Chapter 70

~~Day 94~~

~~David~~

In the throne room, everyone gathered. David waited in his armor, staff in hand, ass on the throne, legs dangling. Laoko grinned at him, and he decided to stand instead. Better that than looking like a child sitting on the countertop while Mom grabbed a snack.

All his girls arrived, Septima too, along with some of her honor guard, big brutes wearing their armor like Septima. Tacharius and Zabulon showed up, but they left Zazee and the three betrayers behind. Good. Where they were going, it was better they didn’t come.

Domnius squatted nearby, wearing the biggest grin David had ever seen, but the little guy said nothing, content to watch and wait.

“As you all know,” David said, “I’m not sticking around. I have to keep moving, and that means leaving the Scar.”

Tacharius stepped up. “That means—”

Septima stood up on her hind legs and glared down at the man. He shut up quick. Standing humanoid style, Septima was almost nine feet tall, bigger than Caera. Scary, especially when combined with the nigh full suit of armor.

David smiled. “That means I need to leave, and while I’m gone, I need a steward. I’ll be back, eventually. I didn’t start this civil war just to abandon the Scar. The Grave Valley will be a problem, and I’ll deal with that before I leave. In the meantime, we need a spire ruler.” Again, Tacharius opened his mouth, but David waved a hand. “It’s Septima.”

The room went silent. Everyone looked Septima’s way, and the tiger slowly tilted her head as she eyed David, looking for words and finding none. She took off her helmet, still standing on her hind legs, hooked it under her arm, and glared at David with an expression he couldn’t read. Anger? Astonishment?

“Why her?” Zabulon asked, voice cutting through the void.

“Because,” David said, “Septima is the only one with a head on her shoulders for large-scale issues. Don’t get me wrong, Zab. You and Tacharius have been indispensable, and I’m sure Septima will appreciate your input. But she knows how to run a province. You don’t.”

Septima slammed her tail against the ground, but not as hard as she probably could have.

“I have not accepted the title yet, unmarked. And I ... do not know if I can even survive the ritual.”

“You can,” Laoko said, nodding to the tiger near her. “It will be painful, but you will survive. The volas? They would break.”

“Why not a tetrad then?” Tacharius asked, gesturing to Laoko. “It’s always a tetrad who rules a spire, since all the children of the Old Ones died.”

But Laoko shook her head. “I will not leave David’s side.”

Tacharius squinted up at her, but Laoko didn’t even bother to hold eye contact. So Tacharius gestured to Acelina instead, standing nearby with the large goort egg held against her breastplate.

“What about a zotiva?” he asked. “She—”

“I am not staying either,” Acelina said. “I remain at David’s side.”

David sighed with relief and smiled at the two gigantic women. Laoko smiled back subtly. Acelina maybe smiled?

“I picked Septima,” David said. “She can say no, but the reason I picked her is that she’s smart and committed to the province. She’ll say yes because she knows it’s the best option.” Confident in his choice, he gestured to Septima with his staff. “Unless you know of someone you think can handle the ritual, and would make a good ruler? Got any tetrads lying around?”

Septima growled, but it shifted into a sigh. “No. If there are tetrads in the Scar, they hide and indulge in their broods, content to rule their small groups instead.”

David hadn’t even considered that. Tetrads, hiding? Well, there was Caera’s old friend Renato, whose armor and axe Acelina now wore. He’d done the same thing, hung out deep in Death’s Grip’s caves, and enjoyed his own troupe of demons, before the Cainites got him.

“Septima knows the Scar better than anyone,” David said. “She’s patrolled the entire province, end to end, for years.”

The tregeera sighed. “Decades.”

“Decades.” Nodding, David walked toward the throne room exit, and gestured for everyone to follow him. “We don’t have time to argue about this like a committee. This is what’s happening. So let’s go.”

Sighing, the two incubi followed, not happy, like a couple of university students the RA had to slap on the wrist for sneaking in a Bunsen burner to try and fry a frozen turkey in a giant pot of oil in the middle of the dorm room. Yes, university students were that stupid.

Without asking, Moriah and Tsila scooped him up, and descended through the center hole in the spire, down and down into the depths below. Everyone followed, jumping to lower floors, or gliding if they had wings. It was a long way down, and on each floor, several demons stopped to watch the group. With David in his armor and two angels holding his shoulders and arms, lowering him like he was some sort of entity brought from on high, it was definitely a sight.

