The Pleasures of Hell 03.044

~~David~~

Remnants weren't much of a problem in this area. Maybe it was because the place was a dead zone like Timaeus and Laoko said. No souls got dumped here, so no demons came hunting, which meant no activity, which apparently meant fewer remnants. They found several and promptly killed them, but only several.

Killing remnants was getting easier. He didn't like that.

After some more exploring, Daoka joined them, and the group wandered back to the underground tomb where she'd had her private time. It was a good place for them to sleep, and defendable, a big square room with only one entrance. It also meant if the rider, angels, or eldritch monsters found them, they'd be trapped and have to stand their ground. Hopefully Timaeus would come rescue their ass, if that happened.

Timaeus insisted they were safe with his group in the cathedral, instead, but the demon also knew they were justified in being cautious.

Everyone sat and got comfy on the stone. Bones littered the ground, and the black skeleton statues watched the group from the walls, their wrists shackled. A cozy place compared to some caves they'd slept in. Even better, they had a scrying pool.

David looked down into the silvery water and glanced Dao's way. She smiled at him. She had to know what he was thinking, right? What was she looking at when she was here alone? Why alone? What possible thing could Tacitus have done to make Dao lose her voice?

"Where Acelina?" Lasca asked, and she squatted by the bowl.

"With Laoko and Timaeus," Caera said, and she lay on her side by the wall. "She'll probably be sleeping with Timaeus and his group from now on. And she'll probably stay in the spire when we move on from there."

Laria plopped down on her ass and kicked the blackstone floor a few times. Her hooves made clack clack sounds.

"Want Acelina to stay."

Jes laughed and sat in the corner with Dao. "Acelina was just slowing us down. She's a spire mother. Zotivas stay in spires."

"I dunno," David said. "She helped out when those monsters attacked us. Which, by the way, I have no idea if they'll pop up and attack us in the middle of the night. So, uh, be on your guard."

Everyone groaned.

"Acelina," Laara said, "is nice. Not... nice nice." She gestured to Dao. "But nice!"

"Pretty sure she's a bitch," Jes said.

"Nu uh," Latia said. "She's nice! Mean, and nice. Nice meanie."

David would have laughed, but it just didn't come. Sighing, he sat with Caera. With her on her side and back to the wall, she lay in that classic dog-on-side pose, and he was free to sit between her arms and legs and lean back against her stomach.

Daoka had a secret. Caera had a dark past he'd never be able to appreciate. And Acelina was leaving the group in just a couple days. A lot to think about, and he stared at the scrying pool by his feet and stroked his chin.

He could look something up, see something on the surface, for old time's sake. But he just... didn't miss anything from the surface. Yeah, life in Hell was hell, but there wasn't anything specific about the surface he found himself wanting. Not being chased by everyone and everything imaginable all the time would be nice, but that wasn't something he could just look up in the pool. The things he wanted most right now, the things he could ask the scrying pool to show him, were right around him.

Latia and Laria hopped over to him and sat between him and the scrying pool. With big, heavy smiles, they held out their hooves. They wanted their hooves checked.

"I don't think," he said, returning their smiles, "that Acelina is all that bad, Jes. She shared her necklaces with Daoka, remember?"

"Yeah, I guess," Jes said.

Nodding, he motioned for Laria, and the little lady got between his legs and put her hooves on his lap.

"And she fed the Las hearts without a prompt from anyone. More than once."

"True," Caera said.

"And she's been surprisingly cuddly with them sometimes. She even let you two"--he gestured to Jes and Dao--"suckle on her after we had sex last time, remember?"

Dao nodded. Jes rolled her eyes and gestured to Moriah.

"What do you think? You're a bitch, too. What's your read on her?"

Moriah, standing by the entrance with the curving stairway behind her, glared at Jes, but it didn't have the same stabby-stab energy it used to. Maybe the angel was getting used to them, or didn't have the mental energy anymore. Maybe she was hungry. David was.

"I think demons manipulate. You are predators, physically and psychologically. I wouldn't trust anything she does to not have an ulterior motive."

Lasca and Laara frowned up at her. Laria was too busy enjoying David running his fingers along her hooves to notice. Latia wasn't any better. Giggling, she shifted in, got around Laria's wing shoulder to shoulder with her, and put her hooves on his lap, too.

"You give demons too much credit," Caera said.

"Perhaps. All demons are capable of is fighting and fucking, yes? Is that what you were going to say? That they're too focused on the moment to plan ahead?" Hearing an angel swear was so weird.

Caera lifted her head, but rolled her eye and went limp again. "Demons like a lot of others things, too." The 'bitch' was implied by her tone. "But we're not planners."

"Your ruler Zelandariel was a planner."

Jes shook her head. "Not a lot of Zels running around, angel. Most of us are just trying to get by. Or did you not notice how quickly demons get hungry, and how we're always fighting each other for a meal?"

Moriah frowned at the word meal. Yeah, she was hungry.

"It's twilight," David said. "We should get something to eat tomorrow. Using the rune and playing the strings really drains me."

"You closed a canyon," Caera said. "Strings or no, that'd make anyone hungry."

"Yeah, you did," Jes said. "That was pretty--"

"Scrying pool!" Lasca stood by it, leaned over, and grinned down at it with her big shark smile. "Show me sexy fireman! Naked!"

David blinked. Everyone laughed. And unless he'd temporarily gone insane, that was the hint of a smile on Moriah's lips.

He couldn't see from his sitting spot, but the sound of a shower running told him what was up.

"Lasca has a type?" Jes said, getting up. Whatever was on the scrying pool made her laugh. "The scrying pool found a guy showering. Tall, broad, muscular."

All the girls -- save Moriah -- looked at David and grinned.

"Hey! I am muscular. Kinda. A bit." He poked his abs. "I worked hard to get this fit! It's hard when you're just naturally tiny."

Jes shrugged. "Grow taller."

"I tried. Didn't work."

They laughed.

He'd never done that before, make a joke that made everyone laugh. Smiling, he looked back at the two pairs of hooves in front of him, and ran his thumbs along their undersides, looking for lodged pebbles. Him, making jokes, for a crowd of people? It actually landing? The idea was so alien, it'd never even crossed his mind to do that. At best, he used to make sarcastic comments that'd get a chuckle or two out of his fellow students, forced to work on the same stupid project. They enjoyed his old-man cynicism. Sometimes.

Him being social, and just saying the first thing that came to mind, was strange. He'd never been drunk before. Did it feel like this?

Over-thinking it, David, again. Don't ruin it.

Daoka stood with Lasca, shared some clicks, and pointed at the pool. Whatever she said, it got some more laughs from the group, but no one translated. This felt suspiciously like girl talk he wasn't supposed to hear.

Satisfied their hooves were in good condition, Laria and Latia crawled up to him and snuggled into his sides. Two demons and a human, all resting against Caera's stomach and between her arms and legs. Tight fit, but Caera chuckled and closed her eye.

"Monsters were scary," Laria said.

"Very scary," Latia said, and she rubbed her cheek on his shoulder.

Jes gestured to David with a wing. "I'd rather fight those than a proper army of demons. They seemed easy to fight... at first. That big tentacle started off invisible, but gained a shape, right? And the aliens kinda changed shape a bit as we fought. I saw some claws get longer."

"Yes," Moriah said, arms folded and eyes pointed down. "They were evolving."

"I dunno about evolving," Jes said. "But I was kinda waiting for David to use his weird magic tricks to stab a few of them or something. But you didn't."

He winced. "Sorry. I tried to summon something, but every time those monsters screamed, it squashed my song. I couldn't make anything happen."

Moriah stepped closer. "Nothing?"

"Nothing. I mean, maybe if I had played really, really hard, you know? Hit the strings as hard as I could, risk blacking out, maybe I could have played something loud enough to punch through their screams. It'd be like trying to play the guitar with someone else grabbing the strings, though."

The angel swiped her good wing through the bowl, destroyed the image, earned some whines from Lasca and Laara, and stepped closer again.

"You and your sister can play strings, some form of music only you unmarked can hear."

"Yeah."

"And these creatures who invade our world, ripped Deaths' Grip asunder, and assaulted us -- you -- today, they silence the music?"

"Yeah?"

Moriah paced, eyes down and arms across her chest. "The Great Tower, or at least Hell, responds to your music. You can control her, manipulate her, something no one else can do, save for perhaps the archangels. If these monsters can mute your song, that is..." Whatever thoughts ran through the agitated angel's mind, she didn't finish them. She paced in place, rotating her bad shoulder and budding wing.

