The Pleasures of Hell 01.009

Kas grunted. He didn't ask what she was laughing about, or if she'd slept well or anything. Having a quiet asshole for a bodyguard was better than having some angry, hungry, potentially handsy demon, but if Mia had to choose, she'd have rather someone like Adron, or Scilra, demons she could talk to.

She stepped up to the door, and touched her necklace. The small amber crystal on its tip dangled just above her sternum, a bit warm to the skin, and touching it earned a tiny glow for a moment. The huge white teeth that blocked her door pulled apart, revealing the inner balcony of the spire, the pit in its center, and demons coming and going, jumping up and falling down the huge hole as they moved from balcony to balcony.

She touched the crystal again, and the teeth clamped back down again, effectively closing the door. Kas, standing beside the door inside her room with her, rumbled quietly in his throat, and said nothing.

"I figured Zel would have come get me by now."

Kasimiro said nothing.

"I thought she'd might... I dunno, try and corrupt me or something. Not with her blood or whatever; not gonna be a betrayer." Unlike Hannah, Mia had the strange ability to consider the future when making decisions. 666 deaths as a remnant, just so she didn't die anytime soon? Becoming a betrayer was not worth, not worth at all.

Kas said nothing.

"She wants me to use my aura for her. Why? Apparently all demons can make auras using 'sin' or whatever. What's so special about my aura?" This time she walked up to Kas and looked straight up at him.

He stood there, or kinda stood kinda sat, hunched over with long, muscular arms touching the floor, and raptor legs bent at the knee. Sometimes his body looked mostly human, considering how human his chest and stomach looked, and even his arms, big as they were, looked human, save for the occasional small black spike on his elbows and whatnot. But he had demon hands, complete with claws, plus he had raptor feet, a big long tail with spikes on top, and most importantly, he had the head of a dragon... shark... dinosaur. No human face, but a big long snout with big teeth, and a complete lack of eyes. One of the eyeless breeds.

He was also almost as big as Diogo, and probably would have been if he ever stood up straight. But considering the hunched torso and back and the big tail, standing up straight didn't seem to be in the cards for his species. So, dragon dinosaur demon, with the flat head of a shark, and the horns of a bull, except massive.

She hadn't asked him about his many scars. Maybe someday she would.

"You said you can feel my aura?" she asked.

Kas looked -- probably -- straight down at her, and clicked once deep in his throat. If he'd drawn in more air when he did that, he could have croaked like a frog.

"I'll take that as a yes. So, the aura, it's... it's always sexual? 'Cause, I mean, yeah I'm a young woman and I got a sex drive." No point in being shy about that, not anymore. "But it's not the only thing on my mind."

Kas let out a slow, deep rumble in his throat, similar to a crocodile throat singing. He didn't want to talk to her. Well, too bad, she needed answers.

"I'm going to keep asking, you know," she said, adjusting her white silk toga. The fact it was sheer meant Kas and other demons could still see everything, but at least it was something. "Just make it easy on yourself and give in."

Another rumble, but no answer. She stood there, tapping her foot, looking up at the huge demon, and sometimes at the chunks of black metal strapped to his body. It was a nice body.

"The taste of it changes," he said, deep voice rumbling like he'd been smoking for centuries. "It's often too subtle to tell what it is, or notice it if I wasn't looking. And then it grows, and it's sexual." He shrugged, and managed a quick gesture to her before he set his claws back on the metal floor. "You're hornier than any betrayer I've ever met. I don't need the aura to tell me that."

She folded her arms across her chest and glared up at him.

"I doubt that."

He snorted. "I can smell you."

"I... I don't smell! Not like that. I mean..." Did she smell? Hell did this weird thing where it wiped away things like sweat and blood and stuff, either lost to the air or sucked into the stones. Bathing didn't seem to be necessary, at least not for that kind of stuff.

"Humans always have a smell when they're aroused. And their breathing quickens."

"I'd just finished walking up a thousand stairs!"

"And their eyes lock onto certain body parts."

