The Pleasures of Hell 01.007

~~Mia~~

"This is a scrying pool?" she asked.

Adron chuckled, and leaned over the big bowl as casually as any human checked their smart phone.

"It is."

She expected something a little more epic, honestly, but a big wide bowl sitting on top of some rocks in Hell would have to do.

"Where it'd come from?" She already knew the answer.

"Hell."

"Uh huh." Groaning, she peeked down over the cliff edge at the rest of the group.

They were taking an early break, a short one. Much as Diogo tried to pass it off as nothing important, she could see the demon didn't like doing this trek, and he'd taken Adron's suggestion to let Mia check out a scrying pool as an opportunity for a breather. Considering how massive he was, it was no wonder he struggled with hiking twelve hours a day. Even the gorgala and two vrats hated it, and they were much smaller. But, much as a little part of Mia wanted to tease them about it, Hannah told her not to unless she wanted pain.

They'd stopped by a big cliff wall with a huge alcove cut into its side. Not deep enough to really be a cave, but deep enough they parked their butts inside it and took a breather. Beside it was a steep, semi-natural semi-Hell-grew-this stairway in the mountainside that went up to a small ledge that reached out over the alcove. On it was the bowl, sitting innocently on some rocks at about hip height. The bowl was three feet wide, only about six inches deep, and the liquid inside was very reflective and silvery. Mercury?

"Mirror mirror on the wall," Adron said, tapping the side of one of his big horns as he considered, "show me... the inside of a random Starbucks."

"What?" Mia stared at him. But before she could laugh at him or express disbelief, the shimmering image in the liquid changed.

That, was a Starbucks, with people inside drinking coffee and checking out news on their smart phones. The camera, or whatever it was Hell used to spy, flowed around naturally, never quick cutting but seamlessly sliding into new perspectives to show Adron, Mia, and Hannah new angles. It was as if Hell herself, or whoever piloted the invisible camera, wanted to make sure the scrying pool's viewers got exactly what they wanted.

"Holy shit," Mia said.

"God I miss coffee," Hannah said. With a nod, she leaned over the bowl. "Show me that blond woman's coffee."

No need to finagle or convince, or be hyper specific. The bowl happily did exactly as requested, zooming in on the blond woman, and then her coffee. And then, her sipping the coffee, as if the bowl knew exactly what Hannah wanted without her having to say it.

Hannah groaned and walked away. "Fuck me that was dumb."

"Kinda, yeah," Mia said, laughing. "So, it can show me whatever I want?"

"Whatever you want," Adron said. "As long as it exists and it's on the surface right now."

"As long as it exists..." Oh. That did make things a little more problematic. What could she ask it to show her? The home she never really had, could never find, but always wanted? The close friends she'd never managed to make, despite the dozens of kinda-sorta friends she had?

Maybe some of the hot dudes at her university? Nah. She'd gotten her fill of being a peeping tom, and with the threat Diogo gave her not long ago, it was probably best she not think about sex. Whatever the weird aura thing she gave off was, it apparently got a lot stronger when she was horny, and a lot stronger again if she gave into that horniness.

"Show me... show me... Wow, this is hard."

"What?" Hannah asked, stepping up beside her again. "It's not hard. What, you don't miss anything from the surface?"

"I mean I do. I miss cereal and chocolate, and TV, and music, but... You said this is a torture device, Adron?"

"Mhmm. Every so often you'll find a soul or two, hanging out, staring into the bowl, crying over the things they don't have anymore. Sometimes they watch till they starve, and for a human not getting injured, that takes months."

"Months..." Months of watching the things they missed? She couldn't even think of a thing to watch. It wasn't like she didn't miss the surface, she very much did, and Hell and all its horrors and implied future agonies scared the shit out of her. But, fuck, why couldn't she think of anything she really wanted to see? Something she genuinely missed?

Whatever. Make something up.

"Show me my old university. Oh, do I--"

No, she didn't need to specify. The bowl shimmered, and then she was there. The view flowed over the concrete paths along the grass that would have guided her to the different buildings. It didn't go into any of the buildings, but it did circle around them, at one point going up into the air and doing a drone flyby.

"Wow," Hannah said. "Sometimes it surprises me just how good a camerawoman Hell is."

"We're sure it's Hell doing this?" Mia asked. "'Cause, I mean, that's so very... smooth, and nice, and... not things I think of when I think of Hell."