"What about the Old Ones?" Caera asked. "I've read some stories talking about the absurd things they did fighting the archangels. Firestorms. Hellquakes. Things like that."

"I... don't know. Regardless, the Old Ones are dead, and the bodies of the three archangels litter Angel's Spine." Angel's Spine. Real name, or at last the name given by the runes, was Heaven's Tears. Fitting. "Whatever these creatures are, if they can affect this music only the unmarked can use, then perhaps there is validity to this claim they will spell our end. If the Great Tower is a grand orchestra, existence is a song, and something has come to squash that song, then..."

Everyone stared. There was grand and epic, and then there were battles of literal existential scale epic. Then again, Heaven and Hell weren't physical realms, not made of particles and atoms and whatnot. It kinda made sense that if someone or something was literally trying to invade the afterlife, it'd be doing it on that kinda crazy, existential scale.

"Or I could be wrong," Moriah said. "Perhaps the Great Tower is not built on this silent music at all. Perhaps these monsters are simply some form of bottom-dweller creature that's existed beneath Hell for ages. Or perhaps they are another creation of Lucifer's, finally awoken from their slumber. Whatever the truth is, the council..."

Everyone sat up straight or leaned in closer, waiting.

Dao clicked once, and Moriah sighed.

"The council, the twenty-seven rulers of the nine Heavenly Islands... will not answer. They explain nothing!" She spun. Jes, Dao, Laara, and Lasca jumped back, and the angel punched the wall with her good arm. It cracked, and the demons gawked. "Remnants wander free, and they say nothing. Unmarked are taken from our doorstep, and they say nothing. Death's Grip is torn apart by some alien force no angel or demon has ever known, and they say nothing! Nothing, except for one command: kill the unmarked."

Caera lifted her head. Laria and Latia held David's arms. Jes and Dao inched closer to him and put themselves between him and the angel.

Moriah sighed and shook her head. "Calm yourselves. I'm not going to strike the boy down. I am convinced something foul is afoot, that perhaps the council is poisoned or tainted by this force, and that David is but a pawn in this game." And of course she gave him the side eye. "But if, in the end, killing David is how we save the world, I will not hesitate."

The girls opened their mouths, but David put up his hands.

"Agreed."

Moriah glared harder than usual. "What?"

"If killing me is how we save the world, then go ahead. I mean, I'd prefer we not do that. I'd especially prefer we figure out what will actually save the world, and not jump to any conclusions and kill me before then. For all we know, the unmarked are literally the key to saving the world, and someone's tricked the council into wanting us dead." He rubbed Caera's shoulder. "And I know that, if it ever came to that, I wouldn't have the strength to kill myself. I'm only human. So an angel willing to do it for me would be the best bet, right?"

The room might as well have sunk under water. Everyone stared at him, Moriah shocked, the demons sad.

"It won't come to that," Caera said.

"It could," Moriah said. "If those invaders are what will destroy the Great Tower, and if the only reason they are attacking is to kill the unmarked, would they keep attacking if there were no unmarked?"

No one said a thing.

Daoka shook her head and joined David and Caera. With a few hard clicks aimed at Moriah, she picked Latia up, sat in her place against Caera's belly, and put the gremla on her lap. Whatever she said, it made every demon look down, Moriah too, until the silence settled into David's bones.

"Very well," Moriah said. "I will..." She ground her teeth and clenched her fists. "I will see this through."

"See this through?" Jes asked.

"Yes, gorgala. I am trapped between duty and reality, and loath I am to admit it, there is something strange happening. I will help you, unmarked, until we learn more, until I have some proper idea as to a course of action."

David titled his head. "I was gonna be super appreciative if you just let me go. But, actually help? I thought the council--"

"The council of the Heavenly Islands say nothing, and have said nothing for two millennia, save for your death warrant. I cannot shake the feeling that there is something more going on, as you have said, and I... felt that way before I ever met you. Many angels have. For two thousand years, hundreds of my kind have drifted toward Hell, as if they could find a... a... I don't know, someone else they could speak of this with. Angels do not speak against the council." She gestured to David. "You saw a council angel before, at the gate of Heaven. There are twenty-seven of them, three for each island, and each has great power."

Great power. He could believe it. The angel had been huge, bigger than a tetrad, and had six wings.

"Thank you," David said. "I--"

"I do this for Heaven, not for you."

"I know. Doesn't mean I can't be thankful."

Groaning, the angel sat against the wall in the corner, and pulled her good wing in front of her like a blanket.

"We need food," she said. "My wounds are taking longer to heal than I thought, and using batlam today was difficult."

"David make food," Lasca said, and she and Laara sat in front of their sisters.

"Make food?" he asked.

"Make food!"

"Sorry, can't."

"But, Lasca saw David move ground, and break trees!"

"I mean, I did, but--"

"And," Laara said, "David made spikes and stuff."

He winced and glanced Moriah's way. Thankfully, the angel hid her face behind her wing, her own little compartment of privacy, but she was probably grinding her teeth, Laara pulling up the memory of Shaul's death.

"Those are parts of Hell," he said. "I can... I can..." He raised a brow and looked up at Jes, at Dao beside him, at Caera on his other side, and back at the four little Las. "Maybe I can?"

Jes laughed. "How the fuck are you gonna make food?"

"Forbidden trees. They're a part of Hell, right?"

"Yeah, but so are burning bushes and statues and the fucking tomb we're sitting in. So is the scrying pool right in front of us. Can you make any of this?"

"Maybe? I haven't tried. All I've done is move things."

Daoka chirped and gestured at the empty space by their feet. Whatever she said, Jes laughed and shook her head.

"If he can grow a tree," she said, "I will do a fucking song and dance."

Daoka clapped twice, quietly. The Las clapped a half dozen times, not so quietly.

"Alright, let me try." He was genuinely hungry after closing a canyon and using batlam. An easy source of food, one that didn't come with nasty memories, would be a godsend, maybe literally.

He reached out with his sixth sense. All the sense did was tell him about what parts of Hell were near him, fuzzy images that got fuzzier the further they were. The tomb, the scrying pool, the surface overhead, streams of lava deep below, the fire sky far above, he sensed it all. And the more he played with the strings that permeated everything, the more he found the notes these things resonated with.

He plucked a string, just a little thing. And a little thing popped out of the floor, between cracks in the blackstone. A budding, brown plant, no more than an inch tall.

The Las oohed and awed, and Lasca and Laara squatted around the sprouting plant.

"David made?" Lasca asked.

"Y-Yeah, but..."

"But that ain't no tree," Jes said, laughing. "It's so small. What's the matter? Nervous?"

Caera chuckled, and her laughter made Dao and David shake against her chest. Demon girls picking up insults from the surface. Ouch.

"It's not easy!" he said. "I'm trying to do this on my own, without the... the... whatever it is that sometimes lets me make the really big things happen. This is all me."

Moriah lowered her wing enough to watch him, eyes neutral. While Jes put up her hands and wings in surrender, a very David-like mannerism.

"Whatever you say, kid."

Kid. If she knew the secret word to get under his skin, or was just playing with him, he couldn't tell. He played the strings harder, reached further, told the music to bring all that was needed to grow a tree, and funnel the resonance and essence for its fruit straight into the budding, tiny plant.

The tree grew a little more. And a little more. And a little more.

He collapsed back against Caera's stomach and took a breather. "I think this would be easier in a place with more people. More remnants, more demons, more souls. This is like trying to tap a sand desert for water."

"Still though," Jes said, coming closer to the tree and squatting directly beside its one-foot stature. "This does look like a forbidden tree. Give it a few years and it might even bear fruit."

Ugh. His head fell back on Caera's side.

"The Black Valley is different," Caera said. "Remnants grow there by the millions, billions maybe, everywhere, all the time. It churns through them and rips through them like a... a uh... meat grinder, I think is the term?"

"Gross," David said. "But if that's true, and Mia figures this out, yeah, I bet she'd have an easy time growing forbidden trees."

"But not you," Jes said, grinning. And to add salt to the wound, she flicked the little tree.

David glared at her and hit the strings again. Each time he got a little more familiar with the sounds, the way Hell responded to them, the way the ground and the blackstone vibrated, the way the blackwood warped and shifted, the way the amber veins on the ceiling pulsed. Just like learning an instrument, it wasn't just about hitting the strings hard. He had to learn to control them.

