The Pleasures of Hell 01.017

"David! David!" Mia dangled from the stranger's hand, squirming in the air. Every moment she grew further and further away, and her voice disappeared under the rumbling hellquake and roaring demons above.

"Mia! Jes, do something!"

"Fucking do what!? I can't glide that far! I have no idea how she's doing it but that's borderline flying, David."

And only angels could fly, according to Jes.

"Fuck! Fuck fuck fuck!" He slammed his good hand against the stone, but the hellquake and the vibrations that came and went in waves laughed at him. It roared and shook the ground underneath him, and his voice vanished underneath it all.

And then it stopped. The hellquake, the breaking stones, the shaking canyon walls that grew further and further apart, it all came to a sudden, sharp stop.

"The fuck?" Jes said as she stood back up.

David pushed himself back up to his hands and knees, but didn't risk standing. He couldn't tear his eyes away from the stranger's red flaming wings, and the now descending path they took toward the opposite canyon wall that'd grown even further away.

"I... I can't believe..."

"I have no fucking idea what's going on," Jes said. "Was that the rider? Couldn't be. They looked different. Felt different, too."

"No, it wasn't the rider. Someone else."

"Someone else in aera armor, with fire wings!?"

"I... don't know." He sat back and watched the stranger glide off with his sister. Every moment the stranger grew lower and lower, not able to fly but still getting a ridiculous distance. "Will they make it?"

"Looks like." Jes squatted down beside him at the edge of the tunnel, and watched, the only thing either of them could do.

She was right. The stranger got dangerously close to the void below, but she reached one of the tunnels on the other side of the canyon, near the spire. The tunnel Vinicius climbed toward.

"David..."

"She took her! She took my sister."

"David--"

"We have to get over there!" He ignored the pain radiating from his nose, from his shoulder, the fucking agony from his ribs, and got back up. Hell wasn't shaking anymore, so he risked getting to his feet, and pressed his good hand against the nearby tunnel wall. "If we climb to the top, we can glide over there, right? We can--"

"David! Just look, man. Look at that." Jes stood beside him, and gestured out around at the canyon. "This thing has grown ridiculously huge. Even if I climbed to a nearby mountaintop and jumped, fifty fifty I don't make it across. Carrying someone? Not gonna happen."

"But--"

"It grew! The canyon grew! It fucking grew, and grew... until that bitch in the armor took Mia."

"Until..."

Jes was right, on both accounts. The canyon had kept growing and growing, and was now so damn wide Mia was just a dot in the distance, standing next to a slightly bigger, gold and bronze dot. Vinicius was big enough he still had form, and slowly but surely he made his way along the canyon wall toward the tunnel.

"Think he'll make it?" Jes asked.

"Now that the hellquake is over, I... I guess." Energy gone, adrenaline gone, he collapsed back on his ass again. And of course that sent enough pain through him to almost blind him. It forced a little whimper out of him, too. Or maybe that was the crippling depression he felt course through him, like someone had dumped him in an ice bath and drowned him in it for good measure.

Trekking across Hell, running through a battlefield, facing the rider, none of it mattered. He'd failed.

"David, she--"

"She's gone. I can't get to her now." He watched the distant canyon wall. Far as he could tell, the stranger and Mia stood in the tunnel and waited for Vinicius, so at least she was still alive. But... "She's gone. I can't... fucking... fix this. How the fuck am I going to fix this? I can't--"

Jes grabbed him by his useless half breastplate and yanked him up to his feet. He almost screamed, but the rage in her eyes knocked the wind out of him.

"I risked my fucking life to save this puddle of weak shit? No! I risked my life to save the fucker who ran through a fucking battlefield with nothing but a tiny broken sword, and faced off against the fucking rider, to save his sister! Pull yourself together!"

That was a familiar speech. Maybe Jes liked war films.

"I--"

"Shut up, I'm not done! Hell's been ripped open. That invisible thing that tried to kill us before is down there, in the black, and I don't know what that means! Guaran-fucking-teed not even Caera will have the slightest idea what the fuck is going on. But that thing down there, that... nothingness, was trying to break Hell! Break Hell or break into it, I don't fucking know. And it stopped trying when that bitch took your sister. And look! She didn't kill her!" Jes, one hand holding David up, pointed out to the canyon. "She fucking helped!"

"Helped..."