Adron shrugged, and gently rain a claw through the image. The waves turned to silver, and the image shimmered and vanished.

"Hell is cruel," he said, "but not some clumsy oaf. She'll finesse you, if she wants to."

No point in asking why they kept referring to Hell as her. 'Ask Caera', he'd say, followed by 'but she won't know, either'.

"I kind of expected the pool to lie to me."

"Not really the point of the pool," Adron said. "And--"

A quiet, distant rumbling grabbed their eyes and ears. Back the way they came, along the same mountain but on its other side and higher up, rocks fell, cracking and roaring with impact. Avalanche? Not a big one, but even a small avalanche was pretty damn scary, and noisy. Big rocks, enormous rocks, large enough she could see some of them even kilometers away. Clang, crash, crunch, and underneath it all a thick thundering rumble that vibrated and filled the mountains.

"That happen often?" Mia asked.

The vrat shook his head as he walked back down the unusually nice little curving stairway, back down to the area the demons rested in.

"They happen, but not often. Sometimes an amber vein bursts, the lava pressure getting too much."

"All these amber veins are filled with lava?" Slowly, Mia stuck out a hand and waved it over one of the amber veins along a rock beside her. The rock wasn't fully disconnected from the ground, but a part of the mountain. The idea that lava was flowing up into it, right beside, was disconcerting.

"Hell's blood."

She rolled her eyes. "Oh come on. That is a shitty metaphor. Lava for blood?"

He laughed, shrugging. "It's not exactly lava. Caera once told me there's a lot of similarities between it and hellfire, but it's not like demons are going around doing experiments to find out. Maybe in False Gate. Maybe once upon a time."

Once upon a time. What a strange sentence to hear in Hell.

Hannah patted Mia on the shoulder. "We're only a few hours out from the spire, far as I know."

"When's the last time you saw it?" Mia asked.

"Long time ago, not long after Adron first gave me some of his blood. I'm... pretty scared."

"Yeah? Of Zel?"

"Sure, of Zel, and of... the place, really."

Mia raised a brow. "The place?"

"You'll see soon."

Wonderful.

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~~David~~

Déjà vu hit him. This was the second time in four days he plummeted toward the ground with a woman held in his arms. It wasn't nearly as big a drop this time, but it was a drop straight onto a pile of rocks. Would he survive? Probably not. He'd land, his skull would crack open like a dropped egg, and his brains would splatter.

Fuck. He really wanted to have more sex, especially with Jes and Dao.

That, was a really shitty final thought before the end.

His back hit the mountain slope. It was steep, but not so steep it didn't create some friction against his body. His cloak yanked up against his neck as it caught on some rock outcroppings, and both he and Dao, still tight in his arms, swung to the side slightly before it came loose and their slide down to the mountainside resumed.

How come they weren't tumbling? Falling like this and hitting the mountainside, he'd expect everything to be a spinning mess. Oh, Daoka had her hands out, and her nails were dragging along the rocks, and they were doing a much better job snagging on rocks and grooves in the mountainside than his shitty grip could. Somehow, they weren't spinning out of control and breaking their backs against stones.

It didn't last. Daoka shrieked a click as a large rock sticking out of the mountain wall came up underneath them, smashed into her side, and the stumbling started. He didn't let go of her. He tried to keep her away from the wall, to put himself between her and the rock, but everything spun and up was down and up again and rocks came at him from random directions he couldn't understand anymore.

And then it all stopped. They still had maybe a hundred feet to fall, but something stopped them. He forced his eyes up from the death waiting for him, and up at the wings flapping hard. One of the wings looked dented and broken, and Jeskura screamed with each flap.

They hadn't stopped, but they'd slowed down considerably. Parachute speed. Shit.

"Jes!" he yelled. "Be careful to--"

Too late. They landed on the pile of rocks between the two mountains. The ravine, now a big mess of brown boulders, red dirt and black pebbles, had grown quiet with their descent, but it echoed with the sounds of screams as the three of them collided hard with the ground.

A common misconception was, if you did a straight parachute drop like the military did, you landed softly. You very much did not land softly. You hit hard, and if you didn't know how to land right, you'd break something. Thankfully he'd managed to relax a bit, enough that the landing hadn't hurt all that much. That was weird.

No, wait, that wasn't the reason.

