The Pleasures of Hell 01.001

"Fresh meat always asks stupid questions, once they get the nerve to. Usually takes more than five minutes in Hell, though." Shrugging, the gargoyle squatted down in front of him again and hooked her huge wings snug to her back, with the thumb claws hooking around her neck. Like a cape. "So, what'd you do?"

"I... what?"

Laughing more, big and full, she grabbed him and rolled him back onto his back, earning a pained yowl out of him. It only got worse when she grabbed his dislocated arm, and yanked on it, pulling it away from his torso perpendicular. His scream made her chuckle, and his groan of satisfaction and relief as his arm slipped back into its socket made her laugh even louder.

"You're in Hell, right? What'd you do? If it's interesting I might let you live."

The satyr clicked her throat a few times, looking their way before ripping out another demon heart.

"What?" the gargoyle said, looking to her friend. "Six imp and grem hearts isn't gonna keep us fed long, Dao. We killed them 'cause they're Diogo's, not because you're hungry. We could always use more food."

The satyr clicked some more.

"Yes, I know. So we can kill this dude right here, fat ass."

David blinked up at the gargoyle standing over him, ignored the blood that dripped off her armor onto his chest, and looked to the satyr collecting hearts. Four hearts, almost as big as human hearts; he knew how big his own was now, for comparison. She held them like someone collecting apples with no basket. Apparently the satyr had an appetite.

"I didn't do anything," he said.

The gargoyle laughed, something she did a lot, and squatted down over him, straddling him face to face. Her tail slithered left and right slowly like a swimming crocodile, gliding over his legs. Warm, warmer than a human.

"You're in Hell, dude. What'd you do to--" Her black and red eyes snapped open wide, and she squatted down closer. Closer. Too close, until her face was only a few inches above his. "Where's your mark?"

"Mark?"

"Mark, dumbass." She pressed her hand to his forehead and brushed his hair aside, coating his head in blood. He didn't move. "You... don't have a mark."

He couldn't move his head to see, but some clicking sounds confirmed the satyr had come closer. Four giant black horns coming in close from overhead confirmed. The satyr was looking down at him, with no eyes.

"I don't know what you mean. Mark?"

"Mark! Mark, you dumbass. I--oh, here." The gargoyle got up, and walked down the shore into the water. David didn't move, not with the satyr still looking down at him. Why did she talk with clicks, and not words? Why didn't she have eyes? The big solid plate of black across where eyes should have been actually looked kinda like bone from so close, the same sort of dark material her huge horns were made of.

She clicked a few times.

"David," he said, because obviously the only thing the satyr could be asking was what was his name. What else?

"Here," the gargoyle said, coming back over him with a decapitated head in her hands, a fresh head, a woman who'd had long black hair, maybe from the Middle East. Hard to tell with all the blood. She hadn't killed anyone to get it, it'd just floated down the river. "Look, dumbass. Mark." She pointed to the number on the dead woman's forehead, something carved into it like someone had taken a knife or claw to the skin.

"452?" he asked.

The gargoyle laughed, threw the corpse head over her shoulder into the river, and squatted down over top him again.

"She must have been an evil bitch to get a number that high. But that don't mean shit down here, just that she's tastier." Shrugging, the gargoyle ran the blunt side of her claw along his forehead. "Seriously, where's you mark? No one gets through the first gate without one."

"First gate?"

"Uh, you know, the giant bridge of flesh and bone and stone? Enormous skulls with fire in their eyes? Big famous Estian letters spelling out 'Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here' on the gate? You went through it to fall through the portal to Hell?"

He blinked. A lot.

"I... didn't go through that gate."

"You didn't? Holy shit. That... That's..." The gargoyle stood up and gestured to her satyr friend, who was still crouching over David's head and looking down over him. "Any ideas?"

The satyr clicked in her throat, slow and deep -- for dolphin clicks -- before she shrugged.

"I dunno, Dao. Diogo's pretty furious. Stick our heads on pikes furious."

More clicks, more desperate this time.

"Don't fucking talk to me about Leos! I want to kill Diogo and Tacitus as much as you, but--"

Louder clicks. The satyr Daoka stood over David and shoved her friend hard enough to make her stumble back.

"Fine, fine! Jesus Christ, I get it." Groaning, she gestured down at David, and the satyr reached down and scooped him up. "It's your lucky day, fresh meat."

