The Pleasures of Hell 01.017

She slid closer and closer, and turned over onto her ass and dug her heels into the balcony, but they found no groove or friction to latch onto.

"Mia!"

Mia looked up. Adron had fallen toward the hole between the circular balconies, and held onto one of the chains dangling from the balcony above with his good arm. Vinicius did his best to keep his back against the double doors of the dungeon, but the with the spire tilting on its side almost perpendicular to the doors, his weight eventually slipped out from under him. The lower of the two doors to the dungeon flung open, and two of Vinicius's hands reached up and grabbed it to keep from sliding down the balcony toward Mia. But neither of them had said her name.

Her brother had. David, wearing nothing but a silly, weird skirt thing, and a piece of black demon armor across half his chest that probably weighed a lot, slid down toward her. He made no effort to slow down, and half stood up on the slanted, bloody surface, borderline surfing down it.

"Mia!"

"David, what're you--" She sucked in a breath as the edge of the tower came up to her. Her hands flailed out to the sides, but the metal beams to her left and right were too far to reach. The spire's inner balcony floor came to an end, and gravity, apparently out to kill her, pulled her down into oblivion.

David's hand grabbed hers. David grabbed the metal beam just outside Mia's reach.

The scream of pain from her brother ripped her eyes away from the abyss waiting below. His right hand held hers, and she dangled over the newly opened canyon. His left hand held the side of the metal beam between some of its bloody spikes. David's left shoulder did not look good, and a new coating of blood came out of his nostrils as every muscle in his arms and chest flexed.

He was going to break. She had to grab something, anything, and get her weight off him before he couldn't hold on anymore, but something grabbed her eyes and demanded she look around.

Hell had been ripped open directly under the spire, a canyon that cut across as far as her eyes could see, in both directions, toward the center of Hell and toward its outer edge. A giant ravine that'd spread at least a few hundred feet across, and was only growing wider.

The spire, a colossal structure as deep as it was tall, black metal framework that held red flesh and white bone, was half falling half bending into the canyon that'd ripped open underneath it. The only reason it hadn't fallen into the abyss was the metal framework and the way it latched into one side of the ravine and hooked into the stone wall. The canyon wall that'd ripped away oozed and bled, and a few thick strands of sinew still connected the distant ravine wall to the spire, but they snapped as the ravine grew wider again. There were tunnels in the canyon walls, too, ones that'd once connected to the spire's depths, and sex demons and souls stood in them and stared down. Not across the canyon to the spire, but down.

Mia looked down.

Hell bled into the darkness. The spire, bending under its weight with half its body exposed, oozed blood and lava that spilled and ran down the canyon wall. Veins of lava in the opposite canyon wall poured down the stones as well. The crimson and glowing amber fluids fell into blackness.

The depths weren't black or dark because of shadow. The fire sky burned above, and lit the canyon walls all the way down, to where they eventually stopped. Hell had a bottom? Unless her eyes were lying to her, the canyon wall opposite of her didn't go down infinitely, but stopped, and exposed the blackness below. True, unending, real blackness. The amber, glowing lava poured upon the obsidian eternity beneath her, beneath Hell herself, and broke apart upon nothingness. The crimson liquid of the spire did the same, its fleshy growths and torn muscles bleeding onto the blackness below, only for the blood to hit something, break apart, and vanish.

She stared down into the endless eternity. It stared back up at her.

Demon roars tried to pull her vision away, but failed. As she looked into the black hole, shapes fell past her in her peripheral vision, dark red bodies wearing black armor, and a couple wearing gold. Their screams and roars of rage and frustration echoed through the canyon, and ended instantly when they reached the bottom. No, before they reached the blackness. At the edge of the canyon's floor, above the shifting, living darkness, the falling demons hit something else. They shattered like glass, and vanished, before reaching the void.

New vibrations flowed up through the canyon wall. The earlier hellquake had been from the canyon ripping Hell open, but had thankfully stopped for the moment. The new vibration didn't move her, shake her or the tower, or do anything she could feel. But she felt it nonetheless.

Something in the darkness below roared. No sound, but it was roaring. Something in the darkness moved, something she could not see.

Endlessness.

Nothingness.