He reached far and played a tune to draw the essence and resonance like a snake charmer. And the tree grew, rising higher until Jes took a step back. The dark, dead branches reached out. The small tree peaked at over a meter tall, with a half dozen branches, sharp and mean, and a few small fruits dangled from its branches.

"Holy shit," Jes said. "You did it."

Gasping, David checked his forehead. Yeap, that was sweat.

"Not sure it was worth it. It took energy to grow that. Hopefully energy I'll gain back eating one of these." He slipped a chuckle in between his pants.

"Still, though," Caera said. "You're learning, right? Not like there's ever been unmarked before to tell you how to do any of this. Learning now instead of in the middle of battle is a good idea."

"Good idea," Laria said. She grabbed a small fruit and handed it to him.

Lasca grabbed another and hopped over to Moriah. "For angel."

Moriah looked down at the heart-shaped fruit and at the little impa holding it out for her. No need for Mia to translate the expression. The angel was confused. But she took the fruit, slowly, did a double-take of Lasca, and swallowed the fruit down.

"Th... Thank you," she said.

Lasca tilted her head. "Angel says thank you to Lasca?"

Grumbling, Moriah nudged Lasca back with her wing. "Do not taunt me, little demon."

"Not taunt! Not taunt! Humans say thank you, and welcome, and please. Not demons."

"No, I imagine you don't. Humans do. Sometimes because they are kind, empathetic, and worthy of Heaven's waters. Sometimes because they are cruel, manipulative, and worthy of Hell's fire. But I am an angel, and..." Sighing, her wing hung limp in front and beside her, huge feathers across the floor and her lap like a loose blanket she'd given up hiding behind. "Thank you."

The demons all gasped, but David grabbed Latia and Laria before they could go over and make a big deal of Moriah's vulnerability. They blinked back at him, fluttering their wings, and he shook his head.

"Leave the angel alone," he said, soft as he could.

"But why?" Laara said, joining him.

"It's complicated. Don't worry about it." He gestured to the Las and to the different spaces around Caera's long body. "Let's sleep."

A little distraction was all it took, and the Las came and joined him and Caera. The tregeera was eight feet tall when standing on her hind legs, longer if you went from nose to tail, and had plenty of room for Lasca and Laara to join him. Doubly so, when Dao got up and sat closer to the entrance. Jes joined her. They were taking first watch.

David smiled at Dao. She smiled back. He wanted to ask. God, he wanted to ask. It tingled on his skin, danced in his brain, little nagging voices that told him he had to find out what Dao's secret was. How fucked was that? Something had happened to her, something that made her not talk anymore, something probably traumatic; how fucked did something have to be to be traumatic to a demon? And yet, he still wanted to know.

Sighing, he melted back against Caera's stomach. Laria and Latia snuggled to his side, and Laara and Lasca snuggled to theirs, half draped across Caera's arms and legs. Thanks to Jes, he couldn't stop thinking about Caera either. They got along, him and her, and it felt natural and easy. Caera usually spoke bluntly; he loved that. Caera was smart and interested in things; he loved that. Caera was fun, but not silly; he loved that. Caera had a serious side to her, very serious sometimes, and in fact she was usually serious unless someone else instigated the silliness; he loved that.

She was also lean and muscular and had huge breasts. No denying it, he loved that, too.

He'd never had a girlfriend before, and he and Caera had never said they were dating. Was dating even a thing in Hell? Should he ask her? But then, how would that relationship work?

David held up his hands and looked at them. Jes had a point. Not only was he human, or at least human-like, but far as Moriah could tell, he was the sort of human who should be in Heaven. How could he have a relationship with a demon? And what would that even look like? Sharing sexual encounters, or even kissing, seemed perfectly normal to them. Cultural difference, or a whole species difference?

Overthinking. Again. Making drama in his head for no reason. This isn't a soap opera, you moron.

He reached over the two little ladies on his left and rubbed Caera's shoulder and back. She purred, a deep rumbling sound closer to a growl than an actual purr. If she was being self-destructively analytical, too, he couldn't tell.

He'd ask her about the dating thing later. Maybe after they saved the world? Or, maybe tomorrow? Not tomorrow. He was too much of a pussy for that.

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

~~Day 64~~

It took a couple more days of traveling to reach the spire, but they did, and déjà vu hit David like a hard wind. It was the same as Death's Grip's. He'd half expected a different shape, maybe something more Gothic, like the buildings in the Black Mausoleum district the spire stood next to. Nope, it was all flowing black metal covered in chunks of red, pulsating flesh, and white bone. He couldn't be sure with all the fog, but it probably had circular, black, platform balconies up high above, with big white fangs surrounding them.

The spire stood up from a valley, not deep, but deep enough the fog pooled at the bottom, hiding the entrance of the enormous structure and all its jagged spikes until they came closer. So close, David almost froze when a dozen brute silhouettes came into view only twenty meters ahead.

Timaeus and Laoko led the group, Acelina behind them, and the two tetrads clicked a couple times, loud enough to penetrate the fog.

"Step aside," Timaeus said. "We've come to see Azailia."

David and Caera crept closer until they could see details. A dozen brutes stood in the cavern-like entrance of the spire, walls of black metal and red flesh around them, giant white teeth hanging from the archway above.

"Timaeus. Laoko. Teleius?"

"Dead," Laoko said.

The brute in the center nodded and stepped aside. Wow. That was easy.

Timaeus faced the group and spoke to his entourage. "I expect you at the entrance in two days, the moment morning twilight ends." And with a small flourish of his wings, he walked into the spire.

It wasn't silent. The fog suppressed sound, but the screeches of distant demons permeated the endless white blanket. If this were anything like Death's Grip, there were probably imps, grems, and gorgalas taking flight from the balconies high above, and gliding to whatever location they wanted. What would the Grave Valley look like from on high?

Laoko gestured to the group, and the group followed, David and the girls first. It wasn't his first time in a spire, but this time he got to admire the decor. Or be scared shitless by it.

Black metal frameworks, covered in black spikes, with skinless flesh growing on them. A hard metal ground. A giant pit in the center that led up and down, with inner balconies lined with large white teeth. Dangling cages filled with remnants and jagged spikes of their own so the remnants slowly tore themselves to pieces. And demons. So many demons.

"I feel like," he whispered to Jes beside him, "that we're walking into the lion's den, again."

"Expression?"

"Yeah. Never heard that one?"

"Don't think so."

He winced. "It means I'm surrounding myself with things that are likely to kill me."

She laughed and looked around. There wasn't much fog in the spire, which meant demons from every corner of the circular area could see them. Dozens of brutes, vrats, and gargoyles gathered around, eyes wide. Acelina warranted a second of staring. Moriah warranted a dozen. But many stared at David and didn't stop. No way they'd react like this to a random soul without a mark. They must have heard about the unmarked.

A dozen grems and imps, hopping up from floors below, jumped up onto the inner edge of their platform, and stared. The Las stood tall and proud beside David, Acelina, and Moriah, kept the posture for a whole two seconds, and hopped toward their fellow little demons. Chattering clicks turned into a wave of tiny sounds.

"Don't worry," Acelina said. Ahead of him, she leaned down and whispered. "The little vermin could never communicate sensitive information. It is beyond them."

He nodded and hid his smile. She called them vermin, but her tone didn't have the same bite it used to. Mia would have been proud of him for noticing.

"Azailia waits for us above," Laoko said, "in her main chamber. Come." The ten-foot woman on hooves walked to the edge of the balcony, took a peek down at the deep pit below, and jumped across and up to the balcony above.

David gave the watching demons his best menacing stare. If he could make them afraid of him, hopefully he could avoid some violence. Unfortunately, that was hard to do when Laoko turned around on the floor above, opposite of the balcony, and waited. He couldn't jump that, not even close.

"Pathetic," Acelina said, grabbed David by the hands, and jumped. "Come along, Las."

There was no pants-pissing in Hell, thank god. Acelina was not gentle, and he dangled like a fish on a hook from her hand over a pit deep enough the fall would turn him into paste. It wasn't like he didn't think Acelina was strong, but seeing the nine-foot woman jump after Laoko put her in a new perspective. Yeah, she was strong.

Everyone jumped after her, Moriah included. She didn't need wings to jump a single story.