The bottom floor was grotesque. Dark, no demons, and walls covered in remnants. The floor, too, all remnants, all screaming and crying.

Caera cut a swath through them, and the other girls followed suit. David looked away. It was a good thing, killing remnants, lowering their numbers so they’d get through their torture faster. But he couldn’t stomach watching it, let alone doing it.

“Like I said,” Jeskura said. “The door is open.”

She was right. Everyone stared at the open door, a slab of metal and bone, split down the middle and opened on both sides.

David sucked in a breath and stepped through it into the hallway, again, filled with remnants. No one else did. He turned and tilted his head.

“Well? Coming?”

Laoko took a breath and came first. “This is an unholy place, David. Lucifer walked within this room.”

“Lucifer?” he asked. “Archangel the size of Tokyo?”

“Yes. They forged the spires, wrote the word of God, corrupted it, and started the First War.”

“Yes,” Caera said, following next. “How they, he, it, fit into a spire, I can’t imagine. But I read things about the archangels changing their bodies as fluidly as thought.” On all fours, she took a single step into the hallway, and stepped back. “You sure you want us in there?”

“Lucifer’s been locked in a cell for billions of years,” he said, “if they’re, he, whatever, is even still alive. I don’t care if he thinks of this place as unholy or whatever.” He gestured forward with his staff, toward the endless remnants coating every surface of the bone tunnel. “A little help, please?”

Everyone hesitated. Moriah did not. She marched in, sword out, and cut a path through the remnants. Again, David looked away, but followed in the blood trail. It wasn’t long before everyone else followed, too.

They didn’t know what to expect. David did. The next door was open, too, and a dark, colossal room awaited them. Hanging braziers lit the floor of charred bones, the cavern walls, and as they walked through the room, the awaiting walls of the castle of bone. An enormous castle, with empty windows, multiple floors, and skulls.

If a building could ever be haunted, it’d be this building. Its walls reached the cavern’s ceiling, almost as if the building itself were carved out of stone, instead of built. But it had been built. And every bone under the feet was a bone put there by Lucifer.

David glanced back. Everyone looked anxious, even Laoko, staring up and around at the nigh endless display of death. Brutes, decked in full armor, looked anxious too, glancing down at the bones shifting under their feet. Daoka stayed close to Acelina’s side, and the Las practically hugged the spire mother’s thighs. They were scared.

David was scared, too. He didn’t have Azailia to guide him, this time. There was no spire ruler at all. He had no fucking clue what was going to happen.

“Laoko,” he said, stepping up to the open door of the bone castle. “Know any details about the ritual?”

“No. I have never entered the Halls of Lucifer. But Azailia spoke of the ritual, loosely. She said it was a trial she accepted, and endured.”

“Lovely,” Septima said. She got on all fours beside David, took a deep breath and joined him stepping through the front door into the bone castle.

It was identical to the Grave Valley’s. The inside of a giant cathedral, complete with balconies above, colossal and grand, held up by titanic pillars of small bones. In the center, a nave, no pews, but an obvious aisle that led up to a huge pulpit too big for even a tetrad. Black skull braziers dangled from chains, fire burning behind their eyes. And nothing but silence awaited them.

The demons spread out, half exploring, half staying near the door in case they had to run. He didn’t blame them. Last time he was in the ‘Halls of Lucifer’, he’d been scared shitless, and it’d only gotten worse when he’d touched the book and imprinted an entire ancient language onto his brain.

He sucked in a breath and walked to the pulpit taller than him. “Laoko. Grab the book from the top of this for me, would you?”

The tetrad glanced around a few times before following him, posture forward slightly like she was ready to bolt if needed. But nothing happened as she stepped around the pillars, through the empty nave, past the hanging braziers, along the huge, empty cathedral, and toward the pulpit. Only the sound of her hooves crunching on charred bones filled the silence, every demon borderline holding their breath.

She wasn’t big enough for the pulpit, either. Maybe a child of the Old Ones would have fit better behind it, but not her. She scooped the enormous, scary book from the pulpit and handed it to David. The cover flinched in his grip, and the black skull embossment stared at him with glowing, amber eyes. It wasn’t locked.

Nodding, he handed Septima the book, and she stood up on her hind legs as she took it.

