The Pleasures of Hell
Copyright© 2023 by Novus Animus
Chapter 85
Fantasy Sex Story: Chapter 85 - An epic fantasy adventure through Hell, with demons and angels, and a couple humans with targets painted on their back. David and Mia didn’t want to be a part of this, but their unexpected first deaths land them in the middle of events grand and beyond knowing. Why are they in Hell in the first place? Why don’t they have the mark of the Beast, like other souls do? And why does everyone either want them, or want them dead?
Caution: This Fantasy Sex Story contains strong sexual content, including Ma/Fa Mult Consensual Reluctant Heterosexual Fiction High Fantasy Paranormal Demons MaleDom FemaleDom Spanking Gang Bang Group Sex Harem Orgy Anal Sex Double Penetration First Lactation Oral Sex Tit-Fucking Big Breasts Size
~~Day 133~~
~~Mia~~
They ducked back around the curve of the path. To their left, a nigh-bottomless canyon. To their right, the cave wall. Beneath their feet, a path only a few meters wide.
The rock wall on their right merged into the side and shadow of a colossal stairway. Very wide, and far as Mia’s sixth sense could tell, it went all the way up to the surface, and all the way down, down and down, beyond the reach of her senses. Problem: the stairway was covered in betrayers coming and going. Thousands of them. More. And most of them were going up, probably to deal with the insanity Mia and her crew had caused by releasing Belor.
They hid in the stairway’s shadow, the colossal structure sitting five or six meters above the winding walls of rock of the descending canyon wall.
“Plan,” Mia whispered. “We need a plan. We winged it yesterday. Not doing that again.”
“Agreed,” Noah said. “That yesterday’s plan worked at all is ... insane.”
Romakus shrugged. “When in Rome.”
Belor tilted his head, leaning against the wall for support. “Yes?”
Romakus looked up at his boss. “When in Rome...”
“Yes?”
The old tyrant’s old subordinate rolled his eyes before devolving into a quiet chuckle. “Nevermind. See anything other than betrayers up ahead?”
Vinicius shook his head.
Adron wasn’t satisfied. The vrat crept forward, suddenly going absolutely silent, right down to the talon. Adron wore a few pieces of meera metal, enough to cover his organs and parts of his limbs, but no demon wore boots of any kind. It made it easy for the sneaky vrat to prowl forward, crouching down and moving on all fours like Kas might.
Everyone stared as Adron merged with the shadows. It was practically magic, the way his dark red body pressed against the stone wall, every muscle blending into the crevices. His feet’s claws didn’t make a sound, each navigating the rocky path with all the noise of a hunting owl.
Adron turned, winked — or blinked — and stuck his head out. No one moved a muscle as Adron did something he was apparently very gifted at: reconnaissance. The demon was an expert at stealth? Was he even breathing?
The group gave him a few minutes, and the sneaky vrat returned, nodding, eyebrows furrowed.
“It’s down,” he said. Everyone stared, waiting. “The runes are down. Most of the betrayers are humming that song, but a few are talking. Hard to make out what they said. I had to read some lips.”
“You can read lips?” Mia whispered.
Adron grinned, gave his tail a little flick, and squatted in front of the crew. “A little. And I spotted large scratch marks on the stairs. Seemed recent. If Carius was right, and Thracius dragged those stones with big black chains, they probably dragged them down here.”
Belor nodded. “Devious little vratorin, aren’t you?”
“I am.”
Kas gestured to the curved wall keeping them out of sight of Molech’s army. “Then we head down.”
“Down how?” Yosepha asked. “Here?” She gestured to the canyon, and the canyon wall beneath them. It had its own steps, but each was a good ten-meter drop.
Noah nodded. “Better than risking our lives fighting the betrayers.”
“I could handle them,” Mia said. “But it’s a gamble. And ... I don’t want to kill them.”
“Agreed,” Azreal said.
Julisa, Romakus, and Vin grunted. They wanted violence. But Belor eyed Mia with a look she recognized from the mirror. He was analyzing her.
“And when we have to run to escape?” Romakus added. “I’m all for sneaking around, but climbing back up the canyon wall sounds problematic. And I don’t want to run around in that darkness”—he gestured down at the depths—”like a headless chicken.”
Mia raised a hand. “I can make stairs and stuff, if I have to. It’s just ... we have to be close to Molech. He might be able to hear my music, even a quiet tune.”
Vinicius stepped around Adron to the head of the group and waited. “We must fight.”