Shit. Shit shit shit. He forced himself to his feet. No bones broken. Holy fuck his fingers hurt, and a few of them bled from their tip, and some random parts ached from hitting the mountain slope, but otherwise, he was fine. Dao wasn't.

"Daoka!" he yelled, and squatted down over her. "God damn it, Dao."

She smiled up at him as she clicked a few times. She'd moved him at the last minute. He'd landed on her.

"Dao..." Jes, five feet away, stood up, and collapsed a second later with a scream that hit his bones. The arm of her left wing was broken, and so was her left ankle.

"Oh fuck." He gulped and looked between the two demons. Oh fuck oh fuck what to do what to do.

Jes dragged herself closer to Dao, now on her hands and knees, and glared down at her friend.

"Daoka you idiot. You..."

Dao clicked a few more times, but they wavered, and a few pained moans slipped into them. The satyr was worse off than the gargoyle. Her right arm was broken, and so was her left leg, above the knee. A femur break. Oh fuck.

"Oh fucking god, I... I'm..." He sank his fingers into his hair and stared down at the two demons. "Fucking god, I--Caera! Oh fuck, Caera! Caera!" He walked away from Jes and Dao, and scanned the mess. The ravine went on for a kilometer in either direction, and the pile of rocks the avalanche had created went on for maybe a quarter of that. A small avalanche. Not so small when it happens right underneath you.

"I... I gotta find Caera," he said. "You two, uh..."

"Go," Jes said, groaning as she grabbed her broken, bent wing arm, and yanked.

The shriek she unleashed cut David down to his guts. He would have vomited if he could. The sight of flesh stretching, and the bone inside pressing against the skin before Jes twisted the limb and forced the bones to realign, was too much. He turned away, clutching his stomach.

That wouldn't have worked on a human, not on Earth at least. Bones didn't just magically realign like that. Either demons were very durable, or all afterlife bodies were, but he was damn content to not test it, not after dislocating his shoulder when he'd arrived. Even now, he looked down at his bleeding, throbbing fingers, and did his best to think about anything else. Find Caera, and don't think about broken bones being yanked on and forced back into other bones.

"Hurry the fuck up," Jes said. "Christ. I'll help Dao."

Without looking back, he walked away. But when Dao clicked a couple times, he stopped and turned.

"Will Dao be--"

"She'll be fine," Jes said. "I'll get her up and moving."

"Your ankle--"

"It'll heal, now find the damn tregeera."

"But..." He stared down at Dao, at her broken limbs, and came closer. "I--"

"Fucking. Go." Jes sat up, reached out for her foot, twisted and yanked, and fell back as she screamed again. He heard the click and crack of bone that time.

Dao smiled at him and waved him off, clicking softly. Not softly, weakly. She was hurt, really bad. So much for protecting her from the fall.

He clenched his fists, and walked in the direction Caera had fallen. Up and over a pile of rocks, around some giant boulders, and through some jagged stones. When Daoka screamed behind him, clicks mixing into her high pitched wails, he covered his ears.

It didn't take long to find Caera. The tiger lady lay on her side, bits of her dark skin ripped open on her legs and arms. Even her tail had a long gash along its side. But none of her limbs looked broken, and she was breathing. Eyes closed, but breathing. Unconscious? If she had a concussion, he should probably wake her up. Was that even a thing in the afterlife?

Stop thinking. Stop analyzing. What would Mia do? She'd fucking do something instead of over-thinking until everything fell apart around him.

He reached down, and lifted. Holy shit Caera was heavy. David was a strong guy; short limbs and some muscle made it easy for little guys to lift a lot of weight. But damn, Caera had some heft to her, and he groaned as he pulled up on her arms and pushed her against a big boulder so she was sitting. His fingers hated that. His aching limbs hated that. He almost screamed as he got her up, and of course when he stood back up, blood dripped from his fingers.

He squatted down beside her and shook her shoulder.

"Caera?" he asked. Still breathing. "Caera." A cut ran across her forehead, across the scar already there. "Caera. Ca--"

Her eyes shot open, and she snapped out her arm for him, full intent on cutting him to ribbons. But thankfully he'd half expected that, and he jumped away, leaving her swiping at nothing. And she'd missed anyway, to far to the side. Definitely a head injury.

"David?"

"Yeah, it's me. You okay?"

"We... We fell. We--where's the... the thing, chasing us?"

"No idea. Jes and Dao are alive, but injured. Broken bones."

