The Pleasures of Hell 01.011

"The rider," she whispered, "is... no one knows."

"No one knows? You said he's shown up before."

"He has, but he's just a ghost story. A human-shaped person, probably a man, who shows up so rarely he... he's just a fucking myth."

"Not exactly a myth," David said. "You're sure it's the rider?"

The three demon ladies looked at him, until Dao eventually clicked once, and they got all marching again.

"Stupid question, my bad. That goort was huge, too."

"If it's even a goort," Jes said. "I've never seen a goort that big, or with skin that black."

Caera came to a stop beside a big boulder, the four of them in a small ditch between two mountains, and she took a breather as she sat down. A break then, before going back to their cave. He didn't bother asking why they weren't heading back to their cave immediately, either. Caera wanted to avoid going straight there, in case they were being followed. If they were, going around the mountain first meant time for them to notice.

Dao, Jes, and David sat beside her, each taking some time to let the ache soothe. Crouching and sneaking so long across jagged rocks, climbing up and scaling down, was fucking hard.

"Is he even human?" he asked.

Caera shrugged. "No idea. First time I've seen him."

Dao clicked a few times.

"Right," Jes said, "if he's even a he. That armor was... thick."

"Aera armor," Caera said, pulling her tail in front of her and rubbing it. A nervous tick. "I've seen fragments of it. Adron's got a few. But a full suit? One made to perfectly fit the body?" With a shaky hand, the tiger stroked the spikes along the back of her tail. "That armor was made probably specifically for him in False Gate, thousands of years ago when demons still knew how to use the forge."

"Thousands of years," he said. "That's... That's... The fuck does that have to do with me? Why is he here? I mean yeah, we assume he's here for me, or Mia, but he's just some... guy, who's been wandering around for thousands of years?"

The ladies all shrugged.

"He killed Gorlus," Jes said, "like he was fucking nothing. Yeah, Gorlus was always an arrogant asshole, and part of the reason I left the spire, but I didn't think he was that stupid."

Dao clicked a few times."

"Could be an aura, yeah," Caera said. "We were too far. But if he's human, no way it was an aura."

David held up a hand. "Hello?"

The tiger shook her head. "I don't know what's going on, David, but there's no reason to think the rider is unmarked like you."

"And you're sure no one's ever seen his face?"

"Not that I know."

"Then I'm putting it on the possibilities list." Nodding, he got up.

And dropped back down. The four of them stopped talking, stopped moving, stopped breathing, and let the silence of the empty mountains fill their ears.

Clop clop. Clop clop.

Caera held up a low hand, and squished herself down against the rock they hid behind. All of them did, down to the ground, with their backs and sides against the wall of stone of the mountain that was between them and where they'd seen the rider.

Clop clop. Clop clop. The sound of a walking horse on horseshoes. Goorts weren't horses, and they didn't have horseshoes, but anything that heavy was bound to make noise with each step. More noise gently echoed through the mountains, the clopping grew louder, and was joined by the quiet clink and clank of metal on metal, armor rubbing against itself.

David snapped his eyes to Caera, but she shook her head, pointed at him and pointed at the ground underneath her. Don't go anywhere. He gulped hard, nodded, and tilted his head up.

A shadow cast over the stone, along the ground beside them, maybe a hundred feet away. There was a path above them, an outcropping of rock path that was flat enough you could walk on it, and Caera had taken them below and around it instead of on it. Too risky being exposed like that, if they were being followed. A damn smart plan. The four of them stared out to the shadow the sky of fire cast, and watched it grow closer and closer, as the rider slowly rode the path over their heads.

The noises grew louder again, the weight of the rider immense and making any sort of stealth for him impossible. Could the goort gallop with someone like the rider on their back? Could the rider run? Was all this hiding even necessary?

Definitely necessary. Caera was petrified. She barely breathed, her tail didn't move an inch, and all three ladies made sure their horns were pressed back against the wall of stone. Clop clop. Dao's lip trembled, and Jes's usual angry expression was gone, replaced with wide eyes like a horrified cat. Clop clop.

Eighty feet. Seventy. Sixty. Heat surged up through David's body. The hair on his arms stood up. Electricity danced through his fingers, and he clenched them tight, trying to suppress the strange sensation. More heat flooded over him, until his eyes threatened to tear up. His muscles tightened. His heart rate soared until he felt the war drums in his veins.