"Yes, helped! She saved your lives when I couldn't, because you and your sister are too fucking fat! Saved my life, too." The rage melted from her eyes, and she stepped back as she let him go. "And she told you what to do. You've been going out of your mind trying to figure out what's going on, right? Now, you have an idea, or at least know where to go to find out."

He stepped back, too, put his back against the rock wall, and let the weight of all the shittiness drag his head down. But not all the way down.

"I have a goal."

"Exactly, and while I'm not happy some bitch in gold armor yanked me out of the sky, I'm inclined to believe what she said."

"About Hell being doomed if I don't make it to the Forgotten Place?"

Jes opened her mouth, probably preparing for a sarcastic comment. But after a few seconds of silence, she sighed and nodded.

"Yeah. And that bitch asked about Mia's leash before she took her. I'm guessing she's going to make Vinicius help her."

"That giant demon, on a leash? The fuck is a spire leash?"

"No idea. Valzanal used to fuck around with shit like that, torture methods using the spire's powers. Zel had that fucker locked up for a long time, long as I can remember. So sure, it makes sense she got a leash on him. Mia has it now, so if I had to guess, your sister has a protector."

"A protector." David shivered and rubbed his chest and ribs. "He was fucking terrifying, Jes."

"Then it's a good thing she's got the leash. And--Hey, he made it."

Jes was right. Vinicius, gigantic even on the colossal wall of stone, got to the edge of the tunnel where Mia and the strange waited. And unless the distance was lying to David's eyes, the stranger helped Vinicius up. Damn, she was strong.

He sucked in a deep, resetting breath and forced himself to nod. His sister was alive, she knew he was alive, and unless Jes was wrong, she had a powerful demon on a leash. Even better, she had the same goal he did: get to the Forgotten Place.

"Okay," he said. "Okay. Mia's okay. I'm okay. I--"

"You look like shit." Jes came in close and examined his face. "Nose doesn't need to be set, at least, but holy fuck you went through some shit in there."

He smiled. "Thanks. For saving me and my sis."

She pulled her head back and snarled.

"Daoka was throwing a fucking fit, watching shit from this side of the canyon. I couldn't just let you fall. She'd never forgive me." She squirmed a little as her eyes fell, and she flicked her tail on the floor a few times before gesturing down at the tunnel edge, and the thing waiting below. "Christ, what is that?"

"I don't know. It has to be that thing that chased us earlier, but..."

"But this thing is... trying to... I don't fucking know." She looked left. She looked right. "Right to the fucking ends, I think. We could walk this canyon and all we'd do is reach the inner and outer edges of Hell. There's no getting across."

David mirrored her. Yeap, the canyon went from one end to the other, and again vertigo hit him as the part of his brain that looked for a horizon couldn't find it. The colors blurred together, and red met black and stone in the far distance.

He didn't bother asking if the sea in the center of Hell could run out of water. It couldn't. The same way the stone they stood on couldn't hover or float, but there it was, an empty blackness far far below them, waiting to devour them but unable because Hell floated above it. Jes and David both stared down into it for a while, and both of them shivered.

Black holes were scary, from a scientific perspective, but an existential one, too. Anyone who spent enough time learning about astrophysics eventually developed a deep fear of them, kinda like the fear many people had of deep ocean water. The same fear ran through him now, and cold shivers pulsed down his spine as he gazed into the endless black below. A black hole, except with no edges. An obsidian, endless ocean. A void. And something swam inside it.

Whatever was down there, it didn't look back up at him anymore. It was still there, but couldn't see him? Something had changed.

Mia wasn't with him anymore. That's what'd changed.

"There's something down there," he said. "There's something... in that... nothingness. It wants me, and my sister."

"Yeah."

"Any idea wh--"

"Not a single fucking one."

He sighed. Why the fuck were so many strange things happening to him?

Movement across the canyon grabbed his vision, and a tiny burst of quiet, high-pitched noise. He squinted and put his hands up to his ears.

Mia stood at the very edge of her tunnel, and some part of her was moving. Jumping up and down and waving, maybe? Shouting, too, but by the time the sound reached him it was a whisper, and buried under the noises of the demons above.

He jumped -- holy fucking god ow -- and waved with his good arm, but said nothing back. No point in adding to the confusion.

After a little while, Mia disappeared into the tunnel with the giant demon and the gold armored woman.

"Come on, we gotta figure out where this tunnel goes," Jes said. "Gotta get up and find Dao and Caera. Climbing the canyon wall would be too risky."