Shit, she couldn't deny that one.

"In case you haven't noticed, demons are walking around either naked or half naked all the damn time, are having sex everywhere, and every single one of you has a body built for... fighting and fucking." The demon motto. She gestured to Kas's chest and stomach. "Look at you! You have the head of a shark dragon but that's the chest and stomach of a human man. What's that about?"

He shrugged. "Some demon breeds are older than others. Less and less of us are born, and more of the newer breeds are born."

"Less are born? So... do... demons give birth to all types or something, and now the newer breeds are..." She threw up her hands. "I don't know. I still don't know how demons reproduce. The way you guys fuck each other, I figured I'd see pregnant demons everywhere, but that doesn't seem to be a thing?"

If Kas had eyes, he'd probably have rolled them, considering the head tilt.

"Just like a betrayer, you know nothing."

"You're right, I know nothing," she said. Kas tilted his head to the other side. He hadn't expected her to say that. "Well, I don't. I'm completely out of my depth, have no idea how anything works. Every day, I'm just slammed with a million new things and Da--" She clenched her teeth and looked away. "I'm pretty overwhelmed, and I suck at putting random shit together. Give me a nice encyclopedia or something and I can read it, memorize it, and understand it. But down here, all I'm getting is random bits of information and I can't figure it out."

Kas rumbled, clicked once, and shrugged.

"Not my problem."

Mia scrunched up her nose, marched up to the big demon, and poked him in the chest. Damn, that was firm. Why did a demon with a dragon face and no eyes have the chest and stomach of a Greek god? The long, thick arms and shorter legs and raptor feet should have looked weird, but on his body it just made him look like a deadly, amazing beast. No wonder Zel picked him to guard her.

"I can make it your problem," she said.

Kas clicked once, deep in his throat, before letting out a long, rumbling breath. No need for a translator on that one. He didn't believe her. That was easily rectified.

She touched the amber crystal on Zel's necklace, and the door opened.

"I'm going to go exploring," she said. "And I think I'll keep running around randomly, talking to big random demons, and stumbling into rooms full of violence and stuff, until I get some answers to my questions." And doing her hardest to hide how absolutely fucking terrified she was of everything she'd just said, she marched out of her room wearing only her sheer, giant silk scarf and Zel's necklace, picked a random direction, and got walking.

Some grumbling and scraping noises made her smile. Kas came up behind her, grabbed her shoulder, and turned her around. Damn that was a big hand.

"You're making my job difficult."

"Oh boohoo. Fuck you, I died! I died and I'm in Hell and I shouldn't be here and now every day is just a giant fucking mess that I don't deserve!" She walked up to him and poked him in the chest again. Why her confidence had skyrocketed, she wasn't entirely sure. Maybe she'd hit the point of gave-no-shits no return? Zel had made it clear she was to be protected, maybe that was it? Maybe it was finally getting a night's sleep in a place that felt at least partially like she could get her feet grounded. Whatever it was, she was fucking done being confused about everything.

Kas clicked a couple times, but didn't explain. Asshole.

"I want to know how demons reproduce. I keep hearing talk about different breeds, and hatchlings, but no one's explained. The imps, grems, and incubus and succubus seem to have different sexes too, but not other breeds? Like you?" She gestured to him.

After another heavy rumble, Kas sighed, walked toward the inner edge of the balcony, and held out one of his big arms. They were going on a trip.

"You can't just tell me?" she asked.

He clicked once, and didn't move. Double asshole.

She walked up to him, and he scooped her up. He jumped down, and she choked down the sudden desire to scream as gravity went poof. There was a giant hole beneath her, and it went down and down and down. Cages dangled from chains, some connected to chains that hung from the top of the tower she'd yet seen, but most dangled from chains hooked on the edges of the balconies. Smaller demons landed on the cages, ignored the remnants inside that grabbed at them, and hopped onto whatever balcony they were stopping on.