“That’s a lot of betrayers, Vin,” Mia said. “Someone could die.”
“People die.”
“Not here they don’t! They don’t just die. They’re killed. I don’t want anyone in our group getting killed, okay?”
Vin turned and faced her, glaring down at her and flexing his claws in the air at his sides. “We are trying to save the Great Tower. You worry about every demon, angel, and soul, when all will die if we fail.”
“I get that, but—”
“Vinicius,” Noah said, grinding his teeth, “makes a valid point, Mia. We have to get those runes, unlock them in your mind, and escape. We must do it quickly, and every life is expendable. You are very close to the goal. Can you afford to hesitate now?”
She glared at the angel, spun, and glared at Azreal too, knowing full well the asshole would be giving her the same look Noah had. He was.
“Your lives are not expendable!” Yelling and whispering at the same time was not easy, and she glared at each angel until her eyes hurt. “And it doesn’t matter. That’s thousands of betrayers, close to us, on uneven terrain. We’d get swarmed, and I’d have to lean into loud music just to keep myself alive. Even if I didn’t summon the alien, Molech would definitely hear it. So we’re going with stealth, and that’s that!”
In case anyone had the nerve to argue, she gave each of them another glare. This wasn’t a negotiation. She wasn’t going to lose people because they were either suicidal, or suicidally addicted to violence.
“I’m with Mia,” Belor said, raising a hand. “I’d like to survive this. I have plans to pursue, after all.”
She rolled her eyes, but gestured back to Belor as she faced everyone else. “This isn’t a suicide mission. This is a reconnaissance mission. So, we’re going down, and we’re avoiding the stairway of doom. Okay?”
Vinicius grumbled, a little too loudly, and she glared daggers at him. Slowly, the titan took a deep breath, calmed down, and nodded.
Belor looked at Vin, tilting his head slowly, but whatever was going on in his mind, he didn’t wear it on his face.
“Then let’s get going,” Julisa said. She started down the canyon wall and dragged her many claws down the rock face the whole way. Mostly quiet, but not perfect.
Vin did the same, making more noise, but considering his side, it was still quiet. Kas was quieter. Romakus used his wings. Adron somehow made less sound than Romakus as he half climbed, half pounced his way down the canyon. Yosepha followed, and Cerberus, excited to do some jumping, went before Mia did. Thankfully Cerb got the point of the game and didn’t so much as growl.
Which left Mia, with Azreal and Noah, and Belor.
“Guys,” she said. “Belor might need help. Can you...”
Noah and Azreal glared at her. Outright glared at her. Usually they just looked at her intensely, as if they could burn their surly dispositions into her soul. But now they both wore their anger on their faces.
“You want us to carry Belor,” Noah said.
“Yeah. I mean ... Belor?”
Belor chuckled as he looked down at the two men. “I have been to the depths before. I still have advice to give. Unless you think you can risk navigating the canyon without me, angels.”
Both angel men clenched their jaws, flew up, grabbed Belor by the hands, and guided him down to the next ridge below while Yosepha flew up to get Mia. Cerb almost jumped up the wall to follow her until Mia waved a hand down.
They repeated the process. Again. And again. Mia was almost tempted to make a slide, carve it into the canyon wall, and just slide down. Alas, time for stealth mode, both for sound and for her music.
“Stop,” Belor said. “I didn’t go deeper than this. We should take this path.”
They’d gone down maybe a kilometer, and it’d taken a while. The distant humming had vanished, and when Adron peeked around the rock wall again, he shook his head.
“Stairway’s gone. The path we took down wasn’t straight.”
Mia gestured around. “It’s a canyon. Nothing’s straight.”
Belor nodded along the path, the lip of stone sticking out from the canyon edge. “Just go. Trust me. You’ll see.”
Mia squinted back at the old tyrant, sighed, and went, the group following the pathway sticking out from the canyon wall, deep in Mother Hell. It wasn’t long before the plan was clear: the path cut near the stairway, but it followed the stairway along its side, in a ravine buried in shadow.
“You used this path before?” Mia asked.
Belor nodded. “Long, long ago, when I first explored this place. Before I was ever spire ruler. Before I was...” Like someone had dinged a tuning fork in his mind, Belor looked up, eyes drifting half closed as he dug through old memories. “Before I was who I am.”
“And you remember it?” Vinicius asked, clearly not convinced.
“Did you think I spent my whole life as spire ruler, Vinny? I was young, once. No, I can’t remember, not directly, but I remember remembering. Memory, of a memory, of a memory.”
