The Pleasures of Hell 01.017

The rider whipped his head around in time to see the child of Belial's enormous tail smash into him. Four hands holding onto one pillar, legs pressed to the other, Vinicius roared with animal hunger, and maybe a little frustration, as the target of his anger fell into the depths.

The rider plummeted for a whole second. A flash of fire lit the darkness. Light could not penetrate the void below, but amber flames erupted from the rider and lit the walls of the trembling canyon. Mia did not blink. She watched, head turned and forced to look down over her shoulder below her, with the way David held her to his chest and with Jes holding his shoulders from behind. She watched, as enormous wings of black bone erupted from the rider's back, and wreathed themselves in flame.

The fire wings roared, loud enough to be heard over the rumbling canyon walls that continued to spread out. And the rider flew.

"Oh shit oh shit oh shit," David said. He had a much easier time looking down than her, and his voice trembled. "He... He..."

He wasn't flying. The rider's giant black wings of red flame caught the air, same as the gargoyle demon holding David, unable to gain height. He glided across the canyon, and with speed Jes couldn't hope to match, crashed into the side of the canyon wall, the side Jes was gliding toward.

But he was nowhere near their position. In moments, he'd glided across a canyon hundreds of meters wide, and slammed into the stone wall hard enough the impact was like a gunshot echoing through mountains. Both axes on his back again, the rider's body pinned against the stone, his terrifying wings vanished in a puff of flame, and he began the climb.

"How!?" David yelled.

"I don't know!" Mia yelled back.

Oh thank god he climbed slowly. Very slowly. For all his invincibility and power, he couldn't climb for shit. No one should have been able to climb a cliff wall while covered in heavy gold armor, gauntlets included, but the rider managed. He climbed sideways as well, toward one of the tunnel holes in the cliff wall. On the same side of the canyon Mia, David, and Jes were currently flying toward, yes, but nowhere near them.

They'd escaped. Mia and David had a chance.

"Fuuuuuck you two are heavy together!" Jes roared, snarled, grumbled, and tossed out some curses Mia had heard other demons say. Things like 'by Lilith', 'by Lucifer', and 'pile of bones'. But she also sounded perfectly happy being angry and using English curses. Or, Estian curses. What would a French person hear?

Jes had no chance of getting them back to the top of the canyon wall, but she hadn't hesitated to aim them at the canyon wall opposite of the spire, even when they'd been closer to the spire. Maybe she had friends on this side? Whatever the reason, she aimed straight for it, and as they got closer, she aimed for one of the tunnels in the wall.

If the tunnel connected to whatever tunnel the rider was aiming for, Mia was going to cry.

Jes got them closer, and closer. And then not so closer. Her forward glide aimed more and more down, speed fell, and Mia squeaked as she looked down at the darkness again. Whatever waited there, its invisible gaze followed her and her brother. And unfortunately, Mia and David were getting closer to it by the second.

"We're gonna hit the wall!" Jes yelled. "Hang on!"

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~~David~~

Oh god, not again.

He didn't know where to look. At the void below them and the invisible thing inside it that might as well have been the size of forever, or at the oncoming cliff wall about to flatten his already flattened nose? It had some grooves, chunks, a few handholds he knew he could climb, assuming his arm didn't straight rip out of its socket. The problem was, they weren't starting the climb from the bottom. They were going to slam into it, and Mia was in his arms.

No choice.

Jes did her best. She really did. She got an arm out from under his shoulder, held his and Mia's weight with one hand, and crashed into the wall with her one free hand out in front of her. Her claws and talons found grooves in the giant sheer cliff face, and her descent came to a quick halt.

Unfortunately, her slamming into the wall with David dangling from one arm was more chaotic than two bikers playing chicken. David got his good arm around Mia and she let go of him with one arm so she could half dangle from his neck, half hug his side and face the wall, but it wasn't enough. They hit and hit hard, and a new wave of pain ran through his body as all of his weight and Mia's weight pulled on his bad shoulder.

He scrambled to get his feet onto the wall, on a rock, a stone, a non-existent root, anything, but the surface crumbled. Pebbles fell, rocks peeled and broke away under his toes, and he screamed with frustration as he did his best to hold on and failed.

Wait, he was holding on. He looked up.