"You don't know the tunnel?"

"There aren't too many tunnels near the spire, except for the hatching pit tunnels. This isn't one of them, but--holy fuck I just realized the hatching pit tunnels might be exposed. Oh fucking god if those little fuckers can scale the canyon wall, Death's Grip is going to turn into a shit show real fast." She threw up her hands. "Fuck. Maybe the spire can repair Death's Grip?"

"Repair a canyon that looks thousands of kilometers long?" Maybe tens of thousands.

"Maybe. I fucking hope so."

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

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

~~Mia~~

"Let me go! Let me go!"

The gold stranger let her go, and Mia collapsed on her ass when her ankles hit the stone.

Groaning, Mia got back up, and looked back to the canyon. Oh god, it'd grown so huge. So ridiculously, utterly huge. The void below waited, no longer ripping Hell apart, but the damage had been done. And this bitch beside her had put her on the wrong side!

"How the fuck am I supposed to get back to my brother now?"

"You're not. You saw what happened." The stranger gestured to the canyon. Despite how scary she looked, especially with her black bone wings all covered in flame poofing out of existence and crumbling into soot, the woman sounded perfectly normal. Almost boringly normal.

"You can't believe David and I..." With a heavy sigh, Mia leaned against the tunnel wall, and stared out across the canyon to the two dots in the distance. David, and his demon friend Jes, stood in their tunnel entrance, same as Mia, and didn't go anywhere.

It was so far. So close, and so damn far.

"We are safe for now," the stranger said, and she stepped up to the edge of the tunnel. "Vinicius, faster!" Even the way she raised her voice was hollow, completely at odds with the burning cold of her aura. Murder was the only word Mia could find to describe it. Murder, and something underneath it the rider didn't have, something subtle, but warm, and almost inviting.

"Vinicius knew you were coming?"

"No."

"Then, uh, what makes you think--"

The stranger reached around and down the edge of the tunnel, and grabbed hold of Vinicius. Mia, eyes locked on her brother, squeaked and jumped back as the gold and bronze woman yanked the giant demon up into the tunnel with them. Vinicius helped her, claws digging into the stone as he pulled himself up, but there was no doubt the woman, tiny compared to the titan, helped. More than helped. She got a hand on one of the massive horns on the demon's head, another around an elbow spike, and pulled him forward hard enough he hit the tunnel ground hard.

Grumbling, Vinicius brought himself to his feet, set a hand against the hole in his stomach, and glared down at the stranger.

"You," he said.

"Me."

"The rider--"

"Followed me here."

Vinicius rumbled in his throat, clicked once, and set his dragon gaze on Mia.

"And you came because you heard some unmarked had arrived?" he asked the stranger, angry gaze still on Mia.

The stranger didn't answer. She set a hand on her hip and tilted her head up at Vinicius as she stood in front of him a whole two feet away. She looked a few inches shy of seven feet, very tall for a woman, but her head reached Vinicius's crotch and no higher. Fearless.

"Mia," the stranger said, "your leash will work until a spire ruler deactivates it."

Mia set a hand on the warm, amber stone on her chain necklace.

"A spire ruler? Any will do?"

"Yes. Spires tap into the power of Hell, and focus it, but it is Hell's power that fuels the leash." The stranger kept her skull helmet pointed at the demon and did not move an inch, not even to shift her weight. "A sliver of that power rests within the stone. It is no horde call, and will not wear with time."

"Unless..."

"Unless a spire ruler deactivates it, or the necklace is destroyed." The stranger reached out and poked Vinicius in the stomach. "How pitiful, that a child of Belial was bound by a single, ambitious tetrad and a simple spire leash."

Vinicius growled and his muscles flexed, ready to strike the stranger. But he didn't.

"The leash will stop him from attacking you, unmarked," the stranger continued. "And it will prevent this beast from going too far of his own will. You cannot command him to do your bidding, but you can inflict pain whenever you wish."

"Zel showed me the pain part. I... didn't like that."

The stranger turned her skull helmet and aimed it directly down at Mia. How could Mia not see her face in the t-slit opening of the helmet? There should have been enough light.

"Do not pity this monster. He has killed as many as the rider. Use him, until your goal is met."

"My goal?"

"The Forgotten Place. You must go there."