For just a teeny-tiny second, Mia almost wanted to shed a tear. How could Belor sneak in poetry so easily?
“Better question,” Romakus said. “Do we leave Belor here, kill him, now that we know the path, or take his ass with us?”
Belor held up a hand. “Option three, if you don’t mind.”
Mia smiled back at him. “We’re not killing Belor if we can help it, okay? Because Belor”—she pointed back at the titan—”understands that saving the Great Tower is more important than his goals of conquest, right?”
“Oh, most certainly.” He touched his chest and half-bowed.
“And you understand if you try to betray me or give me to Molech, I’ll not only drown this whole canyon in lava, but you’ll have doomed everyone to die anyway, right? Either way, you’re dead.”
Belor tilted his head. “You can do that?”
Sighing, Mia summoned up a bad memory, marched up to Belor, and glared up at him, a five-foot girl with a hellhound at her side in a staring match with a twelve-foot titan.
“The first time I really used my powers for a fight, really really used them, I summoned a firestorm tornado that’s probably still burning in Death’s Grip. I summoned red lightning that tore the ground apart. I bathed the area in hellfire. Hundreds of angels and thousands of demons died. Demons I summoned with a spire aura I created. And I’ve only gotten better, Belor. The only reason we’re sneaking along is because I don’t want to kill, and if I play music like that, the alien will find us. But that doesn’t mean I won’t use it if you put me in a lose-lose scenario. Got it?”
Belor put up both hands, finding the strength to keep from toppling over.
“I am many things, oh rescuer mine, but I am no fool. If Romakus says an alien threat is coming to kill us all, and I’m looking an unmarked soul in the eyes for the first time in my long life, I have little choice but to believe.” He grinned, nodding. “You’re in charge, Mia.”
She matched his nod, turned, suppressed the desire to smile, and joined the others at the head of the group.
“Think we can sneak past?”
Adron nodded. “The angels will need to stay in the back and keep low. Keep to the wall. Stay in the shadow. Belor—”
“I can handle it,” Belor said. He put his weight on his palm again, leaning against the canyon wall, and tugged his huge wings snug to his back.
Yosepha looked up at Belor as she joined him. “Lean on me, old monster. I’ll hide in your shadow and keep you from falling.”
Belor’s grin was subtle but relentless, and he aimed it down at the angel now at his side. “How kind.”
“That’s my girl, boss,” Romakus said, glaring back at him. “No touching.”
Belor put up his hands again. “No touching.”
Mia chuckled. Damn it, don’t laugh at his jokes.
The group crept out around the curve of the canyon and into sight of the stairway. Belor was right. The pathway was narrow, uneven, and sized for a couple of hobbits sneaking their way into Mordor, not for a group of large angels and huge demons. But the scale of the canyon was insane, the stairway colossal, and the group disappeared into the shadow of the elevated stairway as the rocky path pressed up against its side even more than before.
Thousands of betrayers walked by, some wearing meera metal armor and weapons custom-fitted for their size. Plenty were emaciated, naked, and humming, while the ones in armor chatted.
“Seal is broken,” one said.
“The punished are killing each other,” another said.
“—coming here,” another said.
Which meant the betrayers knew someone had freed Belor and were probably coming to get the stones. Which meant, much as Mia hated it, they’d probably have to fight.
But everyone knew how this would go. They’d sneak their way into some underground cave or building, find the stones, and have to fight an army of betrayers, and maybe Molech himself. Mia would use the music, but sparingly, and they’d escape. If things got nasty, she’d play a really loud song, the aliens would show up, and Molech would be forced to fight them; based on the last encounter, the aliens wanted to fight anyone who wielded the music. Because they were silence incarnate.
Mia shivered and rubbed her arms, earning a couple nudges of Cerb’s head against her legs.
“Shhh,” she whispered, finger to her lips.
Kas clicked once, and Adron mirrored the shh. Enough information for Cerb to understand, especially serious-head, who looked up at the giant wall beside them, and the stairs and fire braziers that sat upon it. Not a growl.
The cave wasn’t natural, not completely. How much had been grown by Hell or carved by Molech’s music, Mia had no way to tell. The Old Ones could play and make some big stuff happen, but not as big as Hell herself. Tear open a giant canyon across multiple kilometers? Mia could do that, with Hell’s help, but she had no idea if the Old Ones could. But would they even need to, to escape this underground prison? There was something holding the Old Ones down, had been since they’d lost the First War, and it wasn’t the terrain.
