The Pleasures of Hell 01.001

Black eyes. They all had black eyes, with red irises. And they all looked hungry.

Other humans had come up onto the shore before her. The first to die. The demons poured over them and roared like lions as they ripped into the people. Blood gushed from wounds and flowed into the red river, squirting out of shoulders where arms were ripped off, and from necks where heads were severed. Some of the demons had swords, horrible slabs of black metal that looked scrap beaten together. Most demons were content to use their claws to shred the screaming, panicking, scattering humans into bits. The others half cut, half sawed through the people with their half blunt weapons.

"David," she whispered to no one, gulping as she found herself enough to look around. David, where was David. She had to find David. She tried to turn around, maybe dive back into the water, find her brother, and swim them to safety. But she couldn't move. Surrounded by screaming, roaring, death, blood, and body parts that fell into the water to drift with the gentle flow, all she could do was stand there and look around dumbly.

She was going to die.

One of the demons came up to her, grinning, sword in hand. This one was eight feet tall, raptor feet disappearing in the red water as he walked toward her, his muscular, masculine body leaning forward slightly, a big tail behind him slithering left and right. He wore armor, chunks of dark metal bent into shape to fit various body parts. A shoulder, a leg, one arm, and one side of his chest. Opposite of the dented metal chunks, the demon wore skulls, one huge one attached to his other shoulder, giant black horns coming out of its white bone. From his waist, he had half a dozen human skulls dangling from chains.

He lifted his sword. She didn't move. His smile grew wider, exposing sharp white teeth. She didn't move. He came close enough she felt the heat of his breath as he aimed and prepared. She didn't move.

His face looked somewhere between human, and a red and black skull, oddly masculine, with extremely defined eyebrows and jaw, and a couple fangs that went over his bottom lip. He had two enormous black horns that curled up. His long black hair wasn't hair at all, but tendrils, each an inch thick and long enough to pass his shoulders. And his red and black eyes looked into her with the anticipation she would have shown a pizza.

He lowered his sword.

"Loria!" he said, voice mostly human, with a touch of gravel. Did he smoke? "Loria!" He turned to the side and looked to the woman beside him.

A woman, nearly seven feet tall, and a gargoyle. She wore the same sort of armor, and she leaned forward with the same sort of half human, half animal posture because of her tail. When the demon called her name, she stood up straighter, thinner tail resting on the ground as she turned to look at Mia and the other demon. She had a more normal human face, though a couple fangs poked over her bottom lip, too. She had the same sort of raptorial feet, but she had wings, big black ones with red undersides and a claw thumb.

She was covered in blood, one of her clawed hands inside a human man's chest. With a hearty grunt of exertion, she ripped her hand free of the dead man, tossed the body aside, and lifted the dripping lump to her lips. She came closer as she bit into the heart, and chewed.

They were going to do that to her. They were going to tear out her heart and eat it. They were going to do that to her, and David. Oh god, David? She looked around again, and froze again. More people were getting butchered, but not all of them. Thousands of humans had fallen into the river, and it looked like a hundred demons of all shapes and sizes had been waiting for them, not enough to catch everyone. More than a few humans were carted away, screaming and kicking as the demons dragged them off. Meals for later, maybe. Lots of humans got away, bare feet slapping against the shore of stone and... and bones. The shore was covered in human bones.

None of the humans came and helped Mia.

"Yeah Brennus?"

"Come here, look at this fresh meat. No mark."

"No mark?" The gargoyle woman ripped another chunk of meat out of her heart, and frowned down at Mia as she leaned in and chewed. "You sure?"

Brennus reached out with his free hand, and brushed Mia's hair aside off her soaked forehead. She didn't move.

"See? No mark."

"No mark." Loria nodded as she leaned in closer, face only inches from Mia. "She's froze up. Easy meal."

"Yeah, I could eat her. But have you ever seen an unmarked before?"

"No." Loria laughed, shaking her head. One of her big black horns brushed against Mia's forehead. She didn't move. "I suppose you're thinking Diogo will want to see her."

"Couldn't hurt, right?"

She laughed more. It was a sinister laugh.

"You're really scared Diogo's gonna eat you, aren't you?"

"He's not happy with me."