Kas didn't bother with the cages. He landed on the next floor below, raptor feet hitting the metal before his free big arm did. And before she could ask where they were going, he jumped down to the next floor. It took him a few seconds, but soon he found a rhythm and hopped down from balcony to balcony in a seamless bouncing pattern. What would have taken her minutes, he did in seconds.

The fact it took him an entire three minutes to get down to the floor he was heading toward terrified her. If she tried to get back up to her room without him, she'd burn off her quads. Demons, on the other hand, had no trouble jumping up and down, catching cages and chains, or jumping up and landing straight onto the balcony edges without them. Pure strength.

At some point they descended lower than the spire entrance, and went underground. No more big archways of bones and metal leading outside onto outdoor balconies. Now it was a black pit of darkness lit by flames burning inside metal braziers shaped like skulls, and the deeper they went, the louder it got. Not demon sounds though. Screams. Human screams.

They stopped. Kas let her off, and she slipped out of the nook of his arm, shoulder, and chest. Much as Kas was attractive, in that sexy scary monster beast kinda way, she couldn't even think about sex anymore. Down here, deep inside the spire, the remnants were everywhere. They tried to climb out of the walls from slabs of flesh and bone, with the stones of the walls jammed up against their guts. They tried to get out of the cages they were trapped inside, packed together like sardines. They tried to reach down from the ceiling they hung from, from the giant rib bones that reached overhead holding up the balcony above.

"How can you stand this?" she said, gesturing around at the remnants. Their gaunt faces, their torn and bleeding skin, the terror and pain in their eyes. 341, 231, 54, 535. So many more, dangling from the balcony above, from the wall, or trying to climb out of the floor they were trapped inside of.

"Remnants," Kas said. Fucker barely used enough volume to warrant using his vocal cords.

"I know they're remnants, but they're still people. They... were, still people." She came closer to one of the remnants sticking out of the floor. A woman, old, with only her head, neck, and one arm protruding from the floor. She scraped her nails along the metal, leaving a trail of blood under her ruined fingertips. "Is there anything of the person left?"

"Probably. Otherwise the torture would be pointless."

She ground her teeth. "So they have to remember who they were, or all these deaths wouldn't matter? That is fucking sick. No one deserves that."

Kas looked at her, saying nothing. Even without eyes, he had a habit of pointing his head directly at whatever he was looking at, probably, making it easy for her to tell what he was thinking about. He didn't understand why this bothered her.

"Then kill her, and lower her number." He managed a tiny shrug, tail dead still on the floor.

"I..." Sighing, Mia took a step back from the remnant and looked away. It didn't take much for her to get sucked into a cause that she had no chance of even putting a dent in. One random article on the internet, and Mia threw money at a charity, or started distributing pamphlets, anything.

David had told her if she didn't learn how to guard her emotions and passion against random things scooping it up, she'd burn herself out. 'The brightest flame burns quickest' he quoted. She and her brother were empathetic, too empathetic. Much as people thought of her brother as a robot sometimes, it was because he was so much better at guarding himself against other people leeching his emotions out of him. And he was smarter than her, and better at not throwing his mental energy away into pointless causes.

She couldn't fucking help it. Every time she saw a remnant, all she wanted to do was help. The only way she could do that, was to kill them, and what was she going to do, slaughter remnants by the millions? For what? To help them deal with a punishment more quickly, punishment Hell itself -- herself -- thought they deserved? And Hannah had killed--

Mia sucked in a breath. Stop it. This is Hell. The people down here deserve it. And even if they didn't deserve years, or decades, or centuries of being tortured and slowly killed as a remnant over and over, there was fuck all she could do about it. She had to do what David told her to do, a thousand thousand times: self first, others second. You can't do shit for others if you're dead.

"So," she said, forcing her eyes away from the remnant. "What're we doing down here?"

Kas nodded toward a big door archway, the only one on this floor, and slowly walked toward it on all fours. She hesitated to follow, until he looked back over his shoulder at her, and clicked once in his throat.