But there was no denying someone had taken this giant cave and carved it, smoothed out the walls, built colossal pillars that reached the ceiling high above, and deep down into the shadow beyond her sight. And the deeper they followed the stairway, the more pillars they found, each as wide and tall as a skyscraper.
It wasn’t just the cave wielding the insane scale. Where the fuck did Molech get this many betrayers? Maybe he had a little more foresight than his kin, but the army Mia and the crew snuck past seemed unending. Thankfully, most of them were emaciated, not wearing armor, with bones showing through their thin skin and rags. If they even had rags. But there were enough armed betrayers in good health that getting swarmed was too real a possibility. Better to hide.
Deeper, and deeper. The hanging skull braziers lit the way, massive chains that hooked on and dangled from the pillars. The skulls smiled, mouths open wide to reveal the flames within.
And then they found flat ground, and the skull piles. Déjà vu. Mia shivered again, rubbing her arms as the stairs finally reached ground, and led into a cave full of giant skull piles. Each pile was surrounded by kneeling betrayers, doing their best to keep the skulls on top of each other, failing, and trying again. How they’d managed to get some piles as tall as they’d had was a mystery.
The betrayers on the stairway thinned out. They’d broken off onto paths in the cave and canyon walls, and Mia and the crew had had to sneak through openings in the patrols. This wasn’t like Asmodeus’s cave, where the betrayers had ignored them. This was a sneaking mission, and the betrayers were trying to find and capture them.
Scuff marks on the ground marked the way, and the crew followed from a distance. Watching someone as big as Vin or as exhausted as Belor sneak around was oddly hilarious, but the shadows were monstrous and dark, easily swallowing them. Even the angels and their white wings disappeared cleanly.
This was a fucking horror movie. The group was dead silent, even Cerb, with the only noise the constant humming of the prostrated betrayers. They looked little better than remnants, always close to death, and when they weren’t trying to put skulls up a hill they couldn’t climb, they put their foreheads to the dirt in front of the pile, and hummed.
There was a path between the skulls, well-trodden, with black spikes sticking up from the ground, with skull braziers lighting the way. A designated path. The crew stayed away, but Mia spotted scuff marks along the rock path, huge, like someone had dragged boulders across them. Whoever had taken stones—
Up ahead, two massive skull piles sat at the edge of the floor. If it was anything like Asmodeus’s chamber, that was a drop-off to yet another canyon; her sixth-sense confirmed, a canyon in a canyon. Between the two skull piles, a demon stood, with a hundred demons with him. A tetrad, surrounded by many demons, including a bunch of tigers, brutes, and even a couple shark dinosaurs like Kas, sarkarins. All heavy hitters.
“Thracius,” Romakus whispered.
Mia squinted. Thracius stood in front of something. Looked kind of like a scrying pool, a big metal bowl on a pile of metal skulls. But he was speaking into it.
And beside him and his entourage were three boulders. Enormous boulders, a few meters tall each, with massive chains wrapped around them. They weren’t round, though, with flat bottoms, and a flat face that reached up into a smooth point, almost like a fat, rounded pyramid. And on one face, was a giant red mark, sharp, jagged, with harsh corners. A rune.
The swirling shapes lit up in Mia’s mind. ‘Bridge’, but more than just a bridge. Defense? Retreat? All combined into one symbol. And the second stone said ‘reach’, but more than reach. Across. Attack. She couldn’t see the third.
“Good enough?” Adron whispered.
She shook her head. “No. I have to touch.”
“Difficult,” Kas said. “Attack?”
Romakus stepped in for Mia and shook his head. “You really want to fight Thracius, and all those demons?”
“The seal’s broken,” Mia said. “And he was marked, right? Maybe he’s—”
A loud, rumbling noise poured over the cave, sending vibrations up through Mia’s sandals into her teeth, and bringing down the skull piles by the dozens. White bone rolled across the cave floor like marbles. Wordlessly, the betrayers went back to work, piling skulls. Blood shot up from Thracius’s scrying pool, as if someone had set thick, crimson water to an extreme boil. Not a scrying pool, then.
“The seal matters not!” the bowl’s red blood said. The sound came out of the bowl? But it also came along the walls, a roaring bass that made even Belor sound like a schoolgirl. “All will bow to me. You will bow to me!”
Thracius shook his head, and his voice punched above the endless humming of the betrayers. “We ... we are...”
