The Pleasures of Hell 01.010

Caera, the voice of reason in their party, shook her head as she stood back up.

"We know you're thankful, David. But it's not like we're helping you for no reason."

Dao chirped, pushed Jes off him, stood behind him and hugged him instead.

"Okay," the tiger lady said, rolling her eyes, "at least Jes and I aren't helping you for no reason. Dao wants to keep you as a pet, fine, but I expect compensation. You're going to help me kill those Cainite fucks." Nodding, the tiger lady grabbed the sword hilt he'd tossed, and handed it to him. It was better than nothing, at least.

"Still not really sure how you expect me to do that," he said. "You just said you don't expect me to be fighting."

"Of course not. You'll be bait."

He winced. Lovely.

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

Dao and Jes were healed enough to walk, but not run. That meant stealth. He'd have preferred they stayed behind, and Caera had said the same thing, but Jes insisted, and her personal goal -- killing Diogo -- was on the top of the priority list. They had to see the spire.

Saw it they did.

"Holy shit," David said. The girls crouched behind the rock with him, all four hiding near the base of the mountain. Behind the mountain was their little hideout, and they'd had to climb up a ways to get up to where the ground spread out, the valley opened up, and the great spire became visible.

The spire was a towering behemoth of claws, stone and flesh, with giant balconies that circled it at different levels, each lined with colossal teeth. Hundreds, thousands of feet tall. Imps circled the air, gliding, flowing, along with some gargoyles and some bat-like demon women. Dilojas, according to the girls. The bigger breeds walked the ground, vrats, brutes, tigers, plenty of the gliders too, though the imps and grems preferred to hop and glide from giant spike to giant spike that stuck out of the ground.

That was a lot of corpses and skeletons on those spikes.

"Fucking terrifying," David whispered.

"Zel's a scary bitch," Jes said.

Dao clicked twice.

Caera shook her head. "Better her than letting shit get nasty like in False Gate."

"And Mia's in there?" he asked.

Caera nodded. "The demons are buzzing. Excited. Something's up, and a good bet it's Mia. No one's seen an unmarked soul before, let alone one with an aura."

"And that," Jes said, pointing out into the valley and a tall-as-fuck brute standing at the spire's entrance, "is fucking Diogo."

"That's Diogo!?" David slapped his hand over his mouth, and hid behind the rock again. They all did. Too loud. "Shit, that's Diogo? He's huge!"

Jes nodded, growling quietly as she peeked over the rock again. "Like I said, he became a bailiff because he's bigger than other brutes, and just barely smart enough to not get stabbed in the back."

"I could go in there," Caera said. "He doesn't know I'm with you guys. Unless someone's come running from Gorzen Eye to tell them I'm missing, I could walk in there and... convince Diogo to come out?"

"How the fuck you going to do that?" Jes asked. "He's just delivered an unmarked soul to Zel. She's probably rewarding him. Free food, lots of sex, the works."

"Not with Mia, I hope," he said.

Dao clicked a few times, shaking her head.

"Yeah," Jes said. "He's probably trying to fuck Acelina again."

"Wh--"

"One of the spire mothers."

Caera and Dao both sighed happily, earning a raised brow from David. When they noticed, all three ladies held out their hands in front of them, cupping nonexistent giant breasts that left them all in the dust.

"Uh..."

Dao giggled, clicked a few times, and patted David on the shoulder before she peeked out again.

"Spire mothers help raise the eggs," Caera said, "and they help make sure young demons who survive the hatchery get to escape the pit."

"And get a taste of them, too," Jes said, nodding and grinning.

Dao clicked excitedly, nodding.

"Eggs? Taste?" How demons were born was just one of the many questions he'd had, and had promptly forgot about when shit hit the fan.

"I'll explain when we're safe," Caera said. "Let's go up. Better vantage point."

The four of them scaled the mountain. It wouldn't be long before the fire sky died down, and the twilight hours began, a bad time to be out and about, but David wanted to make sure he understood everything about the place before they made any kind of plans. Unfortunately, the only plan coming to his head at the moment was to duck and cover, and pray things got better. Maybe someone would hear the prayers?

Probably not.