She forced her eyes back up to David. Like her, he stared down into the emptiness that wanted to devour them.

"David!"

His eyes snapped back to her with a jolt.

"Jesus," he said. "Je--holy fuck my arm!" He looked back up to his fucked up shoulder, back to her, and ground his teeth hard enough she almost heard his jaw click. "You got fat!"

"Oh fuck off and hold on!" She swung her other arm up and grabbed onto his wrist. He groaned and cursed, but nothing he hadn't told her a thousand times before, and she summoned a grin for him as she helped him pull her up. They were both small and light, and that meant they'd forever be weaker than people bigger than them. But they were damn good at climbing.

The strange, electric flow continued to run between them, but didn't blind her with a flood of sensation and information anymore. Whatever it was, it'd settled down to something ignorable.

She scaled up her brother's arm, waist, good shoulder, and got her hands onto the metal beam that connected her balcony floor to the floor above. It was covered in huge jagged spikes, and the spikes were covered in torn bits of flesh where they'd once been covered in the spire's muscle and bone wall. She got her hands around the curves of some spikes for a better grip, dangled from both hands, and looked down again.

The blackness looked at her.

There were stories about the things people saw in the ocean. It was one of the deepest, oldest fears humans had, right up there with the fear of spiders, snakes, and heights. Staring into the darkness of night was one thing. Staring into the endless depths of the ocean, straight down into blackness that defied understanding, while things in the dark stared back up, hidden enormous things, was the stuff legends were written about. Legends and horror stories.

There was something in the darkness below her, something that swam in shades of onyx and almost shining edges of obsidian. Whatever it was, its movement stirred the black waves, and countless, invisible eyes surrounding an eye the size of the universe stared up at her and her brother.

"The fuck is going on?" David asked.

It was David's voice that ripped her eyes away from the void, this time. He was closer to the balcony, and with the whole spire bending and tilting almost forty-five degrees, he got his feet up and pressed to the balcony behind him. The tilt didn't look so bad on the floors below them. It looked worse on the floors above, but at least the half of the spire that grew above ground had kept its walls. Only the lower half had lost its walls, all on one side, ripped away by the opposite ravine cliff face. The metal beams were literally bending.

If the spire lost its grip on the canyon wall they were on, it'd fall into the dark.

"I don't know what's going on!" she said. "Did the rider do something?"

"I don't think so."

"I killed Zel, that might have--"

"You killed Zel!?"

She glared at him, and slowly swung toward him and the balcony along the metal beam. If she thought of them as monkey bars, and not the bones of a flesh spire, or the only things keeping her from falling to her death, it wasn't so bad.

"She was going to torture me! And I don't think her death has anything to do with... with this!" She waved one of her feet below her at the pit. Best gesture she could manage with both hands busy. "Now help me get up!"

"The fuck are we going to do if we even can get back into the spire!? The--"

"David stop thinking and just go!"

"Go where!? We can't climb back up this slope!"

"I... I..."

Shit. He was right. Her brother pressed his feet up against the balcony slope, and tried to push himself up back onto it, but without an edge to get his feet on, he couldn't get up. He did manage to get a foot up long enough to pull himself up and straddle the metal beam, though.

Once settled, he reached out for her and helped her do the same. She had to sit higher on the beam, and slip her legs between some of its big spikes, but it was a shit load better than dangling off the edge of the spire, over a black hole.

She forced herself to look down and did her best to keep her eyes on the canyon wall and not the pit. The ravine that'd ripped open underneath the spire had taken at least a third of the spire's flesh walls right off the metal bones, where they now oozed blood from the other canyon wall, or literally fell off the canyon wall into the void below, joining the hundreds of remnants and demons that fell into oblivion.

Demons roared. Some stood in tunnels, either on her canyon wall or on the opposite one, tunnels that'd once been connected to the spire's guts. Most stood on the canyon edge high above, on both sides, and all of them stared down into the endless black. Whatever battle had been happening on the surface, it was over.

A familiar shape glided across the air from above, someone tall and curvy, with wings that struggled to hold her weight. A spire mother. Acelina? How the fuck? Either that wasn't Acelina and one of the other spire mothers, or she'd survived the rider, climbed a few floors, and fell out of the tower like the rest of them almost had.