Again, the blood boiled, splashing over the rims, and the voice of a hellquake rumbled the cavern.
“Bring the unmarked to me, Thracius, and you will have the spire, as Belor once did.”
“Belor is still alive, Great Molech.”
“Perform the ritual to become spire ruler, Thracius. I will instruct you. Belor’s connection to the spire will wilt and die, and he will be powerless.”
Thracius snarled, twitched, and looked back at his little army with a flare of his wings. They were twitching, too, and rubbing at their shoulders or chests where they’d been marked by the spire seal. More than a few of them had fresh cuts on their bodies, and their limbs hung weakly. Had they slept since the seal lost its power yesterday? Or maybe tried to kill each other?
“The war is over,” Thracius said. “And punishment has been served. We must focus on this new threat, this alien threat. They are—”
“Bring the unmarked to me!” The sound filled the air as much as it rumbled the walls, and Mia heard it through the vibration in the rock like she’d pressed her ear straight into a subwoofer. “I will deal with the alien! You, Thracius, will take the spire, and the plan will resume.”
“I don’t—”
“Now!”
Just like Asmodeus and Beelzebub, Molech was a verbose monster with delusions of godhood. It was almost comforting how predictably evil and simple-minded they were.
But Thracius ... This was not what Mia had expected to find. From what Carius and Romakus had said, Thracius was going to be a problem, but from the conversation, it almost sounded like Thracius wanted to resist.
“As you wish,” Thracius said, turning.
“And Thracius,” the boiling blood said. “Kill Belor.”
Mia looked back at the old tyrant, but Belor smiled and winked at her. Excited for a fight, just like Vin.
Slowly, Thracius and the others turned and walked away from the stones and the bowl. They teetered, and some snapped and growled at each other, but Thracius turned and backhanded the loudest of the bunch, shutting them up. A hundred demons would be a tough fight under normal circumstances, but the group was a mess, struggling to stay standing. And Vin and Belor looked at them like hungry wolves looking at lambs.
But no violence was better than violence, and Mia held up a hand until Thracius’s group was gone back up the stairs. Once out of sight, Mia, Adron, and Cerb snuck forward past a couple more pillars, staying in the deep shadow away from the center path.
“Cerb,” she whispered. “Stay.” Cerb grumbled, but lowered to the ground, braced like a cat ready to pounce. “Adron, be ready to grab me if I get spotted.”
“Will do.”
She took a deep breath and stepped out toward the giant boulders. The only people around were betrayers absorbed in their jobs, piling up the skulls. The two piles near the edge had mostly collapsed, sending skulls everywhere, and each betrayer Mia walked past didn’t so much as look at her as they got back to work. If boredom could ever reach a level of torment worthy of Hell, this was it.
She sneaked toward the metal bowl a couple of meters wide and a meter deep, sitting on a pile of metal skulls that wouldn’t be going anywhere, merged and grown together. And beside it, the massive boulders.
Please work. Please work.
She touched the first. The runes in her mind lit up, and a pulse of electricity shot through the web until it reached the one she was looking at. The rune turned into a song. A lyric. Sheet music. There were no words to describe it, just that the rune was something that existed on top of the sound of existence. She might as well have been trying to think of a color she’d never seen before.
The first boulder: bridge. To connect. The second boulder: reach. To extend. The third: defy. Resist? Withstand?
Figure it out later. Get out now. She stepped away from the boulders and ... and peeked into the bowl full of blood. For a whole tenth of a second. Curiosity killed the cat. She walked away. Thracius talked to Molech with that thing. Don’t tempt fate.
She sucked in an unsteady breath and walked past the betrayers. Same as before, too busy to notice her. Touching the boulders had done nothing, played no music, made no noise. It’d activated things in her mind so she could understand them, play their tune, and that was it. Stealth mission successful? Maybe?
Back with Adron and Cerb, the three of them ducked through the heavy shadows of the bone piles and stone pillars, and joined the rest of the group.
“Mia?” Yosepha asked.
Mia smiled. “Let’s get out of here.”
Everyone traded a few surprised glances, smiled, and turned around.
“Belor,” Adron asked. “Got a way out of here?”
“Back the way we came,” Belor said. “Which probably isn’t a good idea. Molech didn’t know what happened yesterday. He knows now. That path will be crawling with betrayers, and any demons Molech has deemed worthy enough to know of his existence.” The old tyrant chuckled and gestured to the skull piles. “Which is apparently a lot of demons, since my imprisonment.”