The last time David had been in a spire, it'd been mostly empty, with a few demons running past to get out and fight the rider, his demons, and his dragon. This place wasn't empty. It was a hive of activity, with each floor they jumped to freezing and staring when they realized an angel was with them; most didn't have time to notice David's lack of mark. And each floor grew progressively smaller as the spire narrowed on the way up.

He got to have the sneak peek he didn't last time. Each floor of the tower had things going on, from remnants growing out of the flesh-covered metal walls, to demons brawling over food. Some floors had fresh layers of gore. Some floors had piles of skulls. All floors had giant chambers beyond the inner balconies, with doors big enough to display their contents, and a lot of that was sex. David had yet to deal with an incubus or succubus, but he was probably going to by the time they left, because they were everywhere, and unlike the imps and grems, the sex demons weren't ignored. On many floors, there were chambers filled with incubi and succubi having sex with each other, with other demons, and the occasional betrayer soul. Not all of it looked consensual. The spire was a quick reminder that most demons weren't as nice as his girls.

He reached out with his sixth sense. He could feel the spire, its floors and rooms, but it felt different, distant, and far blurrier. Hell herself felt like something tied directly to the strings inside him. The spire did not. Whatever the strange tower of metal and flesh was, it felt more like something that'd been stabbed into Hell, instead of a piece of her. There, but no feeling, like a nail stuck into the arm so long the wound had healed and the nail had become part of the body.

Ten, twenty, fifty stories later, David's body ached. He'd gotten onto Caera's back by the fourth story, but even then, they had a long way up. There were stairs, archways in the walls that showed stairs of bone, but they'd take too long and probably burn his quads off by the time they reached Azailia's chamber. And it had to be her chamber, considering it had a ludicrously massive black skull with an open mouth for its entrance.

Timaeus's four brutes followed behind the group and played bodyguard, shoving away curious demons. By the time they'd reached Azailia's floor, a dozen imps and grems had followed, chirping with the Las, and a few other random demons had joined them, too. All watched the one-winged angel, licking their lips and fangs. She sent stabbing glares their way and scared a few off, but no doubt about it, a one-winged injured angel probably looked like a good meal.

"Come," Laoko said, and she stepped into the chamber. Timaeus followed.

David sucked in a breath, hopped off Caera's back, and walked through the open maw of the black demon skull. No way demons carved this. Either it was grown by Hell herself, or Lucifer did it. Either way, it would have been awesome, if not for all the death and violence happening around him.

More walls of black waited for him, with black jagged spikes sticking from their surfaces, along with more slowly pulsating walls of red flesh. Tiny streams of blood fell from the high ceiling into awaiting paths in the floor where they flowed out, like little rivers. Cages dangled from above, with a few demons in them, not all of them alive.

Past the winding paths of blood on the floor, past the dangling cages and serrated hooks, past the pulsating flesh and slabs of white bone, a throne sat. A throne made of bones, unnatural in shape, even by Hell's standards. That throne had been grown.

Within the throne sat a tetrad woman, someone wearing drapes of red silk that did a poor job covering her body, strips that covered her huge breasts and dangled down past her completely exposed pelvis and legs. She sat with legs crossed, and gently tapped her claws on the throne's arms. Piercings dangled from her body, thin black chains a lot like Acelina's necklaces, but Azailia had hooked them to her piercings so they hung from her skin in strange places.

She stood up. The silk was attached to the piercings, too. It flowed as she moved, barely sticking to her breasts while the red strips behind her moved like two capes, connected to her forearms by more piercings. And much as the woman was obviously intimidating, holy shit she was hot. She had the same curves as Laoko but for one key difference: she was a fujara, and that meant a tail and dinosaur feet. The tail flowed side to side behind her between the two hanging capes, and unless he was mistaken, she had some dangling chains pierced to the tail, too.

Four big black horns stood on her skull like a crown, and her dreadlocks were chained together into some kind of ponytail behind her that reached her butt. A tiny amber horn protruded from above her forehead. She had a soft face, but her expression was sharp, and deadly.

"Laoko," she said, with a subtle smile.

"Azailia," Laoko said, with a subtle smile.

The two women hugged and shared a kiss. Not on the cheek like a couple mafia bosses might. Full-on lips-on-lips contact, like they were intimate, or had been before. Had they been intimate before? Timaeus said Laoko was Azailia's favorite.

Another tetrad stood beside the throne, a gorujin like Timaeus, with a dozen or two skulls dangling from his belt, and from his wings, and around his chest.

"Azailia. Silvain," Timaeus said, and he grinned at his mirror image.

The other gorujin didn't respond except for a grunt and nod.

With a half spin and flourish, Azailia turned, gestured for them to follow, and sat in her throne once more, complete with one leg over the other. No underwear. David did his best to not peek under her thighs, and failed.

"What brings you from the Border Stones, my sweet sister?"

Sister? Demons weren't family, not biologically. Hatchmates, then?

"Current events."

"Oh?"

Laoko stepped aside and gestured to the group. "This unmarked has plans to travel to False Gate. At first he had planned to simply pass through your province unnoticed, but..."

"But madness has befallen him, as it has on many places in Hell." Sighing, Azailia gestured with a hand. "A one-winged angel?"

"A complicated affair. She was injured by the rider, who stalks our land. She now aids our cause."

Azailia tilted her head. "Our?"

"Indeed. On our way here, we were attacked by not only the rider, and ambitious angels, but creatures we believe responsible for the canyon in Death's Grip."

Laoko trusted Azailia quite a bit, judging from how easily she spoke of things. Demons had a habit of not being direct or honest with each other, but Laoko laid out the problem clearly. She went on and explained the rider was trying to kill the unmarked, so were angels, so were weird eldritch monsters, and that David had to get to the Forgotten Place to maybe save the world because a woman similar to the rider told him to.

Azailia took it all in with slowly widening eyes.

"I am sorry about Teleius," she said, and glanced at the gorujin tetrad at her side, but he only grunted again. "It sounds like it was a good death."

"It was."

"And your little diloja friend, Ericia?"

"Slain by this very angel." She gestured to Moriah. "It was a good death. I cannot be angry."

Moriah stood tall, proud, and gave her single wing a slow flap. Taking a page out of Silvain's book, she said nothing.

Azailia smiled. "An interesting prisoner."

"I wouldn't call her a prisoner," Laoko said. "It's complicated."

"I can only imagine. But your story only explains the unmarked boy, and the wounded angel. What of the zotiva?"

Acelina stepped up beside Laoko. "I am Acelina, a zotiva of Death's Grip. The canyon has separated me from my birth spire, and I wish to find a home in another."

The Las, half hiding behind Caera's legs, quietly whined.

"I understand our once dear lover Zelandariel is dead?"

"Yes. Slain by the rider."

Somehow, David found enough acting talent to not react.

Sighing, Azailia gestured around at the rest of the group. "And you all?"

"We're going with David," Caera said. "We didn't mean to get you involved in any of this, but Laoko convinced us you could help. We were originally just going to drop Acelina off, but then--"

"Madness befell you."

"Yes."

Azailia nodded, stood up, and gestured they follow. They did, the Las making damn sure to keep either Caera, Dao, or Jes between them and the spire ruler. And David did his best to not stare at her ass and the way her tail swayed above it. Practice makes perfect, and he grabbed the strings inside him and muted them before he leaked an aura.

How fucked up was it he could still get horny on a dime in this situation?

Azailia walked across the balcony into a room opposite her throne room. This room had nothing in it, wide empty space that opened up to the outer balcony and the big white teeth jutting up from its edge.

"Look out there," she said, and gestured to vast openness.

They stepped out and looked. And David froze.

They were so high up, the fog looked like clouds below. The heat of the fire sky hit him, not hard, but hard enough the breeze made him wipe his brow. And the view into the distance sucked the breath out of him, a non-existent horizon blurring as the different shades of the sky and the ground combined.

"That way," she pointed, "is Death's Grip."

They looked. No good. Too many mountains blocked the line of sight of the spire, and from the distance, it'd have been nothing but a blurry line no bigger than a grain of sand. The fire tornado was visible, though, or at least the part that touched the sky.

"And there," she continued, "is the Forgotten Place. False Gate sits directly on the other side, the opposite side of Hell from here. Your journey will be a treacherous one."

