone floor.

He followed her in, and she closed the doors, locking him inside the scariest building he’d yet to see in Hell. It truly was a cathedral, an interior that would have looked like a sophisticated, royal hall, complete with giant pillars and a stage and pulpit, it not for all the bone. Small fire pits dug into the bone floor held tiny, dancing flames, the inside of the cathedral far darker than the outside. But the pulpit in the back of the cathedral was titanic and made even Azailia look small the closer they approached.

“What is this place?” he asked. He glanced back. Right, he was alone with the spire ruler. No Jes. No Dao. No Caera.

He didn’t like not having Caera near.

“Lucifer supposedly created the spires when he was cast down from Heaven,” she said, and stepped up onto the stage and behind the pulpit. She wasn’t tall enough to use it, and she had to reach up and grab a book from its surface. “These depths are ... well, they are used when a new spire ruler makes her claim, but I will not share the details. You understand.”

He forced himself to nod.

“Lucifer created the spires,” she continued, “and the spires give birth to demons. But the spires did more than that. There is a connection between the spires, the Old Ones, and Hell herself. A mystery that plagues all demonkind.”

“You sure? I think most demons don’t really care.”

Comment not successful. She glared at him, and he shut up.

Sighing, she sat on the edge of the stage, tail slowly swaying behind her, and she looked at the book in her hands.

“When Laoko arrived with you, I was surprised, to say the least. My sweet sister was content to enjoy her solitude, away from me, away from Zelandariel, but if she felt it important to bring you to me, I have to respect the gravity of the situation.” She ran a claw along the weird book’s cover. “I hear whispers from wandering demons, and even from the little grems and imps, of what the unmarked can do. Stories of destroyed regions. Stories of cults, enslaved. Stories of powerful auras.”

Talk? Don’t talk? He couldn’t tell. When in doubt, shut up.

“The unmarked are dangerous. Angels could defeat us in war, but they respect the purpose of Hell and have no need for war, usually. The rider is a mad dog, chasing whatever his nose finds; why that is now the unmarked, I do not know. But neither of these forces are ... innocuous as an unmarked soul, someone who belongs in Heaven but is simply misplaced. And after what happened in Death’s Grip, I am forced to take your presence seriously.”

“You barely reacted when you saw me come in with Laoko.”

Azailia eyed him. Yeah, he shouldn’t have said anything. You never interrupt a dictator giving a speech.

“Lucifer wrote this book, supposedly,” she said, and she ran her claws down its cover of tightly compressed little black bones. A single skull sat on the cover, engraved into it, and amber glowed from its orifices. “The archangels and perhaps the Old Ones wrote in the ancient language. We do not know why, but they did. They weaved Hell herself to craft their runes, and if someone can read them, then that is of great interest to me. So you will read for me, unmarked, and perhaps we can form a strange alliance, you and I.” She opened the book.

Light sucked out of the room. David spun around. No, the fires were still burning, but the shadowy flicker in the corner of his eyes told him the room was empty, void of light, that the light he could see wasn’t really there.

He looked at the book. Black pages with amber runes. How the fuck did someone put amber, literal encasements of Hell’s lava, onto thin pages? He stepped closer, and Azailia waited with the book open, her eyes on him.

“Read for me, unmarked.” She grinned at him, Laoko’s grin, just a little more evil, and she turned the book right side-up for him.

He gulped. “The Grave Valley. Lucifer. Astaroth. They’re, um, they look like titles.” The flowing lines danced in his mind, and in the dead silence of the bone cathedral, he could hear their music. Quiet, so quiet he wouldn’t have been able to hear it a month ago when he was still learning. But it was there.

Her eyes widened, her smile grew, and she turned the page.

“This child of mine, Astaroth, they shall rule the Grave Valley and all within.” Next page. “I have wrought my will upon my kin, and have blessed this land with the mist of the lamenting.” Next page. “In this valley, this echo of the surface’s grief, Astaroth’s brood fight amongst themselves. Only the strong survive. The children of Astaroth will grow, become his greatest soldiers, and bring war to Heaven’s Gates.” Next page. “Rise, children of my first. Rise. Obey. I shall rip the fire asunder, and reclaim the Heavens.”

Azailia shivered, head to toe to tail, turned the book back to herself, and teased her claws down the amber runes.

“A sermon?” she asked.

He risked answering. “It sounds like it.”

“Lucifer created the spire, molded the land into the Grave Valley, and the children of the Old Ones were born. The first soldiers.”

The first soldiers were fucking huge then, because Vinicius had been a titan who’d have made Azailia look small.

“This place,” she said, gesturing around, “was a place of worship, and of sacrifice. That much is clear by its construction. But I did not realize Lucifer themself delivered a sermon here. No Old One could fit in this cathedral. What little is known of the original nine says they were beyond colossal.”

David opened his mouth, but stopped himself. The fact they were reading a book written literally by the devil was a giant red flag saying he probably shouldn’t do this. But circumstances had forced his hand, and if he wanted to get out of this alive, did he even have a choice?

She turned the book back at him, and waited, evil smile on full display.

“Come, children of Hell and Astaroth, crafted by my hand. Children of the Great Tower. Children of sin. Come, my agents of justice. Prepare for war.”

Azailia sucked in a breath, shivered again, and ran a hand down her chest, over the silk draped over her nipple, down her waist, and down her naked pelvis and thigh. If he didn’t know any better, he’d have thought she’d just cum.

Next page.

“The nine spires are my bastion. My children will flood the world. My children will pour over the Heavens, and then the Earth. The nine islands will bow to me. The surface will bow to me. All will be mine, and my children will feed well. Vengeance will be wrought, my kin will be ash, and the creator of all will watch in terror, powerless, as I make this Great Tower kneel.” Holy shit, Lucifer had actually planned to take over the surface world, too. Every word David read out loud grew louder, but he wasn’t making his voice louder. The cathedral was. “Rise, Astaroth. Rise.”

They both froze and waited in silence. Nothing happened, thank god.