He grabbed the useless sword hilt he had hooked inside the strap of his skirt, and slowly slid it out and held it in front of him. He didn't know why. Something told him to. Something told him to grab the sword, and use it. Something burned in his blood and told him to fight, to stab, to cut, to attack the rider. Attack anything.

Fight. Kill. Destroy.

Caera snapped a hand out and grabbed his. He almost sucked in a breath, a noise that might have meant their doom, but Caera's panicked eyes hit him like a bucket of ice water. He managed a weak nod, and relaxed his muscles until his hand lowered. Only then did Caera let him go.

The rider stopped. David held his breath. The shadow, a steady and solid mass of black casting over the dark red stone, shifted only slightly as the rider looked out toward the mountain opposite of him. If he came closer to the edge and looked down, he'd see the four of them. They'd have to run or fight, and Jes and Dao were in no condition to do either.

Don't move. Don't breathe. Every fiber of his being demanded he do the opposite. Something hot and searing poured over him, like rapids of lava, invisible and untouchable, but in full force and drowning him in something he could not fully explain. Rage? The animal urge to fight and defend food or territory? The urge to battle over a mate? Something scalding that shot up through his center into his heart and out into his limbs until they shook with adrenaline. His afterlife body had adrenaline? Apparently, and it flooded him until his clenching fists were sweating and his teeth ground so hard he heard them.

The rider didn't. After a few more quiet eternal seconds, the rider moved on. No snap of the reins or jamming of the heels, the goort just decided to move on, and the rider didn't argue. Either the two of them knew each other better than best friends, or the rider gave an order David couldn't hear or see in the shadow. Clop clop, clop clop, the metal armor of rider and goort clinked quietly, and the shadow moved on.

The four of them didn't move a muscle until they knew the rider had hit the curve of the mountain and had gone around it. Caera held a finger up to her lips, got on all fours, and prowled in the opposite direction. They followed.

Something had stirred the hornet's nest. More demons drifted around the mountains, and a lot of gliders jumped from cliff edge to cliff edge, perch to perch. They were looking for something. The rider? If they were on a suicide mission, sure. Whatever it was, life got a whole lot more difficult, and Caera had to take detours deep into canyons and ditches to avoid getting spotted.

If this continued into tomorrow, they had no chance of monitoring the tower, let alone approaching it. Shit.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

They all collapsed inside their little cave. It was a decent hiding spot, out of the way, somewhat deep between two mountains, and in their shadow. No one would notice it unless they came through the ravine randomly, like David and them had after the invisible monster attack. No sign of any demon activity yet, or giant invisible monsters, or Cainites, down in the little canyon. They felt safe in the cave, a little, enough they all pressed their backs to the back wall inside around the curve, out of view of the entrance.

"Holy fucking shit what the fuck was that," David asked.

"The rider," Jes said.

"I meant that... that... aura."

Caera managed to push off the wall, and lay on her stomach in front of the three of them, perpendicular.

"There's not much information out there about the rider, David. He's a ghost story demons like to tell each other sometimes, when sitting around a burning bush. No one knows shit about him. No one knows where he came from, why he does what he does, where he goes, what he's up to, nothing. He just shows up, and everything goes to shit. He slaughters demons, and moves on."

Dao clicked a few times and made some gestures.

"Dao's got a point," Jes said. "That aura, I've never felt an aura that strong, and I've been in Diogo's fight aura before. I almost bit my tail off."

Caera nodded. "It was intense. Every muscle in me was screaming I get up and... tear into something." Slowly, she held up a hand, flexed her individual fingers, and examined each big claw. "It was a little too similar to Zel's horde summons."

The horde summon, yeesh. Sure enough, Caera closed her eyes, and went still on the ground as she probably did her best to suppress the horrible memories. David had never asked about the sort of horrors she'd had to deal with while part of Zel's march against the Black Valley, because it didn't seem to be a personal issue, like Kia and Marquez's death had. Instead, it was a black mark on her past of nothing but pain and misery, and talking about it didn't seem like it'd do much for her.

Maybe she'd talk about it if she wanted to, someday. Not today.

"We know he's probably here for me or Mia," he said. "But, if we don't know anything about the rider, we have no way of figuring out why."

"We know one thing," Jes said. "He's been around for hundreds of years. Thousands."

