The Pleasures of Hell 02.020

The gargoyle poked him with her closer wing's thumb claw.

"That why you've been staring off into space so much?"

"No... No, it hasn't been."

"It's not?"

"There's... something else."

"Something else?" Jes asked.

"Yeah. It... It started when I touched Mia."

"Touched her?"

"During the rescue, we hugged, before we fell out of the spire. And... something went through us. Or more like, from her, into me? Like electricity, I guess." They may not have known a hurdy-gurdy, but they knew electricity. Thank god for scrying pools. "And I've been seeing symbols and runes ever since, in my head."

"Symbols?" Caera said. "Runes? Like the ancient language?"

"No. Something new, and weird, and... and I can't understand them."

"And you waited until now to tell us?"

"Sorry. I wanted to wait until I had some clue what was happening, and that I wasn't just going crazy."

"Okay," Jes said, "the crazy argument makes sense, I guess. But still, fucking tell us when shit happens, you dumbass. I want to get clear if you go nuclear."

The satyr clicked a few harsh sounds, earning a wince from her gargoyle lover.

"I will," David said. "I mean, I could have waited weeks, right? Just needed a few days to make sure it was happening and I wasn't just seeing things." He held up a hand in front of him, and slowly squeezed and released a fist. "She touched me, and put these symbols in my head."

Caera sat up. "Can you draw them?"

"Nope. I'd only draw what I'm seeing, and there's more to these runes than the visual part. That's why I'm so damned stumped. It'd be like trying to draw a tesseract on a flat surface." The ladies all looked at each other again, and David laughed. "I mean, there's something to these runes, something I can't wrap my head around. But, they're real. I know that because... because after I had that dream, or vision or whatever, where that girl died, the runes got brighter. Brighter, and a bit more defined."

"Defined?" Acelina asked.

Everyone looked the huge demon's way. It was the first time she'd shown any interest in the weird things happening to David.

"Y-Yeah," David said, eyes on the spire mother. "Like, I can kinda see them better now? Kinda wrap my mind around them a bit more?" He shrugged. "No idea what that means, yet."

"This gonna be a problem?" Caera asked. "I mean, with visiting the Cainites."

"I don't think so? It's just a puzzle that keeps popping up in my head." Whether he wanted it to or not. "I'll ignore them until I know if there's something I can do about them. Or with them." He squeezed his hand in front of him again. "A few, I know the names for. Batlam, potram, and royam. But that's all so far."

Acelina ruffled her wings slightly, earning some glances from the rest of them, but she said nothing.

"Old stories I've found talk about runes," Caera said. "Powerful things. Angels use them, supposedly, but there's no details about them anywhere."

"Then I guess I got a few things to figure out while we're on the way to the Forgotten Place. On the way to..." He squinted down at the ground, and tapped his temple. "The... Frozen Heart."

"Frozen Heart?" Jes asked.

"The... real name for the Forgotten Place, according to the runes in my head." This one he could draw, and he scratched it into the ground with a stone.

Jes threw up a hand. "The real name? What the fuck? That--you know what? It can wait. We didn't find anything on our hunting trip, so we should get going. Better hunting grounds out there than here." Once she was up, the gargoyle stretched out her wings, and Dao hopped over, clicking and chirping. "Yeah, good idea. We should get higher and get some eyes on what's going on below."

David got back to his feet, put his clothes back on, and ignored all the wetness still coating him. It'd be gone in a few hours, but that didn't mean it wasn't annoying in the meantime. Hell needed paper towels.

"Is it safe to go higher?" he asked. "I thought we were hiding."

Caera got up on her hind legs and got to work putting on her own armor.

"Death's Grip is a mess right now. I'm not sure it's any worse out there where demons can see us or not. Besides, not every demon is going to want to fight. Some will respect Zel's dueling law. Most might even think twice about considering us an easy meal."

Acelina chuckled as she scooped up her myriad of chains and slipped them back on, including a few around the waist, ankles, wrists, and even a few, short, dangling chains on from wing fingers. Thankfully, they didn't jingle as she moved. Much.

"Not that that would stop a demon," Jes said.

"It'll stop some," Caera said. "I'm more worried about hellbeasts. Better we get up high before we stumble onto a pack of goorts and get trampled to death."

Dao clicked some more as she came up behind David and hugged him. Only to squeak when Jes whipped her ass with her tail.

"No time."