Jes, latched to the wall by her claws, had one hand wrapped around his left wrist, while her wings flared and flapped like a bird, desperate to not fall down the glass window they'd just hit. Her tail flailed behind her, but he knew she couldn't lift anything with it. She might be able to climb up if David wasn't limiting her to one hand, maybe.

"Jes!"

"Fucking climb! Tell your fucking sister to climb!"

"We can't get a hold of anything like this!"

"Grow! Some fucking! Claws!" With a roar, she sank her talons deep against some rocks, until the scraping noise of their sharp tips fighting for a ledge sent painful chills through David's body.

"Mia," he said. "Can you--"

"I'm trying!"

Mia was in the same position he was. She had one hand free at least, but with one of her hands clenched around his wrist and her whole body dangling and half turning -- ow -- as she dangled from him, she couldn't get a grip on the wall, either.

David, hanging from the arm of one woman, and with his sister dangling from his other arm, could do absolutely fuck all. Every moment sent scalding pain down through his shoulder. His broken nose was an afterthought. All he could do was pour his focus into squeezing Jes's wrist, and doing the same for Mia.

He risked another peek down, past Mia, toward the void below. It was the invisible monster again, or something like it. Same feeling, same sensation, same nothingness that'd tried to kill him and nearly had with an avalanche. This time, it was using a canyon.

No, that couldn't be right. The thing that'd attacked him on the mountain had been huge, sure, at least as far as physics would guess considering the footprints it left. But not so big it could create a fucking canyon. A canyon that was getting bigger by the second as another earthquake, or hellquake, ripped through Death's Grip, and turned the wall Jes climbed into slippery ice.

Her claws slipped free.

"Jes, get out of here!" he yelled.

"Oh shut up!" She grabbed his wrist with both hands and flapped her wings for all they were worth. It was just like last time, Dao in his arms, the two of them falling to their deaths, and Jes doing everything she could to save them. At least no giant rocks fell on them.

But demons couldn't fly. They sank lower, and lower. No matter how hard she flapped, her wings refused to grab enough air, and the void grew closer.

He wanted to let go of her wrist. Something in his brain told him to let go, so maybe she could save herself, glide to one of the tunnel openings, anything. But the demon had her claws wrapped tight around his wrist, and every muscle in her body flexed as her big bat wings spread as wide as they could. Even as her wings blasted air down at David, the best Jes could manage after the collision with the wall, was slowing their descent.

"David, look!" Mia's voice.

"What? I--"

An amber maelstrom descended on them. Black wings of bone, wreathed in flame.

The rider. How did the rider get above them?

David squeezed Jes's wrist. "Jes, let go! Get to a tunnel!"

"I said shut--"

The speed was insane, the wings almost a blur of amber against Hell's fire sky. Maybe it was because of the rider's weight, all that gold bronze armor, but he came down from above and his giant wings did nothing to slow him. And once he got close to them, he spread his wings and crashed directly into them.

The impact was painless. Part of David's brain told him it'd hurt later, like the time he'd slipped on an ice slope and cracked the back of his head. In a few seconds, he'd be on the ground, groaning, maybe crying, from what was probably a bunch of busted ribs. Not yet, though.

More realizations kicked in. Jes had let him go. He'd let go of Mia. He snapped his eyes around. He couldn't see them. Oh god oh god oh god.

"What the fuck let me go you fucking sonuvabitch fucking I'll fucking send you to the fucking after-after you fucking--"

Oh thank god Jes was still alive. It was hard to see anything, with his face inches away from a set of giant burning black wings, his gut on the rider's shoulder, but he heard Jes's curses and roars punch through the noise like firecrackers.

"David!" Mia's voice. "David, can--"

"Be silent," the rider said, and her voice cut through Jes's curses, the roaring vibration of the hellquakes, and the hissing wind hitting David's ears.

Wait. Her voice?

Whoever the gold-armored person was, they had much more air control than Jes had, and didn't have to fly across a canyon. The stranger had no trouble turning back to the nearby wall, and glided into one of the tunnel entrances.

She landed inside a tunnel, a small one only ten feet tall and wide, and landed with the same heavy clinks that'd warned David whenever the rider was moving. But, it couldn't be the rider. He'd heard the rider speak, and had seen the rider use fire wings to land on a much lower tunnel along the canyon wall, near the bottom before the ravine wall ended and opened up to the black void.