"Yes," Caera said. "Some demons say he first showed up during the Spires War, and went around causing chaos. But always randomly, just to kill. And if he's been going around with an aura like that, it's no wonder. We were lucky, hiding like we were. If we'd gotten into a fight with him, that aura would have made it impossible to even think about stopping or running away." She shivered, and rotated her shoulder, the one with the burn scar hidden under a slab of leather strap. "Just like a horde summon, once sealed in."

They all took a deep breath, and let the silence sink in for a while. It was yet another problem they had to deal with, and at this point their problems were so random, a giant turtle falling out of the sky right onto David's head sounded perfectly reasonable. Fit right in with the invisible Godzilla.

Dao clicked a few times, gestured to Caera, and pushed David off the wall toward the tiger. He'd been sitting down, but the satyr was damn strong, and he stumbled forward before falling onto his hands and knees, palms against Caera's back.

Caera laughed, smiled at Daoka, closed her eyes, and let her chin rest on the back of her hands as she got comfortable lying half on her stomach, half on her side.

"Fine fine. David, I need another deep massage, and then some good sex."

"Foreplay this time," Jes said with a slap of the tail, right on David's ass. "No skipping the good stuff this time."

"Skipping? Last time I—"

Dao clicked twice, gave his butt a gentle kick with her good leg and hoof, and gestured to Caera again.

He rolled his eyes, and couldn't help but smile as he undid some of Caera's binding straps. The situation was a shit show, but if the girls were happy to use sex as a way to de-stress, he was happy to oblige.

He drilled a massaging elbow into Caera's back as his mind went back to the rider. The aura had felt unbelievably powerful, and it'd overwhelmed David's mind. Had the rider sensed David's aura? If that were true, why didn't he notice when he'd gotten so close? Had David's aura even been on during that, activated, or suppressed?

All he could gather from the memory, was fear.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~Day 22~~

~~Mia~~

She woke up with a jolt, runes dancing through her mind. A dream. A dream? She was in Hell. She didn't dream anymore.

She stared down at her fingers, and squeezed on nothing. It'd been a dream. Not the sort of dreams she'd had when alive, but something else, something that echoed in her skull and demanded she notice it. The exact opposite of what a dream would do, the way it'd do everything it could to fade away and be forgotten once she'd awaken. Not this dream. The symbols didn't fade. And somewhere in the mess of symbols, an evil smile gnashed its big scary teeth.

Belial.

Slowly, she looked to Kas. He came out of his sleep at the same time, the crack of dawn, or rekindling. Without missing a beat, he stretched out like a dog, one arm and one leg at the same time, then the others, before he found a crouched and casual posture in the corner by the door. He hadn't asked her what she and Zel had seen, and far as Mia could tell, he didn't really care.

"Hell is a scary place," she whispered.

Kas said nothing, not even a click.

Groaning, Mia got to her feet, made sure her silk wrap covered her bits, and made her way up the stairway along the side of the room, up to the raised area with the huge table and chairs, and stopped by the window. The big white teeth were still closed, blocking off the window and stopping her from jumping out, or any demons from jumping in. But the teeth were spread out enough she could peek through them and admire the sky of fire, its swirling maelstroms of red and orange, and how they brightened from embers to proper roaring flames.

She watched the fire grow, just like when she was a kid with her brother, hanging out in the woods and making little fires at night. Her mind wandered, and she let it swim through memories of her and David roasting marshmallows over an open flame in the forest, before her mind came right back up to the surface with the runes again.

Batlam. Potram. Royam. Those three stuck out more than the others, but she couldn't wrap her mind around them. She didn't even know what they meant, not really. Some of the other runes, her brain understood intimately, and had no problem translating the alien language into English, or Estian, for Zel. Others, she had no chance of understanding. But those three seemed doable, if she could figure them out. They were strange in a way the other runes weren't. Something inside her tickled at the thought of them, like maybe they were something she should have understood, like someone making a meme reference she was supposed to remember but couldn't.

The other symbols, the scarier ones, the dark ones hiding underneath, with talk of fire, death, claw, blood, pain, and sin, those circled the scary smile that again grinned at her in a darkness she had never known before. A big scary smile that put Acelina's to shame. Maybe Zel was right. Maybe the book had been written as part of how Lucifer created Belial, one of the Old Ones. Maybe—

Her door opened. Only one person could do that.