It was a big valley, surrounded by mountains. None of the mountains were insanely tall, but that didn't make climbing them any easier. Lots of jagged rocks. Lots of places where a misplaced step meant sliding enough to slice open a calf muscle against a sharp rock, or break a toe. Lots of places where there was no path, just climbing, and David was again super thankful he put in the time to get strong, especially with the armor and the broken sword weighing him down.

But his feet were tough now, fingers too, and he felt comfortable enough holding onto an outcropping of stone to look out and admire the horrible beauty of the valley, the spire, and the spikes and pillars that circled it. They were too far away for the demons down there to see them as anything more than small blurs against the rocks. It was the only thing that made traveling around Death's Grip even possible, that the dark stone, shades of red, brown, and black, matched the demons' skin and his cloak perfectly.

Higher and higher they climbed, until they stopped on a cliff edge that faced out toward the valley. It was sloped inward toward the mountain, perfect for getting on their stomachs and peeking out over the valley without all the gliders spotting them.

"Eggs," Caera said as she crawled forward, lay on her stomach, and gestured out to the spire in the distance. "Hell lays the eggs."

"Hell?" He lay beside her, and scanned around as best he could. It was getting late, too late.

He couldn't see over the mountains around the valley, except to the counter clockwise direction and the Black Valley. The vortex was visible too, just barely, a tiny little slit in the distance past the spire, past the mountain behind it, hundreds, maybe thousands of kilometers away. Death's Grip supposedly had the tallest mountains, but climbing the tallest mountain just to get a peek of everything was at the bottom of the list of things he wanted to do right now.

"In the spire," Caera said. "There's a place where eggs are laid by Hell and her flesh. Spire mothers take care of them, hatch them, put them in the pits, and whoever survives the pits until adulthood gets to leave."

"Whoever... survives."

Dao lay beside him, and clicked a few times.

Jes lay beside Dao, opposite of him. "Yeah, it's pretty rough. But after about a year, and a dozen or so kills, you're free."

"Wait. Demons are locked up in this pit place, for a year? And you kill... and eat each other?"

Caera nodded. "It's a big pit, lots of tunnels and caves. And sometimes the spire mothers will throw down some fresh meat for us, some souls to eat. But, yeah."

Information overload. Hell laid eggs, herself. Some apparently busty demons called spire mothers helped hatch the eggs. Then they put them in something called 'the pit' until they were mature enough to leave, which was apparently around a year. And Jes said earlier something about 'getting a taste'. So many questions.

"Okay," he said, "so, lots of balconies on the outside. Demons gliding down to lower balconies. How do they get up?"

"Balconies on the inside," Jes said. "A lot more, with a big hole in the center of the tower, all the way up, all the way down. There's stairs, too, but demons just jump."

"No wonder you all have such amazing legs."

All three girls chuckled. Wow, he managed a decent compliment in the flow of a conversation. Mia would have been proud.

"The hole goes deep into the ground, too," Caera said. "As deep as the spire is tall."

"Jesus."

Jes nodded, outstretched her wing over Dao, and poked David in the shoulder with her thumb claw.

"Zel has a lot of rooms she likes to live in, sleep in, fuck in, and collect her trophies and jewelry in. Mia's probably in one of those rooms, higher up."

"Upstairs then," he said. "You don't think Zel will lock her up in a dungeon or something?" Or worse.

"Nah," Jes said. "Zel can be a cruel bitch sometimes, but she prefers playing games and having fun with her pets. She'll want Mia's cooperation."

"And if Mia doesn't give it to her?"

"Then she'll torture the fuck out of her and make her wish she was dead."

His stomach flipped, but Dao rubbed her horns against his shoulder and chirped a few times.

"Dao's right," Caera said. "Zel plays the long game. She won't resort to torture unless she has to."

David gestured out to the valley below. "And all the corpses I'm seeing on spikes?"

"Zel makes examples out of demons -- and souls -- who step out of line," Jes said. "If they're on a spike, they probably deserve it."

"Probably," Caera said, "but... not always."

Before David could groan, Dao poked him in the shoulder, and gestured to the side, away from the valley, and toward one of the nearby mountains. With a few quiet clicks, she inched back from the edge of the cliff, pressed her body against the mountain wall, and again nodded toward the other cliff.