Whoever this woman was, she dumped David off her shoulder with a powerful shrug, and as he landed on his ass hard enough to bruise, the stranger dropped Jes and Mia. She'd held Mia by the wrist and Jes by her ankle before dropping them on the tunnel floor. Mia landed on her feet at least. Jes had been upside down, clawing at the woman's hand, and subsequently dropped on her back and wings.

With a snarl and hiss, Jes jumped away from the woman, grabbed Mia and David's wrists, and threw the two of them to the stone a few feet behind her as she flared her wings and faced the armored stranger again.

"What the fuck?" she said, snarling as she snapped her tail behind her.

Jes was a few inches shy of seven feet, and about as tall as the stranger before them. The rider had been a little taller than either of them, and on second, third, and fourth glance, this stranger was a little slimmer, too. Considering the woman's voice David had heard, and the sword sheath on her back and lack of axes...

"You're not the rider," David said, and pushed on the ground with his only good arm. Nope, that wasn't happening. Pain finally found him, flooded him, ripped the air out of his lungs, and he collapsed backward.

"David. Holy fucking shit, David." Mia got up, and helped him up with his good arm. "You look like shit. Dislocated?"

"It was. It's been yanked back into the socket... half a dozen times today." He knew he was going to be starving tomorrow. "You okay?"

"Yes I'm okay! You... you..." With tears in her eyes, Mia threw her arms around him. Never mind the gargoyle standing beside her she didn't know, or the stranger in gold armor who'd saved them, Mia wanted to hug him. He wanted to hug her back as tight as he could, but settled for a one-armed hug.

The pain in his chest told him it was going to get a million times worse soon, like a popcorn kernel about to explode. He gently pushed her away.

"Sure you're okay?" he asked.

"Yeah, yeah. I got kidnapped, made a few weird friends, and Zel, she--you! How did you survive?"

"Jes and her friend found me." He nodded back toward the gargoyle. "Caera, too. They've been keeping me alive."

"Caera, the tregeera? From Gorzen Eye?"

"Yeap."

"Oh thank god." She giggled and squeezed him again. Oh so much ow.

Hell, apparently, did not like hugs. The tunnel, the ground, the amber veins along the cave wall leaking lava down the sides of the ravine, all of it shook and threw Mia and David down on their knees again.

"David!" Jes yelled. "Get off your ass and--" The hellquake yanked the ground out from under Jes, too, and the only reason she didn't immediately fall over was her flared wings.

She had a point, though. A woman who looked an awful lot like the rider stood before them, skull helmet pointed at them, and her black wings faded in a puff of red. The flames momentarily lit the tunnel far, a burst of fire, but it disappeared just as quickly, and the black bone wings within crumbled into tiny bits of ash. The gold-armored woman did not react, even as the soot of her wings fell around her boots.

Her aura was different, too. There was malice there, rage, but it wasn't an overwhelming flood like the rider's. And there was something underneath it, something that felt warm.

"You saved us," Mia said. "Thanks. Um... who are you?"

"There weren't supposed to be two of you." As quiet and cold as the rider, the woman walked toward them. Jeskura stood her ground, but once the stranger got within clawing range, Jes didn't claw her. Her tail drooped, and the stranger nudged her aside. "You saved them."

"Fuck yes I did," Jes said, summoning some rage and venom. It didn't last. Her wings drooped and her eyes fell. "Got a problem with that?" Her fiery voice did not match her body language.

If not for the gold and bronze skull helmet, and the t-slit opening hiding the person's face in thick shadow, David could have sworn the stranger smiled.

"It was good that you did." Nodding, the stranger squatted down in front of Mia and David. The trembling ground didn't phase her. "Siblings. Twins. Unexpected."

"You know about the unmarked?" Mia asked.

"I do."

"Yes! Finally," David said. "Please, for the love of god tell us--"

"No."

Heat drained from his body, from the tips of his fingers and toes straight to his heart.

"No?"

"No," the stranger said. "If you want answers, journey to the Forgotten Place."

"Are you fucking serious?" David and Mia said together. Jes chuckled.

"I am serious." The stranger grabbed them both by a wrist, and picked them up, undeterred by the ground that continued to shake, and the heavy cracks of distant rocks shattering as the canyon grew wider. "There weren't supposed to be siblings..."

"Supposed to be?" David asked.

"Supp--oh no!" Mia let out a tiny squeak and ran toward the tunnel exit.

The stranger did not stop her. She stared down at David, and left a long quiet pause where a sigh would have fit perfectly. No sigh, though, just silence filled with breaking stones and the distant roars of angry demons.