"I--"

Daoka set him down on his feet, and made no effort to make sure he landed softly. The jolt of his weight shoving up through his heels into his skull was painful, and he groaned, only for the gargoyle to slap him in the ass and send another spark of pain through him.

"Alright, we're going back to my hideout. Move it, fresh meat."

"I'm David."

"Ha! I love it when you guys treat your first day in Hell like it's no big." Shrugging, the gargoyle woman gave him a shove, and pointed toward the distant, jagged mountains. "It'll hit you later."

"Probably."

Apparently the gargoyle woman thought he was hilarious, because she burst into laughter even louder, loud enough to draw the attention of the demons up the shore. But they didn't come. Were they afraid of these two? Probably not. The gargoyle was almost seven feet tall, towering over him, and while the armor covered a fair bit of her, he could see plenty of muscle on the feminine figure, and same for the satyr, too. But some of the demons in the distance were bigger. A lot bigger.

They just didn't care. Six dead small demons, imps and grems according to the gargoyle, and the other demons didn't give a shit. But then, he was literally walking on a shoreline of white, because it was covered in bones, and the water was red probably because people kept getting ripped apart in it.

That was the world he was in now. Demons slaughtering humans, and each other. And no one cared.

"I'm Jeskura," the gargoyle said, "not that it matters."

"It doesn't?"

"Nah." She pushed him forward with one of her giant bat wings before hooking it to her back and neck again. "You're fresh meat. Just a free meal for any demons lucky enough to see the portal open."

"The portal opens around randomly?"

"Yeap." She shoved him again, and pointed to the mountains. "Come on. You get to live for now, but don't push it. You got a few hours hiking to do, and I wanna get out of here before people recognize us."

"I--"

"I said move!" She used her tail to hit him in his ass this time, and he yelped.

He got walking. Bones crunched under his feet, and the stones pressed and dug into his skin. He looked down and stared at the white and bloody shoreline as it changed into stone, before he looked up and stared into the burning sky. Adrenaline crash, assuming his body even did the adrenaline thing anymore. He could feel things again, more than just the big pain, but the little pains too. He could feel the rocks stabbing his soft feet. He could feel the dull ache in his shoulder. He could feel the hot air blowing by. He could hear the two demons escorting him breathe. He could...

He could think about Mia again.

"My sister," he said. "She... She was with me."

Dao looked over her spiky shoulder to him and Jeskura, and she clicked softly before shaking her head and letting it hang.

"Dao says your sister is probably dead. But if she didn't have a mark either, a demon might be thinking the same thing we are. Take you to Diogo and get on his good side."

"Diogo?"

"Bailiff for this corner of Hell and Death's Grip."

"Bailiff?"

Laughing all the more, the gargoyle slipped an arm over his shoulders, and walked with him, like they were buddies. Good. If she didn't distract him, he'd break down crying. She'd been right, the hellish reality did hit him later, just not later enough.

He pushed it aside. Focus on learning about Hell, and on finding a way to save your sister.

"You got a lot of questions, fresh meat. Don't suppose you can just accept that you're in Hell, and you're probably gonna die? Horribly? And then again and again and again. Questions are pointless. Hilarious, but pointless."

"Die again?"

"Yeap. The mark I showed you on that corpse? That was just their first death. They gotta die that many times before they get to go to the Great Tower, and Hell will make sure each death is fucking torture."

He trembled.

"But," she said, "you don't have a mark. Never seen that before. So hey, maybe you'll only have to die the first time? If that's true, consider yourself lucky you don't have to become a remnant."

"Rem--"

"You'll see, later."

"Oh." He gulped as he nodded, before looking up at the gargoyle woman with her arm still around his shoulders. "So, you're going to... take me to this Diogo, so you can get on his good side?"

"Yes and no. We're gonna take you to Diogo so we can trick him into lowering his guard. Then we're gonna rip the fucker's head off."

"Oh. And... you're telling me this because--"

"Because who the fuck you gonna tell, fresh meat? Besides, I like you. You stabbed gremla demon, and tripped up that impin." She leaned in and poked him in the cheek with her other hand as she grinned at him, black and red eyes up close. "And you make me laugh."

"I'm... just asking questions."

"Yeap, that's why you're so funny. By now most fresh meat is a blubbering mess, on their knees screaming up at God for mercy and shit. No one answers." She shrugged and let him go, and walked slightly behind him as they made their way toward a path between the massive mountains. "You got me in a good mood, now. So keep 'em coming, I guess."