David stared at it, and waited. Sure enough, a shadow shifted. Death's Grip was nothing but solid rock, and any shifting shadows were mild and sporadic, cast by the flickering flames of burning bushes, or the sky of fire and its ambient waves of light. No shadows just 'shifted' unless whatever they were attached to was alive and moving.

Caera, Jes, and David followed after Dao. David nudged Caera, pointed at his eyes, then up at the distant cliff edge with the shadow, and then at her. It took her a second, but nodded, and climbed. She was the better climber, and every motion she made was a perfect prowl, claws navigating the stones immaculately. The rest of them followed whatever path she took, knowing it'd be the best path with the least chance of making noise, or falling and breaking a limb.

What Caera had said about Kia and Marquez weighed heavier on David with each moment. The tiger lady really was used to having companions she took care of, and every motion she made, she did making sure it'd be a good path for the people following her to take. She was good at taking point. She was used to being a leader and taking care of her friends.

It took a bit of time, but she got them up to another flat area with a lip they could lay on and look out over the other mountain with the suspicious shadow. Even better, there was enough space between them and the distant mountain they could whisper to each other without risk of being heard. Probably.

"What... the fuck is that?" David asked.

There was a goort. He'd seen some goorts, big scary horse-like creatures, but this goort was enormous, bigger than a work horse, and completely black. Even scarier was it had armor, slabs of bronze metal crafted and shaped to perfectly fit the giant creature's thick musculature. War horses from human history would have been jealous of its bronze armor, the red gradients in it, the gold engravings of demon skulls, and the silver horns that came out of it.

That wasn't the typical meera metal armor David had seen. This was aera metal, the special stuff Caera told him about. And the person on the horse was covered in it.

"The rider." Caera's voice was a whisper, but it trembled, and her eyes were wider than he'd ever seen them. David looked past her to Dao and Jes, and found the both of them shivering, Jes's eyes just as wide.

They were beyond terrified. They were frozen solid.

The rider, whoever that was, was decked in enough armor he -- probably a he from the shape -- would have killed a normal horse riding it. Full plate, head to toe, and just as ornate as the goort they rode. Bronze and red, with gold lining the edges, and gold embossed skulls all over. They clutched the reins of the mount with gauntlets, and did not move, their classic medieval helmet pointed straight toward the spire. Two silver horns stuck out from the helmet's sides upward, and while David couldn't see the rider's face from the side, the shape of the helmet told him there'd be a T slit for a visor, or maybe just two eye slits like on a great helm.

So much armor, with enough bulk the rider barely looked human, and could have walked out of some absurd, violent fantasy story. All that was missing was a cape. The rider had two huge axes hooked onto his back, just as ornate as the rest of the armor, with silver blades that had amber lines cutting through them, like veins.

"Who's the rider?" he asked, and made doubly sure his voice was the quietest whisper possible.

Caera spoke first, voice still trembling. "No one knows. I hear stories about him, and how he shows up... randomly. There's no runes about him anywhere that say anything useful, but I heard he got into a fight with the Damall in the Grave Valley a few decades ago. There's a story about him being in Angel's Spine a century before then."

"All I know," Jes said, "is every story about the rider includes demons getting slaughtered. If he's here..." Slowly, she looked David's way. Caera and Dao did the same.

"Fuck." He hit the stones underneath them with his forehead. "Here for me, right? Me, or Mia."

They all looked back to the rider, and waited. But the goort and the rider did not move. With all the armor, it was impossible to tell if the rider even breathed.

"Let's go," Caera said. "We can't--"

More movement cut through the silence, hooves and talons on stone, and the four of them froze stiff. It was sheer luck the sound didn't come from above them.

An enormous pair of red and black wings rose up from around one of the curves of the mountain, coming the rider's way. Before the bearer stepped into view, other demons jumped up first, a couple vrats, one tiger, one gargoyle, and two big brutes. All of them were tiny compared to the demon with the wings.

A tetrad demon, a korgejin. He flapped his wings once, hard, and used the blast of air to help his jump send him high before he came crashing down, straight onto the rider's position. A colossal beast, bigger than Caera, bigger than Diogo, he slammed into the ground on his hooves, and the mountains echoed with the harsh clang of his black sword striking the stone.