After a heavy gulp, David stepped around her and followed Mia to the edge of the tunnel.

"Oh shit, he's still alive," David said.

The colossal demon called Vinicius dangled from the canyon wall to the side of the spire, and his four hands and raptor feet dug at the stones even as blood dripped down his legs. And all his arms. The big demon was really fucked up, injured, and struggling.

He was trying to get away from the demons of the spire, apparently. Or maybe they'd shown up after, but at least a dozen demons hung off the edge of the balcony slope, dangling from the metal beams that'd once been covered in the spire's flesh walls. The flesh and bone that'd used to make up the spire's side had been ripped free on one side, leaving behind a metal, spiky framework covered in chunks of muscle. The spire was a strange structure, and the way it bent sideways while still being connected to the canyon wall along its lower half was just as strange, the whole structure bending like a branch. And along its lower half, wherever the flesh wall had been ripped off, demons swarmed.

Whatever had caused his current situation, Vinicius couldn't go back. The demons, increasing and joining the chaos from the balconies above, hissed and roared. They were looking for blood, and it seemed to be Vinicius's. The huge guy could probably take fifty demons in a fight without issue, but he was bleeding from half a dozen places. No one could climb up onto a ledge if a dozen people were there, waiting to stomp on your fingers. Or in this case, bite your face off. He had no choice but to keep climbing toward a tunnel and hope it was empty.

"He's gonna fall!" Mia raised her tiny fists in front of her. "I don't see Adron or Kas anywhere, though. I hope they're okay."

"Holy fucking shit," Jes said, joining them. "Vinicius. So that's what that fucker looks like."

"I... I um... I freed him," Mia said.

Jes spun around. "You what!?"

"I freed him! I had no choice. Zel got this leash on him, so I took the leash and killed Zel and--"

"You fucking what!?" Jes threw up both hands. "Zel's dead!?"

"I didn't have a choice! She was going to torture me, and--"

Another hellquake shook the canyon, and the three of them got to their knees immediately. Easier to not accidentally fall forward to their deaths in the void below when on all fours.

The void stared at them and reached out for them. Something hit the walls of the canyon and pushed them further apart, but that almost seemed incidental to what was actually happening. Whatever it was in the black nothingness, it was trying to get them, or get out from down below or something, and its focus pointed directly at him and Mia. How the fuck David knew that, he had no idea, but he knew, and looking down into the depths made it feel like a million people walking on his grave.

Hundreds of demons on the ravine wall, both high above David's head and on the other side of the bottomless canyon, stared down into the darkness, or toward David and Mia, and the stranger in gold and bronze armor who'd just flown around with fire wings. They didn't know what to do, either.

"You have the child of Belial on a spire leash?" the stranger asked.

The three of them turned as the stranger walked up to them.

"I do, yeah." Mia touched her necklace. "I haven't used it, but--"

"Listen to me, unmarked. If you see another unmarked, avoid them at all costs. Kill them if you must. You cannot risk this happening again." The stranger shook her head, the closest thing to some sort of body language yet. "You've started this journey far later than the others, but you should at least know the goal. Reach the Forgotten Place, or we are all doomed."

David and Mia, both still on their hands and knees on the edge of the tunnel, stared up at the stranger.

"Uh, seriously?" they asked together. Jes outright laughed, this time.

The stranger reached down, grabbed Mia by the wrist, and jumped off the tunnel into the canyon.

"Mia!" David got up halfway, and collapsed again as his bad arm gave out, and Hell slid the ground back and forth under him. He tumbled forward, and gravity sucked his stomach out from under him as he fell.

Sharp claws wrapped around his ankle and pulled him back into the tunnel.

"Stop trying to get yourself killed! Fucking christ!" Jes, on her hands and knees, glared down at him with angry, panicked eyes.

"Mia! She took Mia!"

Hell roared. The walls of stone trembled. More rocks fell from the new cliff faces, and shattered on the edge of nothingness below. None of it mattered. David, on his stomach and head sticking out over the edge, watched the person who'd saved their lives steal his sister, and plummet toward the void below.

The stranger's wings reemerged in a small explosion of flame and caught the air hard. They spread as wide as a tetrad's wings, and guided the stranger and his sister toward the other canyon wall. Just like when she'd crashed into David earlier, the stranger's speed was immense. She was going to reach the opposite canyon wall.