“You said you could get us in,” Romakus said. “And you implied you could get us out. Don’t hold out on us, boss.”
Belor gestured back to the stairs. “There are many tunnels and paths that follow the stairs. I know them. I can get us up to the great forge and cathedral. After that, I do not know.”
Julisa rumbled. “We will have to fight our way through this province, no matter what, since the seal is now broken. You saw those demons in the spire.”
“Maybe,” Mia said. “Maybe not. Maybe the demons are calming down, whatever’s left of them. You saw Thracius and his group.”
Romakus shrugged and gestured to Belor. “Point us in the right direction. We’ll figure it out when we have to.”
Belor nodded. “Other side. We need to cross.”
Mia winced. “Shit.”
The crew, hiding in the shadows of the giant pillars, was on one side of the giant room, with the stone path and its braziers cutting through the center before connecting to the massive stairway they’d left behind. And Belor was saying they needed to get to the other side. No way to do that except walk out in the open where every betrayer would see them.
Maybe they’d ignore her crew, like they had Thracius’s crew?
Mia sucked in a breath. “We have to cross, then.”
“It will lead to battle,” Kas said.
“Yeah, probably, but we don’t have a choice. So, just ... follow me. Noah, Yosepha, Azreal, can you fly up? Stay in potram, don’t summon your gear unless you need to, and blend into the shadows up higher.”
The angels grimaced but didn’t argue. Wings spread, they took to the air, staying behind the pillars and soaring high. There were plenty of harsh shadows to exploit, and they used them.
“Now,” Mia said. “We just uh ... walk without rhythm?” Shrugging, she gulped down the rock in her throat, and—
“Mia,” Adron said, grinning. “If you don’t want to be noticed, ditch the clothes.”
She glared at Adron, but her eyes fell away as she slipped her clothes off and undid her gladiator sandals. Adron was right. Most of the betrayers were naked, and none were wearing clean, beautiful red silk. Sighing, she stood naked in front of the group, spared an especially angry glare for the intrigued Belor, and stepped out onto the main path.
On her left, the pathway between the skulls and pillars that led to the blood bowl, the giant stones, and the canyon in a canyon where Molech likely waited. On her right, the same path merged with the giant stairway, but too far for any roaming betrayers to notice her as anything other than a small dot.
And, as if they belonged, the demons in her crew stepped out onto the path, too. Adron walked beside her as if he owned her, and everyone followed. Followed turned into leading the moment they realized no one was screaming bloody murder and charging at them with a giant axe. Mia looked across the long path to the distant stairs half a dozen times, but down here at the bottom of this part of the canyon, there were no betrayers coming and going. And Thracius and his group were gone by now.
Mia glanced down at the worshiping betrayers. The crew walked past them, far too close for comfort, but they had to blend in, look like they belonged. Mia’s naked leg brushed against a betrayer’s arms as the old woman grabbed several nearby skulls and pushed them back toward the pile. Whoever she was, she didn’t look up, didn’t grab Mia, did absolutely nothing but seize nearby skulls and go back to work. And when she couldn’t reach high enough to pile more, she pushed more in from the bottom, and climbed, wobbling with the weight of her own anorexic body. Mia looked away.
Without a fuss, Mia and the crew got to the other side, and disappeared into the shadow behind the pillars. Even Cerberus didn’t get anyone’s attention. The betrayers might as well have been lobotomized for how little they cared about Mia and the group.
“That went well,” Mia said.
Belor grinned. “It did.” And his dragon eyes roamed her naked body again.
She glared at him and summoned her potram rune. What little red light it took to reform the skimpy clothes and her sandals blended in with the dancing flames of the braziers. No one noticed. Unfortunately, her potram rune made her look like an erotic dancer, and Belor made no attempt to hide how his eyes slid up and down her now half-naked body. She’d probably have been better off staying full naked.
“Now we climb,” Belor said, gesturing up at the rock ledges. “Stay in the shadow of the stairs. But there are no tunnels that lead to the surface, as far as I found in my searches. We will reach the great forge at the top of the great stairway, and above that, the cathedral.”
Mia raised a finger. “I thought the cathedral was destroyed by the angels in the Spires War? Or, I mean, whatever building it was back then.” Why was Belor even using the word cathedral? What word was it, two thousand years ago? The Estian language was weird.
“I assume it regrew,” he said. “Angels?”
Azreal descended from the darkness above and hovered a few inches above the ground.
“It did.”