"So he's going to eat you?"

Brennus nodded as he swung his sword behind him, and hooked its handle onto something on his back.

"He ate Dareemus."

"Well, Dareemus fucked his favorite betrayer. So... You didn't."

Brennus winced as he looked at Loria, simultaneously reaching out and slipping his huge, clawed hand behind Mia's head. He was warm, warmer than a human.

"I didn't."

"You didn't?"

"I didn't fuck Sarah." Chuckling, he winked at Loria, and licked his lips and fangs with a massive pink tongue. "I fucked Marilyn."

"Diogo found out? And you're still alive? Lucky."

Nodding, Brennus yanked on Mia's head, and threw her to the ground, away from the red river. Her knees and palms scrapped against the stones and bones. Brennus grabbed her shoulder, rolled her over, and used his other hand to pull one of his chains from his belt. It clinked against the others, making the half dozen human skulls bounce around the demon's legs as he wrapped the chain tight around Mia's wrists.

"Alright, unmarked, you get to live your first day in Hell. You're coming with me." He scooped her up like she weighed nothing, and threw her over his shoulder so her stomach rested flat against the sheet of metal bent around it. It hurt.

She didn't make a sound. She didn't move. All she could do was stare out toward the river, the shore covered in thousands and thousands of bones, and the humans being slaughtered like cattle. Some of the demons laughed, clearly enjoying themselves. Some didn't, frowning as they jumped humans and killed them. All of them made an effort to get a kill, and get a heart to eat.

She wanted to cry, but her body refused. Shock? She didn't know what shock felt like. It was a miracle she was capable of thinking at all. Every part of her wanted to close her eyes and pretend none of this was happening. Pretend she was back up at the gates of Heaven, surrounded by friendly angels, welcoming her into paradise.

She forced herself to stare out at the river and watch more humans get eaten. A dozen humans ran down the river, with a giant brute of a demon following them. He didn't have horns like the others, but his face was even more skull like, and he must have been nine feet tall, bigger and bulkier than the demon carrying Mia. He roared as he closed in on the group of humans, and came to a stop when one of the humans landed at his feet.

One of the other humans, a woman, had grabbed the nearest man, yanked on his shoulder, and had thrown him down. It was how you outran a bear, right? You didn't need to be faster than the bear, just faster than the person you were with.

It made Mia want to puke. How could someone do something like that?

Because they were in Hell.

She watched and scanned the river as it grew further and further away. Where was David? He'd grabbed her and put himself between her and the water when they landed, and he'd hit hard. Maybe he couldn't get up from the water? Maybe he'd drowned? Maybe he was already dead? Maybe one of the demons had jumped him and tore his heart out and eaten it.

Tears blurred her eyes. Now she could cry. But before everything disappeared in a blurry mess, she looked at some of the humans nearby, their corpses on the ground around her.

They had numbers on their foreheads, in their foreheads, as if someone had carved them into their flesh with a knife. The demons hadn't done it. One of the people crawling out of the river, a demon behind them kicking them and forcing them out onto the shore, had the number 189 carved in their forehead. She saw one corpse with the number 284. Another with 402. Another with 134... no, 133? Did it change?

She tried to make out more numbers, but they disappeared under tears. She went limp, ignored the pain of her body crushing into the demon's shoulder, and cried.

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~~David~~

Hands grabbed him and threw him onto shore. The only reason he knew it was a shore, was because he was vaguely aware he'd just been drowning. Attempts to open his eyes blurred everything red as he stared up, and it took a second to realize it was for two reasons: the water he'd been drowning in was red, and the red sky was on fire.

The sky was fire.

He groaned and tried to sit up. Mistake. Pain shot up through his left arm, and his groan morphed into a yelp as he laid back down. A quick glance at the shoulder showed the normally round shape of it was kinda drawn out and down, and thinner. Oh, his arm wasn't in the socket.

Someone overhead blocked his vision of the fire sky, and smiled.

Demon? Big sharp white teeth, big fangs, black and red eyes, big black horns. Demon.

Oh, right. He'd fallen from Heaven, through some sort of portal, down through a hole filled with screaming dead people, through a gate that he almost recognized from Stargate. He was in Hell. They'd been falling toward a red river, and--they.