The Forgotten Place. From this high up, the inner ocean of Hell was visible, a thick line of red that met the white fog of the Grave Valley. And beyond it, black sky swirled, a slow maelstrom of wind and storm that buried the distant island. To its left was the clockwise direction around Hell. To its right, counter-clockwise, both directions blurs of color. And between them, a storm of dark clouds raged and buried the center of Hell's red sea in shadow.

"And there," Azailia said, and pointed up, "are the angels."

David jumped back until the arch of the spire's balcony opening was overhead, a nice ceiling between him and the searching eyes above. She was right. In the distance, high in the sky, were tiny white dots. He had to squint hard to see them, but they were there. And there were thousands of them. Too far to see if they were flying in any general direction, but everywhere he looked, as long as he looked up, he spotted more angels.

"The fog protected us," Laoko said. "I had no idea so many angels were looking for the unmarked."

"Indeed," Azailia said. "If not for the fog of the Grave Valley, I am sure you would have been spotted and killed. And if not for the canyon splitting Death's Grip, I would say journey back, use the tunnels in the mountains to reach the Black Valley, use the black fog of its lands to protect you, and reach Angel's Spine. And from within the ruins of the First War, you could use its tunnels, brave its perils, and reach False Gate. An easier path for stealth than crossing the Scar, the Red Pits, and the Navameere fields." Shrugging, she approached the edge, as if daring the people behind her to push her off. "And then, of course, you would have to challenge of surviving False Gate itself, and using what ancient tools lay within, to cross the river Styx."

David sucked in a breath between his teeth. "It's... gonna be a rough journey, for sure."

"He speaks." With a sweet little, Laoko-like chuckle, Azailia joined him and squatted in front of him. Like all female tetrads, her nose was mostly flat, giving her face an almost alien, oddly mask-like quality. Beautiful, but intimidating when a foot away and eying him. "I have heard word of an unmarked in the Navameere Fields, and they are creating chaos."

"Navameere Fields?" Somehow, he held eye contact with the ten-foot demoness. "The last place we gotta go through to get to the False Gate, right? On this side of the Hell donut."

"Indeed. The Red Pits and the Navameere Fields have been battling for an eternity, or at least longer than Zel and Alessio have... had been." She broke eye contact first, wincing as she stood up. "You will not be able to cross that battlefield unspotted. It is a land of death and barren nothingness, and both provinces patrol ceaselessly. There are no tunnels to scurry through, and what shelter you can find will only be the bones of enormous hellbeasts long dead and gone."

"Enormous... would one of them look kinda like a lizard? A surface lizard, except with big horns and stuff?"

She tilted her head. "Yes."

"The rider attacked the spire with a giant hellbeast, and a couple dozen demons in aera armor."

"How strange. Aera armor comes from only the False Gate forges. As for the creature, I cannot imagine where the rider found or tamed such a beast." She walked back into the spire and gestured for them to follow.

David shot Laoko a smile. She returned it. Of all the ways he'd figured this encounter with Azailia would go, he hadn't thought it'd go like this, reasonably, with open communication and actual efforts to make progress toward understanding. If anything, he thought he'd have to defend himself from being eaten.

"I have yet to hear the trumpets of war," she said. "As active as the angels are, they have not attacked Hell officially yet."

"You've heard the trumpets?" Moriah asked.

"Oh yes. I was alive during the Spires War. As was Laoko."

Everyone looked at her, and Laoko defended herself with her usual subtle smile.

"Perhaps Heaven," Laoko said, "thinks not explaining themselves will make it easier for them to slay the unmarked?"

Azailia nodded. "Perhaps." She gestured to a door of sharp teeth, and the teeth sank into the floor and ceiling, opening for them. An amber glow colored the tetrad's forehead, and David snuck a peek. A jewel in the shape of a small horn, and it glowed. "You will sleep here tonight, and tomorrow we will speak of how to approach the issue. I would prefer the world not be destroyed, and honestly, doing anything that upsets the angels brings me joy."

"Of course," Moriah said, somewhere between angry and sarcastic.

Chuckling, Azailia waited for them to enter the room. "Acelina, Laoko, come. We will speak to my zotivas. I am sure they miss you, my sister, and they will be excited to meet another zotiva from another spire."

Acelina paused at the door. David and the girls were already inside, a big empty room with a giant bone table and chairs, small open windows only the Las could fit through, and some red silk blankets spread randomly over the metal floor. Instead of jumping on the blankets, the Las turned at the door and stared up at Acelina with big doe eyes. They could be cute when they wanted to be.

The spire mother froze for a moment, sighed, brushed them off at a distance with her wing, turned, and walked away.

"I am locking you up for the night," Azailia said. "I am sure the angel could free you, if she wished, but this is for your protection. You can never trust a demon, after all, and the spire houses many." Nodding, her little amber horn in the center of her forehead glowed, and the big white fangs of the doorway closed, sealing David and the girls on the inside, with the spire ruler, spire mother, and Laoko on the outside. Timaeus had already vanished with the rest of his entourage.

"Very well," David said, as if he had any choice in the matter. It only took a small reach of his sixth sense to feel he couldn't control this tower with his abilities. Whatever the spire was, it wasn't the same as Hell, and didn't listen to the same rules.

The group waited until Azailia was gone, before everyone slumped on the blankets on their back, Moriah excluded. The angel climbed up and sat on a giant bone chair and stared down at the group with hard eyes.

"We're all going to die," she said.

Laughing, Jes spread her wings on the blankets and stretched out. "I dunno. Azailia seems reasonable. She might actually help us."

"We're locked in a spire tower with a power-hungry tetrad. All spire rulers will do anything in their power to control as much of Hell as possible, and Heaven if they could. You're a fool if you think we're not in danger. I can blast us out if needed, maybe. Unless David can do something."

"I don't think I can," he whispered. Each demon leaned in close. "The spire isn't... a part of Hell. Not a normal part, anyway. I can't control it with the music."

"Figures," Jes said. "And--hey, girls, what're you doing?"

The Las hadn't come join them. They squatted by the closed door, and when they turned, all four were frowning.

"Acelina gone," Lasca said.

"Why gone?"

"Don't want gone."

David sat up. "Spire mothers like Acelina belong in spires. This was her journey, to get here and rejoin her kind, doing what they do." The Las whined. "Aw come on, don't be like that. Maybe we'll visit her before we leave? I wouldn't mind seeing the hatching pits."

Dao nodded, sitting up and clicking.

"You just wanna see big tits," Jes said, and she sat up and whacked her girlfriend with her wing. "All zotivas have curves like Acelina, more or less."

"That... is a lot of boob," David said. "I uh, I wouldn't mind seeing that either."

Moriah groaned.

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

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

~~Day 65~~

~~Mia~~

The Trench. Not one of the normal trenches, but the Trench trench. Hopefully. It was definitely bigger than the other trenches they'd seen, and wider, maybe twenty meters wide and deep, and sloped. It hadn't started that big at the edge of Death's Grip, but the demons said the Trench grew bigger the further you followed it until you hit the center.

"Do we go in?" Mia said, atop Kas's back.

"Bad idea," Adron said. "Demons are probably in there, waiting for wandering souls. And some big hellbeasts use it to get around."

"But we should still follow it?"

"Yeah. Easier to fight hellbeasts up here"--he gestured around at the endless black swamp around them--"than down there, with walls on our sides."

"Good point."

Vin snorted and marched, taking a left and following the edge of the trench. Julisa stayed right behind him. And Noah and Azreal stayed in the back.

They walked half a kilometer before Azreal sank his leg into a hole in the muck.

"What the--" He flapped his wings and forced his body up and back, but something came up out of the muck with him. A gremla.

Chaos erupted. Dozens of innocent dips in the mud opened, bones scattered, and black intestines shot in the air as demons jumped up from their hiding holes. Big and small, at least forty demons came at the group, all from one side so the group had their back to the Trench line.

Mia froze on Kas's back. The demons had just been sitting and waiting in their little ground traps, waiting for prey? Each was covered in the innards of the swamp, but it was more than that. Each had bone piercings, little ones, big ones, finger bones and femur bones and everything between, all jammed through skin or their noses or their ears. Some had bones jammed through the thinnest parts of the tips of their tails. One gargoyle had a decorated her wings' membranes with dangling finger bones.