Sighing, Dao gave David a quick kiss on the cheek, and followed Caera as the tiger took the lead. On all fours, her huge spiky tail swayed side to side, and David and Acelina fell behind it while Dao and Jes walked on her left and right.

Walking beside Acelina was problematic. She wasn't aroused or anything, her skin dark red, nearly black in some places, so her breasts and ass weren't exactly jiggling and rippling. Except, they were, particularly her breasts. They were simply too large for her firm skin to hold snug.

"David!" Jes yelled. "I can feel that aura. Fucking christ, god damn pile of bones. Didn't Caera just fuck you?"

"Sorry, sorry." He looked down.

Acelina chuckled. Better than the harsh growl she would have given him a few days ago.

Daoka clicked a few times and gestured back at him, eyeless gaze pointed over Caera and at Jes. Sighing, the gargoyle nodded and turned around.

"Alright, fine. Let's get this over with."

Before he could say anything, they pounced him.

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

They went through the same thing as last time, mostly. Daoka took center stage and fucked him, Jes and Caera had fun with her while she did, and Acelina grumbled and groaned and masturbated, but refused to take part. At least she didn't get angry. If anything, she seemed relieved. Probably because it meant David's aura would finally calm down.

And it would, for a while. But just the knowledge that his body didn't seem interested in a refractory period, or had any sort of limit on its sexual stamina or desire, was a kernel of knowledge in his mind that didn't go away. It was like kindling, a giant pile of dry paper kindling, and each time he looked the girls' way and noticed their bodies, his brain shot off sparks right on top of it.

Getting back topside, out of a ravine, and back up to where they could look out over Hell, put a stop to that quick.

"The fuck is that?" David asked, and he pointed back toward the spire. It was a tiny sliver in the distance now, but the glowing amber beam coming out of it shooting into the fire sky was not.

The group of them found some enormous boulders to stand between, and all of them stared at the giant beam. It almost looked like a SciFi scene, a pulsing laser punching a hole through the sky.

Caera, Dao, and Jes stood there, silent.

"A demon is undergoing the trial to become the new spire ruler," Acelina said. "If Saldavin yet lives, I imagine it is he." Sighing, she shook her head. "Curse the rider."

David did his best to not flinch. He succeeded. Barely.

"Wait, you've seen this before?" Jes asked. "Fuck, you saw Zel being chosen? How old are you, Acelina?"

"Old." In Hell, getting old was good, something to show off.

"How's it work?" David asked.

"A demon must enter the depths of the spire, to the deepest bowels where Lucifer has left their temple. If the spire has no ruler at the time, something will be there, and the demon will be tested." Before they could ask, she shrugged. "I did not witness the ritual itself, only the result, and Zelandariel did not share with me the details. But I do know the ritual is life threatening and difficult."

"So only a powerful demon can do it?" Caera asked. "I guess that's why the spire rulers are all tetrads."

"Indeed." With a small flourish of her tail, Acelina turned and gestured clockwise around Hell. "This way, then?"

"In a minute," Jes said.

"I do not wish to see the spire any longer."

"I do."

Acelina spun around and flared her wings.

"Must you make every moment of this struggle difficult for me?"

Grinning up at her, Jes hooked her wings snug around her shoulders, and walked past her.

"Yeah. I must. Bitch."

Caera looked David's way, rolled her eyes, and prowled ahead of the group. They followed.

"It'll be nearly two weeks before we reach the mountain where I found that tunnel," Caera said. "Another few weeks at least to reach the Grave Valley spire. We really should try to get along, Jes."

"I agreed to take her along. I didn't agree to play nice. The fuck is this, some HR meeting?" The scrying pool references were unending, and David laughed. Which, of course, earned a grin from Jes, and a scowl from Acelina.

"Uh, maybe a different topic?" David asked. "I've been thinking."

"Crazy," Jes said.

He frowned at her, but despite his efforts, it turned into a smile as Jes grinned at him some more.

"The stranger who told us we need to get to the Forgotten Place, she refused to elaborate on anything. The angels we ran into before, they--"

"You met angels?" Acelina asked.

"Yes," Caera said. "Lot of power in a small package. They kicked our asses, just two of them. It wasn't even a fight."

The woman angel had been Dao's size, and the man had been around seven feet tall. They were, by human standards, big. Small wasn't exactly a fair description.

"We just telling Acelina everything now?" Jes asked.