The zotiva glided toward the opposite canyon wall, ignoring the other demons and souls that fell from the tower to their deaths below. Definitely a zotiva, barely able to glide at all with her almost skeletal wings, but she managed to reach a tunnel entrance at the very bottom of the canyon wall. Any further and she'd have died.

The spire mother looked back at the tower, too far for Mia to read her obsidian face, and disappeared into the tunnel.

A glint of color drew Mia's eyes up. Someone else waited on the top of the canyon edge, opposite of the spire, someone in gold and bronze armor like the rider. Someone... slimmer than the rider?

"Mia!"

Adron's voice. Mia snapped her eyes up, and her stomach dropped.

The rider stood on the doors of the dungeon, literally. The huge metal door hung open, Vinicius dangled from it, and the rider stood on its edge with one foot, the other pressed to the sloped balcony. David's broken sword no longer stuck out of his neck.

How long had he been standing there, with the doors open? Maybe Acelina really had gotten out?

David shook his head, looking up at the rider. "There's no way he'll--"

If the rider ever gave a damn about Vinicius, someone he apparently knew, he didn't anymore. With a clear chance to sink his axes into Vinicius's claws and send the gigantic demon tumbling down toward Mia and David, he didn't take it. Maybe he thought it'd put Vinicius in his way of his true goal, because he ignored Vinicius, hooked one of his axes on his back, kept the other in hand, and jumped.

His metal boots hit the sloped balcony, and he slid down the bloodied metal surface like he was riding a surfboard.

"What the fuck!" Mia tightened her grip on the beam between her legs and backed away from the balcony as fast as she could. Not very fast. Sliding up forty-five degrees on a big metal beam covered in blood and giant spikes, to get higher and away from where the rider would land was borderline impossible. And David was below her.

The rider, body and helmet aimed straight at David, raised the axe.

"David, jump!" Mia reached down below her, half to David, half to the empty air beneath her.

David jumped. The fact he didn't pause and do some calculations was surprising. Her brother was not the sort of guy to just do something on the fly, no matter who told him to, but he listened to her this time. He looked petrified.

His hand wrapped around her wrist. Hers wrapped his. Her chest slammed into the beam as his weight pulled her down, and she groaned as she squeezed as hard as she could. Thank god her brother was a small guy.

David, dangling from her wrist, risked a quick peek down before looking back up at her with wide eyes.

"Mia, can--"

The loud clink of metal hitting metal vibrated through the beam. Behind her, the rider landed on the base of her metal beam, and his axe hit the metal where David had been at the same time. The sharp ping made her ears ring.

"Stop, please! Leave us alone!" She almost didn't bother saying anything. A random hellquake ripping a canyon open directly under the spire? The strange blackness below them that no shadow could explain or justify? It didn't even register to the rider. Whoever he was, he didn't give a shit about anything other than killing them. No point in begging.

The rider took one step up the black metal beam, and Hell ripped apart again. He fell back, and his back pressed against the slope of the balcony, the beam under his feet. Heavy vibration shook the tower, and Mia squeezed her dangling brother with all her might while her other arm held the metal beam and its bloody spikes until her knuckles ached.

The darkness below rumbled. She looked down, knowing full well she shouldn't have, and when the darkness again met her eyes, she tried to scream. Nothing came out, only silence, an empty voice lost under the roaring vibration of Hell crumbling, breaking, and tearing further apart. The canyon grew wider, and chunks of stone and flesh fell from the canyon walls and the spire alike from the trembling. More screams and roars fell past Mia, and she peeked around only long enough to confirm more demons fell from the tower into the abyss below. The same thing happened again. They fell and fell, a long plummet into darkness, until their bodies broke apart and vanished before reaching the thing waiting for them.

The darkness reached up. Invisible, but she could see it, limbs or tentacles or something, shimmering in the air, warping and bending her vision like heat would. Or like a black hole would. It struck out against the canyon walls, and Hell shook again. Whatever was beneath them was trying to rip a hole open directly underneath Mia and David. Not the rider, not Vinicius, not the spire or the hundreds of demons around or anything. It was looking directly at her and her brother.