Nodding, Caera clutched her head with one hand as she tried to stand up. And failed. She fell back with a grunt and stared down at her splayed legs, and her tail twitching lightly beside her.

"How... How fucked are we?" he asked. "Jes and Dao won't be walking for months, and you're--"

"We'll recover fast enough," she said. "I'll be... good enough to walk in a few minutes. The girls will take a day or two, maybe three."

"A day or two? To recover from broken bones?"

"We're demons. You recovered from your ruined feet in a day, didn't you? All fresh meat do."

"Yeah but that was just bruises and skin."

She managed a shrug. Nothing dislocated then.

"If they're not dead and they still have their limbs, they'll be fine. It'll just take a couple days, maybe a few, to recover. If they have resonance. And..."

"And you were already getting hungry because I've been dragging your asses across Hell twelve hours a day." Fucking fuckity fuck. "Alright then. What do I--"

The booming thud of a colossal creature taking a step filled the ravine, and it was only ten feet away. Now that they stood on a pile of rocks instead of a solid path, the stones and pebbles crushed into powder underneath the colossal footprint, and the pile rolled with the new indent. Like it was sinking in quicksand, and it kinda was, the invisible thing took another step, and again the whole ravine shook with the impact.

David fell on his ass as the pile of rocks rumbled and shook. Scampering only led to more tripping as the pebbles rolled underneath him, and he fell on his side. He squinted, expecting gravity to get its revenge and crack his skull open, but his shoulder hit rock instead, and he yelped and rolled onto his back.

He still couldn't see the thing, whatever it was. But he felt it, the same way anyone felt it when they were being watched. Which of course wasn't actually a thing, but it still felt exactly like how that was supposed to feel in the movies. Like there was something there, something he couldn't see, staring straight down at him from a great height, looking into his soul.

The rocks erupted underneath him. No, not erupted. Were crushed. He gasped, looking to breath through the immense weight of being stepped on, but he... felt fine. He looked to Caera, but the tiger lady, half pushed off from the rock she'd leaned against, stared at him, just as confused as him.

He now lay in a big footprint, big enough for his whole body. And he was unharmed, except for the nasty fall from before.

"W-What the--"

The ground did erupt this time, to his right. He sucked in a hard breath, shivers shooting up through his spine into his limbs like someone had stabbed him with ice. But he was fine. Three enormous gash marks, each a foot wide and maybe six feet long, cut along the pile of rocks he lay on, straight through him horizontally.

It happened again, vertically. Four gashes this time, and they ripped the rocks out underneath him and out from under his feet. The invisible thing had tried to cut him into ribbons from head to crotch. But, it couldn't.

It couldn't touch him.

"David!" Caera yelled.

He looked her way, half expecting a bunch of mysterious gashes to rip the boulder she leaned against apart. It had to attack her next. But, nothing. It didn't attack her.

A gigantic rock nearby came up off the ground, lifted by something they couldn't see or hear. But the rock crumbled, broke apart, as if crushed through a grate or filter. Where once a boulder had been hovering a couple feet off the ground, a pile of pebbles, dirt, and dust fell harmlessly on the pile. Had it tried to throw a rock at them?

It roared, or wailed, or shrieked. Whatever it was, whatever strange invisible presence was hunting them, it made noise, but not sound, no vibrating air sending signals into his ears. But there was vibration, something that pulsed out through David's body regardless, and instead of hearing the thing with his ears, he heard it with his bones.

And then it was gone. The air shimmered slightly, like Arnold's Predator, and it was gone. The sensation of something watching him, gone. He sat up and stared at nothing, eyes slowly panning around, first to Caera again, and then to the gashes cut into the crushed rocks underneath him. No more thundering footsteps. No more swipes from a hand that'd been big enough it could have held his entire body in its palm, judging from the slash marks. And that was all assuming it'd been a hand slashing at him, and a foot stomping around.

"What... is going on?" Caera asked. She got down on all fours and walked his way, stumbling slightly. Her limbs worked, but she was a lot more beat up than he was, and probably had the afterlife equivalent of a head injury.

"I don't know. How would I know? Fucking christ fuck!" He jumped up and gestured out to the empty ravine around them. "Something invisible just tried to kill us!? What the hell!?"

"You."

"What?"

Caera shook her head as she got closer, until she was beside him, and he followed after her back toward Dao and Jes.