Sighing, Caera gestured around at the mountains ahead of them, and the winding, horrible paths they'd have to weave and navigate to get up to higher vantage points. A lot of mountains. Death's Grip was nothing but harsh mountains, burning bushes, amber veins, the occasional stream of lava, bloodgrip vines, and tunnels. Every step was dangerous, with a thousand places someone could ambush them from, or they could trip and break every bone in their body as they fell and rolled a kilometer down a jagged hillside.

It wouldn't get any better in the Grave Valley, probably.

"On this journey, if we're taking her," Caera said, "we have to trust her at least a little."

"Why?" Jes asked. "I vote we tell her to hang back while we talk about important stuff."

Dao clicked a few times and gestured back at Acelina and David.

Jes shook her head. "She's a stumbling bimbo idiot. I doubt she could eavesdrop without us knowing."

Even Caera knew that wasn't true, and she shook her head, too.

"What I'm saying is, if we're convinced we should take her with us, we need to trust her. You haven't done one of these journeys before, I have. Same reason we're teaching... trying to teach her to hunt, right?"

"It isn't the same."

"It is." Caera patted the ground with her tail. "Shit is going to happen, and we're going to need to talk about it. I will not spend the next five weeks worried about every word I say, Jes."

David gulped. Either Jes really, really didn't trust Acelina, or she was worried about the secret Acelina didn't know. The rider didn't kill Zel, Mia did. If Acelina found out about that, it could be trouble. Had Jes even told Dao or Caera?

"It's just five weeks," Jes said. "Not like we're taking her with us to the Forgotten Place."

Daoka clicked some and gestured out ahead of them.

"It's..." Sighing, Jes looked back at Acelina, and her shoulders slumped as she marched forward. "Fine."

Uh oh, the F word. David slowed down a little until he was in the back of the group, Acelina between him and the volatile gargoyle.

"I... I was wondering," he said. "The angels didn't want to tell us what was going on. The woman in aera armor didn't want to tell us, either. The rider wouldn't talk to me at all, and just came at me. It's weird, you know? No one's talking."

"You expect people to share their secrets?" Aceline asked.

"I mean, if they want me to actually do what they ask? Yeah? Pretty big ask to send me around, what, two-thirds of Hell to reach this place, for some mysterious thing I don't understand? Its... almost like they don't want me to know."

The girls looked between each other, heads tilting slightly. Not being told stuff was par for the course, for them, because most demons just didn't care to inform each other about anything. Actively not being told something because someone wanted to manipulate them apparently hadn't crossed their minds.

Caera stopped, and the group followed suit.

"You think... we shouldn't go?" she asked.

"I mean, until we find something to tell us otherwise, we probably should go? That woman did save me, after all. So I guess I owe her. And if she isn't lying, it'd be a real shame if we didn't go, and all died for it."

Groaning, Jes hopped up onto a rock, and perched as she scanned the path ahead.

"Yeah. Saved my ass too, I guess."

"Then we go," Caera said. "Maybe we'll find out more along the way."

Along the way, across the Grave Valley, the Scar, the Red Pits, and the Navameere Fields, all to reach False Gate. Real name: Unholy Lands. Delightful.

"You think you are being manipulated?" Acelina asked him. And without missing a beat, she gestured for him to come walk beside her again, in the same way a master would demand their servant catch up.

The other girls didn't notice, and honestly, David didn't mind. Whatever social tactics would work to endear him to Acelina, he didn't know, and Mia wasn't around to ask. Playing nice seemed like a safe bet, though Caera had suggested bullying might work, too. But, alas, not like he could bully a demon nearly twice his height.

"I don't know," he said, stepping up beside her again. "But the stranger said if I run into any other unmarked, I need to avoid them or kill them. Something's going on, and that lady in the armor specifically said she wouldn't answer my questions."

"Zelandariel was correct, as she usually was," Acelina said, sighing as she shook her head. Even with her wings hooked on her shoulders so she wore them like a cloak, they still drooped. "Something is amiss. The angels dot the skies, and the imps and grems share strange talk. My love knew that with the appearance of your sister, pieces on the board would begin to move, and it was in our interest that she solve the mystery as soon as possible."

That was a surprising amount of information from Acelina. She didn't like talking about Zel, every word tinted with moroseness, but she'd just given them an olive branch, anyway. Even Jes looked back, one eyebrow raised, and David smiled and nodded to her. Look, see? She's useful.