The rider and his goort dodged the sword with a small sidestep, leaving the giant demon landing and hitting nothing but the rough stone of the mountain. The area was mostly flat, enough for the demons to run around and surround the rider, but it didn't look like it'd be easy as that. The rider hopped off the horse, and landed hard, metal armor clanking with heavy thuds that announced how weighty the armor was. He drew his axes, turned, and faced the half dozen smaller demons that circled him.

"Zel will reward me," the winged tetrad said, growling as he bared his fangs at the rider, "when I present her your heart, and your head."

The rider said nothing. The new angle let David see the rider's front, the beautiful engravings and embossed gold skulls on the bronze and red, and how the helmet was actually shaped like a skull. It did have a T slit visor, but no light penetrated it, hiding the owner's face in complete shadow.

Whoever he was, whatever he was, he stood there, both axes in hand half raised out to his sides. It was a very human posture, standing up perfectly straight, but whoever wore the armor had to be at least seven feet tall.

"Gorlus," Caera whispered, "one of Zel's right hands."

"Gorlus." David gulped as he nodded. The giant demon, wrapped in black armor and wielding a giant black sword, all so much bigger than the rider, seemed so small in comparison.

"Your heart, for Zelandariel!" one of the other demons yelled. "She'll reward us. She will."

"Reward us!"

"Reward us!"

Gorlus spread his wings, lifted his sword to his mouth, and ran his long tongue along the massive blade, before pointing it at the rider.

"You shouldn't have come here, rider. Zel will be surprised and delighted, and I will taste of your soul."

Caera growled quietly in her throat, shook her head, and leaned in toward David.

"He didn't tell Zel he was going to do this. He's risking his life so he can surprise her."

"Or take the rider's heart for himself," Jes said. "Zel's changed ever since this guy got into her life, him and Saldavin. Fuck him."

David didn't say anything. He couldn't look away from the violence.

The rider ran forward. Maybe if he'd had a spear or a sword and shield, he'd have taken a defensive position, but two axes? David shrank into the stone, and watched, mesmerized, eyes locked onto the armored figure as he ran into the demons.

The demons ran straight back into him. Did they think their demon strength would work? Their size and mass? Or maybe they just wanted violence without a care for whether they lived or died? Whoever the rider was, he was smart enough to take advantage.

The rider ducked under the vrat's sword, and sank his right axe into the demon's stomach. Even from so far away, David heard the impact of the axe getting the demon just underneath the slab of black armor covering only a portion of their chest. And as he yanked the axe out of the vrat's guts, he slammed the left axe down onto the skull of the tiger who jumped straight at him. The tiger hit the ground almost as hard as the rock Caera had dropped earlier. Blood splattered.

The gargoyle and other vrat leapt for him from behind, and both got their claws onto the rider's armor. They were heavy demons, but the rider turned around without issue, and again sank his axes into their bodies with all the finesse of a lumberjack angry with a particularly stubborn tree. They died instantly, each getting the axe in the skull, and through it, down to the jaw.

Gorlus was right behind them. How could something that big move so fast? A ten-foot-tall beast on hooves, with wings spread and giant sword in hand, he half jumped half swooped toward the rider again. The rider couldn't dodge the sword this time, and the huge blade hit him in the side. The black blade sung with impact and vibration, and the clank sound echoed through the mountains as the rider fell. The blade had not pierced the armor.

"This is quite the disappointment," Gorlus said, slowly stomping after his prey, his two brutes circling the rider. "You show up again after all these years? I haven't forgotten what you did to me last time."

David looked Caera's way, but she shrugged and watched.

Gorlus and his two remaining demons laughed as the titans closed the distance.

"What's the matter, rider? Old age wearing you down?"

The rider said nothing. He didn't need to. The mount he rode turned, and without a neigh or click, charged. Only the clop clop of its hooves warned Gorlus the goort was coming, and he turned to face the horse-like creature.

Mistake. The rider got up to their armored feet as if they weighed nothing, jumped high into the air, and without a single grunt or scream, he slashed both his axes down toward Gorlus's back. The huge demon managed to turn around again to face the rider, but that left him open to the goort again. The giant horse crashed into the tetrad's back, and sank its horns into flesh.

Gorlus roared in pain and fury, but it ended with a squelch and crunch, as the rider sank both axes down onto the demon's face. With the demon facing David's direction, the rider blocked his view, but when the rider fell and landed on their feet and knee with a booming thud, David and his protectors all gasped.