The incubi jumped to the angels' aid and cut down the swarm of imps and grems that poured up out of the hole. If the angels summoned their armor, it could draw attention. Without it, they couldn't summon their weapons; batlam demanded a state of mind, that you wear it, and that meant armor, and then the weapon attachments. The angels were strong though, and they wrestled the demons off them, threw them to the ground, and the incubi finished them.

Three brutes charged Vin, and a vrat and tiger charged Julisa. The brutes sank into the muck with each step, the vrat too, but the tiger ran on four legs and moved fast enough to keep from sinking deep. She pounced Julisa and sent her to the ground before she could draw her swords.

The tiger had scars all over her body, artistic scars, carved and drawn into her skin. Tribal scarring? The brutes had them too, and the vrat, and the little imps and grems. How did a demon even give themselves a permanent scar? Hellfire?

Their eyes were wide. They were drooling. They were starving.

Vin grabbed the brutes, and they fell into a tumbling mess in the muck. Devorjins were tiny compared to a child of the Old Ones, but they were still nearly nine feet tall, juggernauts of muscle, without a horn or spike to grab onto, and they got their claws and grip around Vin and ripped out small chunks of his flesh.

Mia knew the score. She threw herself off Kas, and her sarkarin bodyguard charged forward, only to get side tackled by another brute. The devorjin got on top of him, but Kas didn't fight to push him off or twist and roll over. Kas snapped his head forward, got his dragon snout around the brute's throat, and ripped it off. He'd done that before. He'd done that a millions times before.

The devorjin, covered from head to toe in scars that flowed like rivers of pain, fell to his side and clutched his open throat. Blood poured from it in squirts, poured over the swamp, and the creature stopped moving in fifteen seconds. The red melted into the black, tainted muck, and disappeared.

Kas didn't get to celebrate. Another dozen of the little imps and grems poured up from the swamp, guys and girls, and swarmed over Kas. Adron cut down several with his sword, but they swarmed him, too, and he fell on his back.

One charged for Mia, got within five feet, and froze.

"Unmarked?" the impa said. "What--"

The impa exploded. A beam of light smashed into the creature at a downward angle, and drove the creature into the muck with enough force it shattered, skin and muscle and bone collapsing inward like someone punching a water balloon. Mia didn't have time to block the splatter of blood from coating her.

Azreal and Noah cut through the demons like death on wings. Azreal stayed in the back, stabbing each demon precisely once, always directly in the chest, always with a perfectly straight arm. If this had been Thermopylae, he would have made the Spartans look like untrained children with the steadiness of his spear. Wearing his full suit of absurdly heavy plate armor, white, gold, and brilliant, he slaughtered the demons on the group's rear.

Noah dove ahead, flying through the mess and slicing demons along the way. No more energy beams, he cut down each demon with ruthless efficiency, each swing of the sword removing a head from a body, or the top of a head from a jaw. His sword glowed with each swing, hiding the mirror blade in its gold aura. His armor shined, not as crazy heavy as Azreal's, but still heavy plate from head to toe, with white silk flowing from the joints of gold embroidery.

He stopped over Vin and cut each brute open with hard slashes. Brutes were hard to kill, skin almost pure black, tough as rock, and Noah cut them down more like he was swinging a giant axe than a sword. But with each brute in a wrestling match with Vin, they were defenseless, and he hacked through their spines and skulls.

As fast as it'd begun, it ended. The two angels dismissed their batlam runes in quiet puffs of gold glow, and the two angels stood over the corpses of dozens of demons, both angels now perfectly clean.

"Damn," Noah said, and he got to his knees and rubbed the swamp over his body. It hurt watching the handsome, radiant man bury his white toga and glorious wings in black remnant guts, but it had to be done. Azreal did the same, grunting only once as he hid his body in grossness.

Mia got up, checked her egg in its sling, and stared at the remains of the slaughter.

"You... killed them so quickly," she said.

Noah brought a wing around and lathered it in muck. "If we didn't, some of you could have been injured, or killed."

"I get that. I just didn't expect you to be so... quick at it."

That got a small smile out of the man, and Noah looked back at her with his silver eyes.

"Demons think themselves so confident, but out in the open where we can maneuver, there is little that can defeat an angel."

Vin half snorted, half chuckled, got up, and ripped open a dead devorjin for an easy meal. And of course, he gave Noah a long side eye.

"Our last battle would have gone differently, ragarin," Noah said, "if we hadn't been... doubtful, about our orders."

They'd definitely been doubtful. Shir had looked devastated, when she and Mia had made close eye contact.

"A lie," Vin said. He scooped up a massive handful of black muck, grinned at Noah, and threw it on his legs and chest. The angel didn't stop him. "You wanted to kill me for your own reasons."

"Many angels want to kill you."

"Few as much as you." Vin came closer. "That's why you dropped out of the sky on the unmarked and I, isn't it? You'd heard the last child of the Old Ones had escaped the spire dungeon, and you came looking to kill me." With a quiet throat rumble like a crocodile, Vin squatted in front of the kneeling angel coating his wings, and poked him in the chest with a claw. "The sooner you angels admit your desire for violence, the--"

Noah stood up and slapped Vin in the chest with a wing. Noah was over seven feet tall, but that was still small by demon standards. Adron looked much bigger, and Adron looked like a child compared to Vin. But the wing slap was enough to make Vin stand back up and ready himself for war.

"You'll never understand, creature, the difference between you and me." Noah turned and rejoined Azreal in the back of the group. Dozens of demon corpses lay about, while the rest of the crew sat there in the muck, dazed. The angels really had cut the demons down fast, so damn fast the group wasn't sure what to think.

Angels were fucking deadly, that's what Mia thought. At the Death's Grip battle, if she hadn't had summoned firestorms and giant walls of rock, the angels would have easily killed her. More than easily.

Julisa pushed the vrat and tiger corpse off her, got up, and grinned back at the two winged men.

"From what Mia told me, I'd thought you two were soft," she said, approaching. The angels frowned but said nothing. "I didn't expect a couple pretty boys to be so quick to jump to slaughter." And because she was a bitch and wanted to drive a point, she gestured around at the corpses with her four hands. "You even killed the little ones."

"Don't say that like they're children," Noah said, and he slowly pushed a gremla's corpse below the muck.

"I think," Faust said, helping up his buddies, "that we should be happy the angels helped us out as quick as they did. I don't think anyone who saw us lived."

"Agreed," Adron said, looking around.

Azreal grunted and nodded. Kas grunted and nodded. Those two should really sit down and have a bro bonding session.

They checked for wounds. They all had them, but just shallow wounds. The demons hadn't had time to do any real damage to anyone, nothing that couldn't be cured with a bit of time and a full belly. Everyone got a quick bite to eat from the corpses, angels and Mia included, and everyone did their best to not stare at the angels as they did. Except Julisa, she stared a lot, and smiled evil wicked smiles when they noticed. Their brutally efficient display of immediate violence had probably turned her on.

Julisa was so classically demon, she belonged in a storybook. Faust, Gallius, Oudoceus, and Locutus were playful, sneaky incubi -- volarins -- that fit into a stereotype pretty well, too. A good stereotype, the fun and engaging kind. Kas and Adron were a question mark. So was Vin, for different reasons.

If -- when -- they found Romakus and Yosepha, Mia was going to cry and hug them. Maybe they could help the group get along, because every moment Azreal and Noah followed along behind the demons, the demons, or at least Vin anyway, grew a little more antsy. And after that display of quick slaughter, it only got worse. Faust and the gang glanced behind them a few times more than they usually did. Adron too. Julisa did, for different reasons. Vin took lead and refused to look back even more than before. Only Kas seemed unaffected, but she doubted that was true.

How the fuck could she play group psychologist to a bunch of demons and angels?

"Noah," she said, "what's Heaven like?"

The group resumed the march, big trench on their right, Mia on Kas's back. If they kept going, they'd run into the Mound eventually, and Xela, and maybe her supposed unmarked prisoner. If true, that was a problem. Unmarked had to avoid each other. Past that would be the center Trench, where the four trenches connected, and where hopefully the Damall were.

"What is Heaven like?" he asked.

"Yeah. Not the secret stuff, like whatever you angels do in your, uh, monitoring of Hell or whatever. I mean, what's it like for souls?"

Noah walked closer. "Are you sure you want to know?"

"Yeah, I do."

He nodded, eyes down, and came up beside Kas. "What do you know?"