"The angels made it clear," Caera said, "that we should avoid other angels, too."

"Did they now?" Acelina said, aiming her eyeless gaze upward as they walked. "Interesting. Perhaps not all is well in Heaven? Perhaps there is... dissension?"

Jes laughed. "If we get lucky, maybe they'll break out in a civil war? Let them have a taste of what every day down here is like."

A civil war in Heaven? Was that even possible? Even after running into those two angels, David had still been running under the assumption Heaven was an orderly, perfect place. Then again, he'd kinda figured Hell would be like that too, before coming. Organized, orderly, and obtuse, unknowable, and biblically eldritch. None of that was true. Yet.

If Heaven was susceptible to things like dissension among its ranks...

He rubbed his arms and followed the girls across the mountains of Hell. Next stop, the temple where a Cainite ambush had killed Caera's friends. After that, the Grave Valley province and its spire. After that, across several provinces to reach False Gate, or rather, the Unholy Lands. From there, hopefully they'd find a way to get to the Forgotten Place. The Frozen Heart, in the dead center of Hell.

An epic adventure, and one he very much did not want to do. He wanted to help Caera, but after that, he wanted to go back to what he was doing just an hour ago. Having ridiculous, amazing, life-changing sex with three absolutely amazing women. A lot of it. So much of it, his brain was still trying to process the insanity of it all and his new, amazing body.

Okay, yeah, sure, the body was completely perfect. In his wildest dreams, he wasn't still less than five and a half feet tall, but all the other stuff? Yeah, the rest was pretty amazing. More than enough sexual stamina for three women? Fucking awesome. An aura that, with a little effort, could make every nearby woman weak in the knees? Yeap, if he was still alive and had this body, he'd have been corrupted instantly. He'd have built himself a harem of dozens of women in a matter of days, and have spent his life doing nothing but fucking and playing video games. Even his usually obsessive need to figure things out, solve the riddle, uncover the mystery, all of that would have fallen to the wayside so he could have simply indulged in his vices if he had this body.

Hero of the story? Definitely not.

But down here, he had a mission. Save the world. And just because he was no hero didn't mean he was going to sit on his ass and let the world burn.

He set his eyes on Daoka, and watched her as she hopped ahead, leapt onto a boulder with her satyr legs, and looked ahead with her eyeless gaze. No way he'd let anything happen to her. No way.

As they got higher, David walked closer to Dao, and once she was close enough, he stepped in beside her until she noticed him. He didn't have to say a word. She slowed down a bit until they walked side by side, and she chirped down at him before leaning in and planting a kiss on his cheek. A few more chirps followed, and she gestured back to Acelina.

"She wants to know," Caera said, ahead of them a little ways, "why you aren't looking at her the way you look at Acelina."

Uh oh.

"W-What? I... I uh... um..."

Daoka chirped and giggled, shook her head, and again gestured back at Acelina.

"She's just playing," Caera said. "Acelina might be a bitch, but it's hard to deny a zotiva's body is quite something."

"As is our hearing," Acelina said with a snarl. "And I would never let any of you touch me."

Daoka giggled some more, slipped an arm around David's shoulders, and half hugged him as they walked. The only reason he wasn't staring at the satyr's huge breasts was the armor that covered them. Nodding and smiling, she clicked a few times, turned his head to look up at her, and kissed him. Not a long, deep, passionate kiss. She saved those for Jes. But there was no denying the strange way she doted on him.

Jes glided down from a boulder and fell in beside them on his other side. She leaned in too, and whispered in his ear, super quiet.

"Don't let that tall bitch fool you. Demons want to fuck humans. It's in our fucking... DNA, I dunno."

"You don't have DNA." Probably true.

"You know what I mean. I, for one, want to see that pompous princess get pinned down and stuffed full of cock. Maybe jam that dick of yours right down her throat."

David gulped, and looked back over his shoulder at the tall woman. With her lips closed, Acelina's face was a purely black canvas, a flat surface of onyx that showed no features of any kind, save for the big black horns coming off the top of her head. When she bothered to open her mouth, it was straight-up scary how wide it was, and how full of shark teeth it was.

"I uh... I think she'd... you know... bite." He shivered from head to toe, and not the good kind.

Jes laughed again, shrugging. Daoka chirped in his ear, as if he could understand, and she tapped a couple of her claws against his jugular as she softly rubbed a lip against his earlobe. No translation needed. She liked Jes's idea.