Mia turned, and managed a weak smile for Zel as the demon woman entered her room.

"Little soul, how do you fare?" The tall demon wore white silks today, with more jewelry but less skulls. Still a few skulls, all of them human, but a nice step down compared to a dozen, or a giant skull hanging from the neck. Three thin chains connected her nipples underneath the silk, and several chains circled her slim waist and abs.

Zel was definitely the type to pierce her clit hood if she'd been human, but that might not work for her with how demon vaginas kinda just closed up and disappeared when they weren't horny.

"I'm... okay, I guess."

Kas clicked a few times and gestured to Mia, earning a frown from Zel. Uh oh.

"Kas says you've been standing there for two hours."

Mia blinked. "I... didn't realize. I was thinking about the runes, and—"

"Wonderful. I expect for you to share with me any wisdom you gleam." Zel joined her up on the raised section of Mia's cave, and motioned for Mia to come to her. "For now, let us depart."

Mia winced. "More rune reading?"

"No. As much as the secrets hidden within the depths of the spire intrigue me greatly, they are a gamble. Perhaps we will learn something of value to me, perhaps not." Zel grinned down at her, and idly plucked at her one of her nipple chains with one of her many hands. "There is something else about you I wish to explore that I am more confident will guarantee value."

"I really am nothing more than a tool to be used, aren't I?"

The demon queen's grin only grew. "Of course."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

They went down a few floors before stopping in front of another giant skull door with closed teeth, just like Mia's, and as they grew closer, a sensation teased up her bare feet into her spine. Sex. That was someone's sin aura, leaking through the cracks of the big white teeth. Mia didn't need to ask what she'd see when the door opened. There'd be people fucking inside, and at least one demon bathing the whole room with the erotic, warm, tingling waves of the aura.

This was it. This was how Zel was going to take her virginity, or have someone else do it. Mia's heart rate skyrocketed, her palms grew sweaty, and she clutched her silks tight to her body as she gulped down a giant rock. Oh god oh god, who'd be in there? Saldavin, with his giant orgy, a dozen succubi, a dozen incubi, and a dozen betrayers? Or Diogo and that bitch Acelina, people who'd rough Mia up and hurt her? Maybe...

Zel opened the door. Well, Mia hadn't been wrong about the sex, but instead of the orgy she expected to find, she found two people. Adron, and Hannah.

The big vratorin was on his knees, and Mia stared at the demon's profile as he fucked his pet. Mia had half thought Zel and Kas were exaggerating when Kas said Mia had been staring out her window for so long, but the day had been going long enough Adron and Hannah had been enjoying themselves for a while. Hannah dripped of sweat, her facial expression was a mess of exhaustion and pleasure, and she was on her knees with her chest planted on a pile of blankets. Her head was turned, facing the door, and her mouth was open, with probably more than a little drool soaking the blanket underneath her, along with the copious amount of cum dripping down her thighs, and down the bulge on her belly.

Adron had his hands on her ass and hips, and he yanked her toward him as he thrust forward. Slap, slap, wet sounds with each thrust, and Adron was not gentle. Hannah's whole body shook, and her broken voice erupted with a tiny, pathetic squeak with each thrust, as the distension on her belly slid back and forth each time, nearly hitting her sternum.

"Adron, you mischievous little impin." Chuckling, Zel casually tossed aside her silks, leaving her lean, muscular body naked — save for all the jewelry — as she walked toward him. "What use are you to me if you expend yourself so soon?"

He eased up on the thrusting, but didn't stop, slowing down to a gentle, deep-but-tender rhythm, as he looked up at his boss.

"Hey, you told me to create the mood."

"That I did. But poor Hannah here is now wasted and ruined. She won't be much of a comforting companion to Mia for her first time."

Mia summoned her best frown and aimed it straight at Zel, but a quiet mewl from Hannah drew her eyes. The woman's thighs trembled, and she tried to push herself back up onto her palms. And failed. She collapsed with a high-pitched grunt, and half closed her eyes as she melted back against Adron's cock. Of course Adron didn't stop, and took the time to remove most of his length, grin at Mia, and slowly sink every inch of his cock back into the shivering woman. The way the distension moved down her stomach before nudging against the blankets under Hannah's sternum, was insane, and mesmerizing.