“What do I do with this?” she asked.

“I don’t know. Last book I saw had some interesting shit in it, a sermon from Lucifer about going to war. Whoever rules the spire is supposed to devote their existence to that purpose, and all demons born inside the spires are to, as well.” He shrugged. “But we’re not going to do that.”

Septima stared at the skull-embossed cover, took a shaky breath, and opened it. From the page of runes only David could read, an amber horn of light and illusion floated above the page. Anyone else would have dropped the book in surprise. Septima held onto it and stared through the face of her helmet into the orange glow. A horn literally floated in the air in front of her, like some sort of amber hologram.

“Be careful,” Laoko said. “If you touch that horn, Septima, it will give you power over the spire. It will permanently mark you as spire ruler.”

Septima nodded and slowly reached for the glowing horn. Confident. But Laoko grabbed her shoulder, stopped her, and pulled off the tiger’s helmet.

“Oh,” Septima said. “I ... Yes, that makes sense.” It had no forehead slot for a horn.

Laoko chuckled and set the helmet aside. Latia grabbed it, put it on, and wandered around with her La sisters, suddenly all the braver and ready to explore the enormous, scary bone cathedral. And from the look on Caera’s face, her one eye wandering over the sights, she wanted to join them on the expedition. It didn’t get more historical than this.

“Shhh,” Latia said, and her sisters shushed each other as they explored the shadows.

Septima didn’t even look their way, eyes locked onto the glowing book and the horn awaiting her touch.

“Tarkissa,” Septima said, “made the Scar ... work. Our spire births almost nothing but volas and imps and grems. He worked hard to create a way for us to exist, to keep our neighbors Khazeer and Azailia happy. And now that responsibility falls to me, to drown those two provinces in indulgence so they leave us be.”

David shook his head. “It won’t be like that.”

She sighed and shook her head. “I am not against that approach. I ... do not want to do as Khazeer and Azailia do, constantly fighting among their own to stay in charge, and fight other provinces in fruitless battles.”

“Oh. I kinda got the impression you’d want to fight them off and make the Scar more—”

She lowered the book, but didn’t let it go. “No. The Scar will never have the military obsession of the Red Pits or Navameere Fields. It will never have the tribal strength and violence of the Grave Valley or Death’s Grip. It will forever be a den of indulgence. But ... I would see it fight to secure its borders. I would like to see it able to defend itself, at least.”

David shrugged. “Sounds reasonable.”

“Will you ... aid me in that pursuit?”

He tilted his head. “Well, yeah. You’ll be my steward, and I won’t ever be able to really rule the spire, even when I return. You got plans you want to enact? S’long as they don’t interfere with mine, I don’t see an issue.” They’d already talked about what David wanted: to stop treating souls like fodder. And as long as Septima treated the volas, and imps and grems well, he had no problems with however else she ran the province.

Maybe this delay, this sudden talk about policy and requesting help, was Septima postponing the choice? Pretty massive change, becoming a spire ruler. And supposedly pretty painful, too. Hey, look at him, reading people’s emotions. Mia would be proud.

“You’ll be a good ruler,” he said. “Won’t she, Tacharius?”

The incubus rolled his eyes. “Yes, I suppose. She’s a killjoy, but she kept things running, kept the Dens running, despite Tarkissa’s absurd requests.”

“Yes,” Zabulon said. “If I can continue to run my section of the Floor, then I don’t see the issue.”

“Domnius?” David asked. “How about you? What would you ask of Septima?”

Everyone raised an eyebrow before looking back at the little guy, standing closest to the door. He looked afraid of the building, like it might crush him at any moment, or swallow him with its ancient gravitas. Slowly, he came closer, peeking up and around at the hanging braziers. It was the first time he’d ever been in an important place. And from the look he gave David with his single eye, it was the first time anyone had ever asked him for his opinion on something.

“Imps and grems get bullied,” he said. “All the time. Bullied. Eaten.”

David glared up at Septima, and she glared back at him, but she didn’t last, eyes eventually looking to Domnius.

“I will make sure the Scar knows the imps and grems are not to be hurt or eaten.”

Nodding, David looked past her to Domnius. “After what happened yesterday, most of the Scar is probably scared of you now, Domnius. You’ve got a lot of power in your hands. Treat it with care.”