He sat up, pushing himself up with his good arm, and looked around.

"Mia? Mia!? Mia where--"

The demon standing over him slammed him back into the ground, hard enough to knock the wind out of him, and his skull bounced against the stones. Except, whatever his head hit, shattered, softening the impact to only headache-inducing instead of concussion-causing. Soft rocks? He turned his head enough to see the shards of white.

Bone. Bone had shattered under him. And the shore was covered in them. Hundreds. Thousands? Tens of thousands of bones, and many of them were getting crushed under the feet of demons, and nearby fleeing humans. None of them so much as looked his way, let alone came to help him. Many of them were being torn open, screaming death shrieks as their blood poured into the red river, dyeing it.

"No mark," the demon said. Male voice, gravely, scary, slightly higher pitched than David expected.

"Mark?" David asked.

"No mark." The demon poked him in the forehead with a big claw, almost hard enough to draw blood.

"No mark," another demon said. David turned his head enough to see another come close, similar to the other one but not quite the same. He could see distant demons with male and female shapes, some with tails, some with wings, all of them varying degrees of big and tall, to very big and very tall. But the demons near him didn't seem any taller than four feet. And there were half a dozen of them.

They had black eyes with red irises, mostly human faces with too-big scary smiles, black horns sticking up from their foreheads, and red and black skin. Three of them walked around on hooves, the other three walked on raptorial feet, black claws digging into the rocks and bones. They wore armor, bits of metal held on by leather straps, and skulls dangled off them from metal chains. The fact they were all four feet tall, instead of huge like the others, didn't make them any less scary. He was going to die to a swarm of piranha, instead of one hungry shark.

He lay on a shore of bones, in Hell. He was surrounded by demons, and now that he was above the surface of the red water with a second to listen, he couldn't not hear the screams of all the people being butchered, people just like him. The demons were killing them, tearing their chests open and ripping out their hearts. They were eating the people's hearts. They'd probably done that to Mia. They were going to do that to him.

He was intellectualizing and rationalizing again, describing reality like it wasn't happening to him. That was fine. He was going to die anyway, or suffer eternal torture or whatever, might as well keep that reality at a distance instead of having it scar him.

"Eat?" one of the demons asked the other.

"Take to Diogo?" another asked.

The closest one shook her head, before grinning down at David.

"I eat. Unmarked might be strong. Special! Tasty."

Another demon shoved her. "No! Mine!"

Another one of them came closer, and started clicking. Not tongue clucking, but clicking, in the throat, like a dolphin, fast trilling sounds.

The first demon shook her head. "I said mine! I said--"

David stabbed her in the eye with a bone. He had one good arm, and for some reason, his hand had dug through the stones and bones until it found one with a pointy tip. So, while still on his back, still completely fucked, still doomed, he swung out with his good arm and managed to sink what looked like a broken femur into one of the demon's eyes. Did it seem like a good idea at the time? Nope. But, he did it anyway.

The demon shrieked. The other demons laughed, pointed at her, and laughed some more. David lay there and didn't do shit. They had him surrounded, so random stabbing wasn't going to work anymore. Best he managed was an extra ten seconds before they ate him like a pack of hyenas.

"Eat! Eat!" One of the male ones with hooves hopped over, and flapped his wings enough to increase his jump so he landed on David's gut hard. "Unmarked is strong. Will taste--"

The demon flew to the side as something red and black smashed into it. They rolled down the shore into the river, shrieking and clicking, one wing broken, and the arm looked broken, too.

Well, that was strange.

David lifted his head up, and looked around at the five remaining small demons, as they all dove at the two demons rushing toward them. One of them had a tail. Oh, that's what had knocked the demon off him. A long tail sticking out of the back of a gargoyle that must have been nearly seven feet tall.

A feminine gargoyle, with a human face, sorta? She had a couple big fangs, and a couple giant black horns sticking out of the top of her skull. Black hair. No, not hair, more like black rope hanging from her skull. Tendrils? Whoever, whatever she was, she was much bigger than the other demons, and she half roared, half banshee shrieked, as she pounced on one of them, and ripped them apart.