"I was at the gate. I know what that looks like. And I know sex is, uh, pretty common. I should have asked Galon for more details, but... I didn't think." She shook her head before the memory dragged her down into the muck like it was the Swamp of Sadness. "What's the first day of a soul's unlife like in Heaven?"

Something happened, and Mia dared not stare at the man, or it might shatter. A smile. A small one, just a little thing, but it was there.

"They are given their primal bodies, idealized versions from their own mind, and Heaven's wisdom. They are given robes, and are escorted to the island of their choosing, though the gabriem help in that choice. Not everyone wants to live in the rather... hard-spirited Azoryev, for example."

"Conservatives," she said, waiting for a laugh. No one did. Damn it, where was a fellow human when she needed one.

"They are given rooms in the grand buildings of Heaven, colossal structures of gold, though most souls do not linger within. They journey out, explore the beaches of silver and gold sand. Or they scale mountainous clouds and peer out to the endless horizon of galaxies. Many find groups of souls with similar interests, guided by gabriem, and indulge in sanctums where they can explore their imaginations."

"Sanctums?"

"Structures where you can bring ideas to life. Many souls spend their time in sanctums with others, creating scenarios Heaven cannot provide naturally. Within a sanctum, you can alter your environment and your body alike. Some souls enjoy war games. Some enjoy fantasy adventures. Some enjoy sexual indulgences of a... fantastical nature."

She grinned. Yeah, if she'd gotten to Heaven and got to make ideas come to life, the first thing she'd have done would probably make some kind of Beauty and the Beast romance experience. Except the dude wouldn't transform back into a human at the end of the story, because fuck that.

Noah continued, and his smile returned. "Some souls visit the stream of memories, where they can coalesce the memories of the dead who have moved on. Animals do not pause in Heaven or Hell before reaching the Great Tower; that is the destiny of souls. But in the stream, you can summon ones who have past so you can speak with them, or you can summon a pet you have lost."

"But it's not them? It's a memory?"

"There is some mystery as to the nature of the stream of memories. Perhaps the council knows more, but the stream is connected to the Great Tower in a way we cannot see, and it can summon the memories of those gone, and infuse with them with a sort of... Heavenly life. They become denizens of Heaven once again, but not truly, not the same way you and I would be. And then when the person who has summoned them is satisfied, the summoned entity happily rejoins the Great Tower."

She sighed and shook her head. "It sounds amazing, but not knowing details of how things worked would drive me nuts. They'd drive my brother utterly insane. Like, the Great Tower? I don't get it. The stream is connected to it? But I thought the Great Tower was just a fancy title for Hell, Earth, and Heaven."

"Hell, Earth and all the material, and Heaven," he said. "We angels are not privy to the inner workings of the Great Tower. I doubt even the council truly understands every aspect. God created it all long before them. But the stream flows through Heaven and disperses into the clouds." He gave his wings a small flutter. "Souls have all the time they wish to speak with the dead, or socialize with other souls, or speak with gabriem and work to leave their burdens and pains behind. Some stay for centuries. Some for millennia. When they are done, they join the rivers of Heaven. Their resonance stays behind, and their soul and memories join the Great Tower, truly join it, beyond what we can see on Heaven and Earth, and Hell."

Heaven sounded like it had all its bases covered for someone to eventually become fully satisfied, complete, and want to move on. Ritualistic suicide didn't exactly sit well with Mia, but if she lived for a few thousand years in a place of endless pleasures and peace, she might find herself suddenly becoming 'satisfied' and want to move on.

"Not like that down here," Adron said. "Must be nice."

The angel nodded, opened his mouth to say something, and stopped. He eyed the vratorin for a moment before looking at Mia.

"Why did you have me prattle about Heaven?"

Mia laughed. "Because I could tell Yosepha and Galon loved Heaven, and the souls there. I knew you would too, right? I bet all angels do."

"We do," Azreal said from the back.

"And it's not like you're not going back eventually, right?" Mia nodded and brought her hands together. "We're going to figure this all out, save the world, and then everyone's gonna have a happily ever after. You can go back to Heaven. Maybe we'll get Heaven and Hell on better terms. Maybe I'll... I don't know, honestly? I'd like to go to Heaven, but it's not like an angel stopped me from entering last time. Heaven did, I assume. The gate did."

Noah smiled. He looked about thirty years old, and wore the intense face of a veteran soldier, but talking about Heaven got him to soften. Mia knew it would.

"I would like to return to her waters, yes."

"Good. I don't know if Heaven will have me, but I'd like to visit."

"Most who are dead and in Hell wish to go back to the surface."

Right, the surface. Life. Weight pulled Mia's head down, and she scratched Kas's shoulders.

"I never had much going on on the surface. No friends, not really, just David and me. We were orphans, and never found a home to call home, you know? It was a... what's the word. Listless? A listless way to live." She threw up her hands. "And then we both randomly died, at the same time. Still got no idea about that. It's not like demons or angels can affect people on the surface, right?" The two angels shared glances. "... right?"

"Many years ago," Noah said, eyes once again intense, and he stared ahead into the fog, "an angel named Ramiel reached the surface."

Kas stopped. The group stopped. Everyone looked at Noah.

"An angel stood on Earth?" Julisa asked.

Noah shook his head. "No. Demons and angels cannot manifest on the material plane, the same as the soul cannot, not directly." He gestured to Mia. "You spent days as a ghost before coming to Heaven's gates, yes?"

"Yeah."

"The same can be said for angels who visit the surface. Muses can speak to the dreams of surfacers. Guardians and reapers can affect the world, and indirectly affect the lives of those within. But they cannot reach out and simply touch the world or its souls." Wings sagging, he shook his head and clenched his jaw. "Ramiel journeyed to the world without permission, and affected it some way. We do not know how."

That was a big info dump. Muses were angels? And there really were guardian angels and reapers? Eep.

She gulped. "When was this?"

"A hundred years ago. Her stay on the surface was short-lived."

She wiped her forehead. "For a second there, I thought you were going to say a rogue angel went to the surface and got some people pregnant twenty years ago."

"She couldn't have, no."

"Because girl?"

"Because, as I said, angels, and souls, are immaterial and cannot affect the world directly. To affect it indirectly takes great power, and is not an ability most angels have, including Ramiel. That is the purview of muses, reapers, and guardians. She was a gabriem, but no muse."

"Still," Faust said, waving his tail and its little devil spade, "an angel reaching the surface world without permission is a big deal. You ever figure out why?"

"We did not." Say one thing for Noah, he was willing to talk. He wasn't nice about it, every word stern and hard, but he was willing to answer questions. Maybe because Mia was here. Maybe because that's what a good ally did.

It'd kill her if he couldn't go back home after all this was over.

"It could be related, then," Faust said. "Maybe Ramiel did something that took a while to come into effect? And when it did, some unique people like Mia were born?"

Noah stared ahead, but his eyes drifted down, and he shuffled his wings.

"I had not considered that Ramiel could be a part of this. Maybe..." He looked back to Azreal. "Could she have done something?"

Azreal shook his head. "How could she?"

"Long before she went to the surface, Ramiel had visited Hell many times, until it was discovered she'd been visiting the Forgotten Place."

Mia winced. "And I'm guessing that's forbidden?"

"Yes, it is. But before she could be captured and... crucified, to learn the truth from her, she escaped to the surface, and died."

"Died?"

Noah shrugged with his wings. "I do not know the details, except that when angels were sent to retrieve her, she died."

Of course the angel didn't need details. He was like Yosepha. A simple answer was good enough for him, and faith would carry him through. Well look where that faith got him now! What angels needed was a good dose of skepticism straight into their brains.

"Okay," she said, "we can put Ramiel in the puzzle box. Maybe she'll click into place later."

"Puzzle box?" Adron asked.

"Yeah. A jigsaw puzzle box. You know, a box full of little puzzle pieces, and you connect them all? Can take all day, or even weeks if it's got like, tens of thousands of pieces, and--"

The vrat laughed and poked her with a claw. "Aren't you nineteen?"

"Yeah. So?"

"I've seen old people do jigsaw puzzles, in scrying pools."

"Hey fuck you. I am a mature, intelligent woman."

Julisa snorted. "You're a child."

The demons chuckled. Even Noah and Azreal smiled. Okay, if she had to be the target of some teasing to get everyone getting along, so be it. She laughed, too.

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

"What," she whispered, "the fuck, is that?"

The group got low and crept forward, trench on their right, and a lumbering mountain ahead.