Mia folded her arms across her chest. "I'm not going anywhere without--"

"Enough." The stranger turned the rest of her body to face her, and Mia promptly took several steps back. "You will either journey to the Forgotten Place, or you will die. You must avoid the other unmarked, or kill them if they try to kill you and steal your knowledge."

"Kill? Steal knowledge? What?"

"I have said enough. Now go."

"You're... not going to tell me about why I'm unmarked? Why I have this aura thing? Why I saw things when I ate a demon heart? Why I can read the ancient language? Why... Why I saw things when I... touched Lucifer's book, in the spire basement?" Might as well pour out her secrets. If there was anyone around who might actually answer her questions, the stranger was--

"No."

Fuck! Fucking god, this woman. Mia could roll with not knowing everything, if she had to. But David would have exploded and eventually taken a swing at her, and probably get his arm cut off for trying. The stranger had a really big sword sheath.

Sighing, Mia let her head droop, before she looked back out to the canyon. David and Jes stood in their tunnel, waiting. At least the stranger had told David where to go, too.

Mia jumped up and down a few times and waved an arm.

"David! Forgotten Place!"

She might as well have been yelling into the void. She kinda was, considering what lurked beneath. Her voice couldn't reach him, at least not as words. He didn't yell anything back, but he jumped and waved back at her a few times. Okay, good, some communication.

Mia spun around to the sound of metal clinking. The stranger was walking away.

"Wait!"

The stranger stopped, but didn't look back.

"You have your mission."

"I know! I know, and I'll go. I'll go because... because what else can I do? But why aren't you helping?"

"The rider will follow me, as he followed me here. He will kill you if he can. Stealth is your only option."

"But he's on the other side of the canyon, and--"

"He will find a way across, if he believes I am helping an unmarked."

Oh, fuck.

"Okay. Okay..." Deep, resetting breaths. "Before you go, did you see a burned vratorin fall? Burned on one half of his body, by this... asshole!" She gestured up at Vinicius. "And um, did you see a sarkarin? One of those shark dinosaurs."

"I know what a sarkarin is."

"Right, of course you do." Gulp. "Did you see one fall?"

"I did not."

Mia sighed relief. There was still a good chance they'd died, but maybe they hadn't.

That zotiva though, the spire mother, had that really been Acelina? The rider had opened the door, and who knew how long he'd stood there, assessing the situation while Mia and David did their best to not fall to their deaths. If that were Acelina, and she was on the other side of the canyon now, she might run into David, and... and kill him. But why would the rider let her live?

The stranger disappeared into the darkness, and the clink of her metal armor vanished a moment later.

"Uh..."

"I do not know how she and the rider get around so quickly," Vinicius said. "They are thorns in my side."

"Oh. You don't like them?"

The four-armed demon growled deep in his throat and clicked a few times, heavy cluck sounds that each made his neck bulge slightly. He used the back of his tongue to hit his throat in a way she couldn't.

"I do not." And, of course, he offered no explanation.

Well, this was going to be a wonderful partnership.

She dusted herself off, waved one more time back at her brother, and followed the rider into the tunnel.

"So, Vinicius. Any idea what she was talking about? On the other canyon wall, she said David and I had to get to the Forgotten Place or we were all doomed."

That got some surprise out of him. He froze and stared down at her, and she managed to meet his gaze for a few seconds before looking away. He was intense.

"No, but... she rarely speaks lightly."

Double gulp.

Vinicius's half dragon, half demony face, with its short-ish dragon snout, was scary, but not ugly. And terrifying as it was being so near him, the stranger seemed to trust the leash Mia had, and considering Zel's demonstration, the leash worked. Mia was happier not testing it to confirm.

Her new pet, or slave, or however she should think of him, was one of the deadliest demons around, and her best bet at actually reaching the Forgotten Place and meeting David again. Lucky, sorta.

She peeked down over the tunnel edge, down at the nothingness, quivered from head to toe, and forced herself to look into the tunnel behind her.

"Alright, let's see if this tunnel gets us back to the surface," she said, and started walking. "And we need to get you something to eat."

"Something to eat?" he asked. Hearing someone with a deep, gravelly voice like that, and a tiny hint of a serpent's hiss in there too, sound shocked and confused, was enough to make Mia smile.

"Uh, yeah? You're injured. Very injured. Breathing fire -- and nearly killing my friend, you dick -- and fighting the rider, I imagine Zel's heart isn't enough food for you, considering Zel left you starving all the time."