"I uh... kinda regret asking to learn about this." She gestured to the huge archway. "That looks pretty spooky."

The eyeless dragon grumbled, and thudded his huge tail on the metal.

"Come on. I'll keep you safe."

"So... it's... not safe in there, normally?"

"Nothing is."

She did her best to match his grumble, failed miserably, folded her arms on her chest, and followed.

The archway was different than the others. They were all unique, many decorated with black metal skulls or real white skulls, black metal teeth or real white teeth; the real white teeth ones made with human teeth were particularly disturbing. This one, bigger than the others, was decorated with weird circular lumps between what looked like rib bones. Eggs?

Oh god. She sucked in a hard breath, as Kas began a slow walk down an enormous stairway. It was the first proof there were rooms that went out further than the spire did, out into the ground the spire grew out of. The stairway went straight down, no spiral. She'd half expected to look down and see a bunch of scary things underneath her, but nope, the stairway was a tunnel that cut into Hell's depths, forty-five degrees down. She wasn't sure if that was less, or more scary.

It got more scary. After a minute of walking down metal and stone, with the occasional dangling metal skull brazier their only source of light, the metal turned into flesh and bone. The stairs became bone. The walls became layers of ribs with web flesh connecting them. It was like walking down the inside of a gutted snaked. Thankfully they still had light, except this deep into Hell's guts, it stopped being metal braziers, and became amber veins again, cutting across the bone ribs overhead. Each time she passed underneath a vein, it smelled just faintly of burnt meat.

Another arched doorway led them into a large room. Enormous. Fucking massive. Instead of the metal and stone, all she saw was walls of meat, and remnants growing out of the meat. Walls that reached high and low, with floors that flowed as rolling hills. Tunnels vast and long, with further, deep curves that told her eyes there was a network of huge paths, like a maze of flesh. Amber veins cut along the bone, and the walls of flesh never touched them, as if afraid they'd get burned.

Someone had decorated. Metal chains dangled from the giant rib bones holding up the huge ceiling, each with a black metal brazier holding a flame inside, some of them swaying and jingling as remnants above grabbed at anything they could. Huge metal things covered some of the walls, and only after staring at them for a second did she realize they were sort of like wardrobes or cabinets without drawers or cupboards, and covered in skulls. Real skulls. And a few statues too, more statues of Zel holding a tiny flame in her four hands. Other statues as well, of another feminine demon kind alike Zel but not. The other female tetrad species?

There was bone furniture around the cabinets, chairs of all shapes and sizes, and a few hundred thousand loose bones sitting around waiting for someone to pick up and stab or beat someone with. Some of them were in shapes she'd thought were maybe big chairs, but that couldn't be right. So many weird shapes.

But even staring into a giant maze of flesh and bone and its gigantic rooms couldn't hold her eyes for long. Three demons stood near one of the weird, giant metal cabinets, chatting among themselves. Clicking, chirps, all the same sort of noises Kas made, if a little higher pitched.

They were tall, almost as tall as Zel, and wore many red silk scarves that dangled over their bodies. They had wings, huge but spindly, thin, probably not able to hold any weight. They walked on hooves. They had long, thin tails, smooth and flowing. Unlike every demon she'd seen with tails, or other demons in general, these three ladies stood tall, a very upright posture. They were absolutely stacked with the biggest tits on any demon Mia had seen. But even more majestic was their four enormous horns, giving them an unusually regal look combined with their very upright posture. Like Kas, they were eyeless, and their faces were completely black. Completely, from forehead to chin. Onyx black.

Kas clicked a few times in his throat, and gestured to Mia as one of the tall, busty ladies walked toward her. That, was a lot of hip sway.

"Kas, talk Eng--Estian!" Mia said.

He grumbled. "Acelina, this is Mia."

The eyeless, tall demon lady with the most absurd, ridiculous curves, grinned. In her obsidian visage, her mouth appeared, wide, too wide, and full of white sharp teeth.

"Hello Mia. So you're the bitch that has all of Zel's attention lately."