Keep them coming? Oh, questions. His confusion was her entertainment. Better than his pain, he supposed.

"I'm the only unmarked you've seen?"

"That anyone's ever seen, far as I know. People don't get into Hell unmarked, fresh meat."

He gulped, forced down the rising urge to cry again, and looked for something to talk about. Keep talking, keep learning. Get answers. He needed answers.

"It... It was weird. I was at the gates of Heaven, I guess, when my sister and I tried to walk through them, and--"

Daoka turned around, and leaned in toward him, tilting her head to the side as she clicked a few times quietly. He didn't need to understand her clicks to guess she was curious.

Of course, when Jeskura spun him around to face her directly, and her eyes were dead serious, it was obvious they both wanted to know more.

"You saw Heaven?"

"I uh... the gate to it, yeah. Touched it even, kinda."

"Holy fucking shit." She tightened her grip on his shoulders and shook him, earning a pained groan as she squeezed on his bad shoulder. It stayed in the socket, somehow. "Details!"

"Details?"

"Details, fresh meat. Give us details! No one's ever seen the pearly white gates." Nodding, a smile across her dark red skin and red lips, she walked with him. "You tell us about what you saw, and we'll make sure you don't die the most painful death possible."

But he'd still die.

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

The walk was painful. His bare feet hated the ground, the stones, the dirt. It wasn't long before he had to stare at the ground with each step to avoid sharp things, which annoyed the two demons escorting him. But they cut him some slack as he described what the gates of Heaven had been like. The angels, the warm aura, the gold, the infinite universe above, the floating islands, all of it.

He planned to ask more questions of his own, but every second his eyes found something to be distracted by instead. The path led between two colossal mountains and became a ravine, and the thousands of bones that'd littered the shore of the distant river, and much of the ground, were gone. Instead, the sharp rocks were bleeding. No, not bleeding, blood didn't glow amber. Amber veins? Amber didn't glow, either, but these did.

Every so often, in the barren wasteland of nothing but rock and stone, they found a bush. Withered, defiant against its surroundings, and on fire. Burning bushes. Another thing to ask about. And of course the burning sky, clouds of literal fire, that lit up the dark mountains. No sun, no moon, just fire.

A shape around a large rock froze him still, and Jeskura chuckled before giving him a shove. It wasn't a demon, just a statue of one. A big one, something male, not wearing armor. It didn't have any spikes on its body unlike the two women with him. No horns or tail or wings either, or genitalia for that matter; might not have even been male, really. Nine feet tall, extremely muscular, skull-like demon face, big claws. He was standing tall and proud, arms up and out, and each of them had a skull in hand, human skulls. Real skulls. Did someone put them there, in the statue's hands?

The deeper the two demons took him into the mountains, and eventually up them along another harsh, winding path, the more things he found. Every so often they found vines along the ground or walls of rock, covered in red thorns that might as well have been spikes, and his curiosity quickly earned him a bleeding finger.

He had so many questions, and he wanted to ask them, but he couldn't stop staring at things. The breaking point was when they came across a metal pillar in the ground, made of a dark stone bordering on pure metal, like the statue, and it was topped with a burning bush. And the burning bush was burning inside a giant black metal demon skull, on top of the ten-foot pillar.

"The bush, is on fire," he said, gesturing to the pillar, "and it doesn't burn away. And it's a bush, growing out of metal, and--"

Daoka let out a clicking chuckle, and flicked him in the shoulder before she jumped ahead, scaling the upward path way too easily.

"Hell grew it," Jeskura said.

"Grew it?"

"She did."

"She?" Right, the angel had described Heaven and Hell with 'she'. Maybe there was something to that?

With another hearty laugh, the demon slipped her arm around his shoulders again, and walked beside him. She didn't mind physical contact in the slightest, which seemed kind of weird to him, considering he was basically just a meal to her, or a tool to be sacrificed to this Diogo demon.

"Hell grows a lot of things. You can tell a lot by what she's growing."

"Oh." Hell was alive?

"So, tell me pipsqueak, you really aren't some vile shitlord asshole?"

"What?"

The satyr ahead of them clicked enthusiastically.

"Dao, he wouldn't be here if he wasn't a sack of shit. That's kind of the point of Hell."

She clicked some more.

Jeskura rolled her eyes, but shrugged and looked back down at David.