David rolled over. Oh, there it was. Pain. Yeap, that was pain. Falling through the tunnel to Hell, through a sky of fire, crashing into a river hard enough to dislocate his arm, and getting his stomach kicked in, that hadn't registered. Rolling over with a dislocated arm? Yeap, that fucking sucked, and he screamed as it flopped onto the stones and bones. It didn't matter. He had to see, had to know what was happening.

Four of the little demons dove at the much larger demon. She had armor too, more bent black metal that looked like it'd been hammered on and strapped on with leather and chains. The smaller demons had human skulls dangling from various parts of them, some strapped on too, but this gargoyle didn't. Every skull attached to her body had horns.

One of the demons went for her back, but the big gargoyle woman spun around, and her long tail slammed into them, too. The tail had spikes sticking out of the back of it toward the base near her spine, but most of it was bare and smooth, except for a couple metal chunks that were strapped to it. She hit the smaller demon with one of those metal slabs, in the face, and teeth and fangs flew out of their mouth. But the other three demons surrounded her and--

Got run over by the other demon. The new demon was only half a foot shorter than the tall gargoyle, ran on hooves, and had no tail or wings. A satyr? A satyr with four curling, huge black ram horns. A satyr with no eyes. Two of her big, curling horns came out of some sort of black bone mask plate thing over where her eyes should have been. Like her gargoyle friend, the satyr wore armor, more black metal, leather, and skulls. And like her gargoyle friend, she didn't hesitate to run into the smaller demons, literally. She smashed into them head first, hard enough to knock one down and break bones, before she got her claws into them and tore them apart.

The smaller demons were clearly outmatched, but they didn't care. They didn't fly away, or run away, or hop away. They let out demonic roars and angry shrieks, and threw themselves at the two other demons. No sense of self preservation?

David snapped his eyes around, looking to other demons, but most of them were upstream, not close enough to interfere. Not close enough to give a shit either, considering not a one of them so much as looked their way, all far more interested in catching themselves a human or two before they got away. A few demons did look down the river toward them, but shrugged and went back to their own hunts.

The gargoyle got her claws into one of the small demons, and ripped their wings off. The roars turned into screams, and ended just as fast as she ripped the demon's throat out. Another one got their chest kicked in by the satyr, metal breastplate dented deep enough to break the bones underneath. They went down clutching at their chest, gasping for breath, only for the next kick to break in their skull. It left the satyr's back open, and one of the demon's jumped her, only to land on the many spikes that covered the satyr's back and shoulders. Not enough to get injured, but enough to give the small demon a hard time.

Enough time for the gargoyle to dash around, rip the demon from her friend's back, and rip their throat out. Always the throat, the reddest place on the smaller demon's bodies. The reddest place on her body, and the satyr's body, too.

The little demon with the broken arm rushed out of the river, past David, but someone grabbed their tail and made them fall. Oh, wait, that was his hand, doing its own thing again. The demon turned around and shrieked at him, but turning his back to the other two got him pinned to the ground and his throat ripped open a second later by the satyr.

Which left David, on his stomach, staring at the satyr and gargoyle, with six demon corpses around.

"Heh, you got guts, fresh meat." Chuckling, the gargoyle squatted down beside him, turned the small demon over, ripped off their armor, and tore open their chest as casually as a lifetime hunter would skin a rabbit. So efficient and fast David almost didn't notice the gore, until it flowed between the stones. "Daoka, you good?"

The satyr came over, clicking in her throat like the small demons had a few times. She had a sharp chin and cheeks, with small lips. Unlike the gargoyle, she was bald, and the four huge ram horns looked almost like a hat, or a crown over the dark red, almost black skin. For a second, he thought maybe she didn't have fangs, but when she opened her smaller mouth to bite into the heart the gargoyle ripped out of the small demon and handed her, he could definitely see them.

"Cannibalism?" he asked.

The gargoyle looked at him, blinked a few times, burst into laughter, and grabbed another demon corpse. With strength he'd only expect to see on a male powerlifter, she ripped the demon's armor off its chest, drove her claws into the chest, tore out its heart, and ate it. She took several bites, each big and messy, and blood flowed down her dark red skin and down over her armor as she walked back over to him while the satyr tore out some more hearts.