The trench had grown larger the further they'd traveled, wider and deeper, until there was no way to mistake it for another of the hundreds of trenches they passed. The thick black fog meant losing sight of it was not an option, though, so they stayed right by it, and that meant they were going to run into other people thinking the same thing.

More than a few times they came across caves hidden in the sides of the trench below, with the swamp guts pouring over them like waterfalls. But if anyone lay hiding within, the group couldn't see. The group was lucky so far, avoiding detection, but they all knew that wouldn't work forever. Eventually, people were going to find out about them, and they'd have to figure something out. Considering Xela supposedly had an unmarked as a prisoner, it was safe to say it wasn't safe to just go around making friends with any demons they met.

But the thing ahead of them wasn't a demon, or soul, or angel or unmarked.

"That," Vin whispered, "is a sercano. I did not think any lived."

A sercano. It looked like a dragon without wings, and it was massive. Thirty meters long? Forty? It was bigger than a blue whale! Like, a giant iguana, except muscular and with five eyes. Two on each side of the head, and one in the middle. Big, red snake eyes. Its belly brushed along the top of the swamp, and its long tail dragged behind it, swiping left and right with its slow, meandering walk. And unless she was going crazy, it had ropes dangling off some horns.

It was wounded. Huge gashes lined its sides, its legs, and its tail. Not fresh, but only partly healed.

It looked back, big eyes scanning, half hidden behind the veils of fog. The group didn't move a muscle. After a quiet eternity of scanning, the creature again began its slow crawl along the trench, body pushing the walls of muck and rock further apart.

"Did sercanos make the trench?" Mia asked.

Everyone shrugged.

"I recognize that creature," Faust said. "That's the one that attacked the spire. Even still has reins on its horns."

"Oh. That's the creature the rider rode in on?"

"Looks like," Gallius said. "I'd heard he normally rides a goort, though."

"He does," Vin said. "But I've known him to break other hellbeasts and ride them."

Faust flicked his tail. "And the demons he came with? It'd looked like he had a couple dozen demons with him on this monster. All in aera armor, too."

Vin shrugged. "Demons recruited from False Gate."

Mia raised a finger. "What's the--"

"We should kill it."

Oh no. Mia crept closer and smacked Vin's tail. "Why?"

"Because it's in our way."

"It's gigantic! And it's a hellbeast, right? Its heart has no resonance. You'd get nothing out of eating it, anyway."

A slow, evil grin crept onto the dragon's lips, but he didn't answer. The grin was answer enough. He wanted to kill it because he wanted a challenge. Maybe Noah and Azreal showing off and saving them from the ambush had hurt his ego. Typical.

"A fun challenge, Vinicius," Julisa said, of course riding his wavelength, "but it could kill the rest of us in a single swing. Let's find the Damall and save the world before we tell said world you're free and roaming Hell once again with giant trophies, yes?" Or maybe not. Julisa, the voice of reason. What a day.

Vin snorted, nodded, and the group continued on, following the hellbeast. The lizard walked casually, but that was twice their walking speed, and it disappeared into the black fog in a couple minutes.

"You know how the rider does it?" Mia asked, climbing back on Kas's back. "Break a hellbeast, I mean. Humans can break wild horses, but I'm guessing that's a gentler process than what the rider does."

Vinicius shrugged. "Ask him." Because, of course, the asshole couldn't answer a question directly.

Enough was enough. She hopped off Kas after a whole five seconds of riding, jogged after Vin, and climbed onto his back instead. With how many times she'd done it, it was easy enough, like climbing a rock wall with a backpack on her belly. His spikes were huge, his back wide, and she was quick to get a foot up so she could scale his ass and tail.

"You--"

"You!" She punched his back -- ow -- and climbed up to his shoulder. One hand on her egg again, she held a back spike, stood on two others, and leaned in close over his shoulder. This was a conversation for whispers. "You--"

"Leave the ragarin be," Julisa said, glaring at her. But Vin threw Julisa a glance, and the tetrad sighed and stepped away, shrugging. "Don't blame me if he eats you, unmarked."

He couldn't. Vin still had the leash, a thin black chain wrapped around his giant neck, and he wasn't allowed to remove it, remove Mia's leash, abandon Mia, or hurt Mia. It was the only reason she felt comfortable doing this, because Vin had become a giant asshole the past few weeks, bigger than when she'd first met him. At least back then, he'd been a quiet, stoic, angry demon. Now he was just angry. And vindictive.

"You and I should be friends," she whispered, straight into his ear.

"What?"

"We kinda got along when we first traveled together, right?"

He turned his head enough to eye her, but said nothing.

"I thought we did," she said, "all things considered. Sure, you were standoff-ish and a brute, but I was happy to work with that. Mostly. Nowadays you're just being mean."

He snorted and said nothing.

"So I think," she said, leaning in closer, "that you should tell me what's bothering you. Doctor Mia is in."

"What?"

"Doctor Mia. I was going to university to become a psychologist, and psychologists are doctors. PhD." She nodded and gave his shoulder a thump. He didn't need to know she'd planned to specialize in sex and couples therapy and stuff. "So you tell me what's bothering you, and I'll see if I can pinpoint why it does, and if there's anything we can do to fix it."

He growled. "You are absurd."

"Yeah? Because I noticed when Adron and Kas showed up, you started getting all pissy with me. Before you were playful once we got to know each other. An aggressive, alpha-male-bullshit asshole, but at least a playful one. Then my old friends from the spire save my life and join us, and you get annoyed with me. And in case you haven't noticed, that bitch Julisa did notice that, and she thinks it's an opportunity to get her claws in you like... like some horny housewife using her tits to manipulate men on the city council." Mia gave Julisa her best side glance. Whispering quiet enough Mia barely heard it herself, there was no chance Julisa did, but the fujara tetrad grinned at her, anyway. "Bitch belongs in a soap opera."

Vin rumbled and said nothing.

"I mean, was it because you... you were... I don't know, getting possessive of me?" She flinched, waiting for the reaction. No reaction. "This isn't really how it's supposed to go. I'm supposed to listen, and you're supposed to discuss your feelings." Which wasn't entirely fair, because she had feelings about this she didn't quite understand either, and she knew talking about them would help. But Vin just said nothing. "I don't know how demons really work, socially. You're all pretty different, far as I can tell. The incubi seem eager to share. I've got a weird friendship going with Adron and Kas, but I don't think it's gotten... I don't know." Romantic? Dare she even use the word to describe how demons treated each other?

Romance was definitely a thing, though. Romakus was romantic with Yosepha, whether he realized it or not. Adron had grown so attached to Hannah, there was definitely some romance there. Then again, just because they were romantic didn't mean they were empathetic. A sociopath could be romantically attached to someone, because they felt the other person was their possession. But the more she interacted with demons, the more it didn't feel like any of them were sociopaths. Maybe some were psychopaths. Most seemed like they were predators, deep down to the bone. But not sociopaths.

"And then Noah and Azreal showed up. I get that you don't like them, but they're our allies. And considering how much they hate you, the fact they came to us hoping to help us is a pretty big deal, right?" She thumped her head against his, above his ear and under a big horn. "And I remember how that fight went, when I first met them. They had the jump on us, but you still beat them."

Finally, she got a smile out of him.

"But," she said, "they also just helped us out of a nasty situation. You might have been able to save yourself and kill every demon in that ambush, but could you have done that before they'd killed us?" His smile faded. "Yeah. So, I'm not saying you should thank them. God forbid a demon ever use please or thank you. But I am saying this is a team effort, and they're useful. Not only useful, they're willing to question their faith in Heaven, go against their superiors, and maybe throw away their lives, all on a hunch that there's more going on than their bosses tell them. Can you cut them a little slack?"

The titan growled and frowned, but he didn't say no. He faced ahead and marched on, and after a minute of quiet rumblings, he nodded.

"Thank you," she whispered. "I know you hate those words, but get used to it."

More rumbles.

"And"--she patted his shoulders a couple times--"it's not like we're never going to fuck again, right? Adron and Kas were my friends in the spire. Kinda. But that's it. They won't mind if we have sex." Probably. Maybe. "And don't tell me you don't like the idea of holding me in your hand and using my little body on your cock." It might not have been the most ethical approach, using sex to convince a guy to get along. But this was Hell. Hell played by different rules.

More rumbles, but higher pitched. Intrigued rumbles. Good. They were getting somewhere.