The rider pushed himself back to standing, fell forward toward Mia's beam, and grabbed one of spikes coming off its sides. Without a sound other than the clinking of metal, he climbed closer, and raised his axe high.

Mia looked up the balcony back toward the center of the tower. Adron wasn't there anymore. Did he fall out of the tower into the canyon? Did Kas? She sucked in a hard breath and looked down to David. He stared back up at her, eyes flicking between her and the rider.

The rider came closer. He refused to let the hellquake dislodge him. He climbed up the beam, one foot to a spike, hand grabbing a higher spike, and he brought down the axe.

Mia rolled off the beam.

The world froze again. Her stomach shot up into her throat. Realization cut through David's eyes like a knife.

"Mia!"

"David, I'm sorry! I..."

She held his hand. He held hers. They stared into each other's eyes as they fell toward the darkness below.

Just like last time, David hugged her and wrapped his arms around her. She hugged him back. In a couple of seconds, the speed of their falling turned the wind against their ears into a maelstrom, and cold shivers stabbed through her as the air grew harsh and cruel.

But she could feel her brother. That was a whole lot better than nothing. Dying with him a second time wasn't so bad, right? He--

Her stomach shot back down into her guts and almost out through her ass as the sudden fall turned into a sudden upward climb.

"What the--"

"Almost didn't jump in time!" A woman's voice. A demon woman's voice.

"Jes!" David, arms still wrapped around Mia, screamed in the most joyful voice she'd ever heard. "Jes, you fucking beautiful angel!" Whoever the demon Jes was, apparently David liked using cheesy lines on her.

"Shut up and let me work!"

Mia forced her face out of David's chest and neck, and looked up. Gargoyle wings. Jes the gorgala had her hands' claws hooked under David's shoulders, and was straining hard to hold on as her wide wings fought against the air.

"I jumped down before you fell, the moment the rider came down to get you. Had to build up... some... fucking... speed!" Her throat flexed almost as much as her shoulders, and she veered them toward the canyon wall opposite of the spire. For a second, she'd taken them back up, using her built up speed on the way down to curve her momentum back upward. The pressure that must have put on her wings was insane.

It wasn't long before she leveled out, though, and gravity got its claws in her again. Demons couldn't fly, Mia knew that from what the others had told her. They could only glide, and Jes did her best to glide toward the canyon wall opposite from the spire and the rider.

"Thanks!" Mia yelled.

"I said shut up!"

Okay, the gargoyle woman was the angry sort. Mia could understand that. David probably appreciated that in a woman.

Mia hugged David as tight as she could to keep from falling, and he did the same, but his shoulder was a mess. It didn't look dislocated, but she could see it flex oddly and the whole arm trembled under her. So she held on tight and looked around some more. Hell continued to rumble, and the demons on the edges of the canyon backed off as a few more rocks broke off the wall of stone. The rider remained where he was, half standing on the metal beam and half against the tilted balcony behind him.

The spire really had tipped over. With the opposite canyon wall having ripped away an enormous chunk of the flesh and white bone of the spire's lower half, leaving the hidden metal framework of it exposed, the spire half collapsed under its own weight. It bent to the side, teetering over the canyon, bending like a branch and refusing to break. A weird building of metal, and literal flesh and bone that'd grown inside a hellscape of rock and deep rivers of lava.

Dozens of levels of the spire were below ground. The fleshy walls were bent and broken, compressed at the bottom where the tower's weight half pressed into the canyon side. Another demon fell from one of the exposed inner balconies, and another. The rider watched on, ignoring all of it, helmet still pointed up at David and Mia.

A huge mass slid down the balcony behind and above the rider, dark red, with black spikes all over it. Vinicius.

"The fuck!?" Jes said, looking over her shoulder.

"Vinicius," Mia said, and she clenched hard as she hugged David, and stared past him at the exposed side of the spire.

The rider and Vinicius knew each other, and whatever had happened between them hadn't been good. Enemies now, of some kind or another. He might have slid down the balcony because he was too injured and massive to hold his own weight along the blood-soaked surface. He might have slid down because he wanted the rider dead that much. Either way, Vinicius and his titanic form were more than big enough. He crashed into the rider's metal beam, and another beam almost ten feet away.