"I don't believe you're innocent, but Dao does. You really weren't a shitty person? A scumbag?"

"I... don't think so? I mean, I did spy on some naked people for a while there, when I was a ghost, but--"

Jeskura burst into laughter, and Dao's dolphin clicks rapid fired as she sat down. It was a strangely soothing sound, a dolphin laugh.

"That is fucking adorable," the gargoyle said. "That the worst thing you did?"

"I... think so? That isn't enough?"

"Fuck no. Being a pervert and spying on people isn't enough to get you sent to Hell. I mean, unless you were dripping with hate and loathing when you did it?"

"I don't think I was."

"Then this is fucking weird, because I've killed hundreds of souls, fresh meat. Me, and every other demon who's been around for a while, and every so often we ask questions to learn about who we're killing. Curiosity, right? And every time it's the same shit." She poked him in his chest with her other hand, almost hard enough to draw blood. "Every human who comes down here is a giant shit stain. A pile of maggots. The fucking worst. Hateful fucking rats, you know? They either did the worst shit, or they planned on it, and you can't even talk to them without feeling the resentment and hate they had for people on the surface.

"You though, I don't get that at all. You're just a... fucking pussy nerd. No wonder you're not marked."

He frowned up at the gargoyle, which of course made her laugh more.

"I'm..." His frown broke, and he slowly looked down. "Maybe it was a mistake? Maybe... someone will come rescue me? Maybe Mia, too?"

"Ha, maybe? The fuck do I know? All I know is, you're unmarked, which means Zel will want you, which means Diogo will want to give you to her. Which will be our way in." Nodding, she gave him a gentle push forward. "Not my problem."

The satyr clicked, and it sounded harsher and louder than her other clicks.

"No angel is going to trade with us, Dao," Jeskura said. "Besides, the fuck would they trade with?"

Daoka sighed but nodded, and hopped ahead some more.

"Demons talk to angels?" he asked.

"Not usually, but angels have been seen a lot lately. They started showing up more a few years ago, and now every demon in this whole corner of Hell has seen at least one angel at some point, flying overhead." She tapped one of her horns as she looked up. "Angels start showing up, then the first unmarked I've ever heard of shows up? Coincidence?"

Daoka chirped.

"Exactly."

"How can you understand her?" he asked.

"Demons can understand Hellian."

"Hellian? I... what?"

"Ha. Most humans just call it Clicker. Not Estian, like we're speaking."

"We're... speaking English?"

She rolled her eyes, and gave him a gentle shove again. "We're speaking Estian, fresh meat. You--" He fell, right onto his knees and palms, and bit down the urge to groan. She raised a brow as she looked down at his feet, before sighing and shaking her head. "Fresh meat is always so soft. Damn it, I hadn't planned on this."

He gulped down the urge to yell as he rolled over and looked down at his feet. They were bleeding, pretty badly, and not because he'd stepped on anything sharp. Hiking for a few hours on bare feet, when he'd been wearing socks and sneakers since he could remember, meant baby soft feet getting torn up by the ground. He almost hadn't noticed.

"Sorry..."

Jeskura stared at him like he'd just exploded randomly.

"Seriously? Sorry? Fuck, what the..." Jeskura sighed and shrugged, but before she could say more, someone scooped David up.

Daoka. He froze as he stared up at her, and she smiled down at him; a strangely nice, gentle smile, even without eyes. The small mouth and sharp jawline gave her an almost sinister look, let alone the four huge black horns and bone-plate-visor thing where eyes should have been. But the smile was anything but sinister. It was kind.

"Dao! Don't get attached."

Daoka chirped at Jeskura, loudly at that, and hugged David to her armored chest tightly as she hopped up along the path.

"Dao, get back here! He's not a pet! We're taking him to Diogo, remember? It was your idea!"

Dao clicked louder, but didn't stop. David held on, thankful for any opportunity to get off his feet. Now that he was off them and someone was carrying him, the pain he'd been ignoring flooded him again, and he clenched his teeth and forced down the groans. Everything ached. His feet burned. His skin burned, and the blemishes he was covered in apparently weren't all dirt, but some burn marks too. His shoulder felt awful.

But he was being carried by a badass pretty satyr, so he had that going for him.

The gargoyle flapped her bat wings and caught up to them with a big leap as they continued up a winding path, up the mountainside.

"Yes, I know he's unmarked. Yes I know he's--"