The Pleasures of Hell 03.046

~~Day 66~~

~~David~~

Daoka clicked in his face and poked him with a claw. Someone had, apparently, ratted him out. A quick glance at the grinning Caera announced her betrayal.

"You could have at least woken us," Jes said, getting up off the pile of silk blankets.

"I think Acelina wanted to do something a little... private," he said.

"With the other spire mothers?"

"Kinda?"

Daoka clicked some more, frowning, got behind him, and hugged him. Hard. Her breastplate dug into his back, and he winced and half squeaked, but she didn't let him go. Death by bear hug.

Jes got up in his face and poked him in the forehead. "Your owner isn't happy."

"Sorry! Sorry. Acelina sounded like she really wanted--"

"Yeah yeah, I get it. Dao understands, too."

Daoka sighed, chirped, and rubbed her cheek on the top of his head.

The Las joined in, clicking and whining, and a few of them punched David in the leg. Gently. Tiny as they were, they were stronger than humans by a decent margin, but they were smart enough to not break his legs as they frowned up at him.

"I think Acelina wants to leave it at that," Caera said. "You know what she's like. Lilith forbid she ever relax around the group for half a second. But she relaxed with the other spire mothers, so, it was a good goodbye." Nodding, Caera stepped closer on all fours and nudged her head between Dao and David, saving him from asphyxiation. "Let's get ready. Who knows what Azailia's gonna do. I'm guessing she'll try and trick David into staying."

"Perhaps," Moriah said. "But Azailia has been known to be direct in the past." Right, Moriah probably had learned some history about what the spires had been up to the past century or ten.

"Whatever it is," David said, "we'll deal, right? We got a powerful angel with us."

Moriah glared at him. "Do you mock me?"

"What? No." Uh oh.

"I am still missing a wing, fool." She aimed her shoulder with the missing wing toward him. The second wing was still a stub, not even a meter long, underdeveloped and snug against her back. "And this shoulder..." She rotated the bad shoulder. Just watching proved it wasn't in good shape. He'd seen people favor a shoulder like that before, ones who'd had nasty dislocations that meant permanent issues. "My body spends every waking moment repairing the damage of hellfire, and you expect me to--"

Jes smacked Moriah in the ass with her tail. Everyone froze. Moriah sucked in a hard hiss and readied a nuclear salvo, and Jes put up her hands.

"We get it. The rider fucked you up. But we've all been there, beaten to fuck, injured and broken, and still found a way to make shit work. And hey, you're an angel. Even half an angel is stronger than most demons, right? Calm the fuck down."

Cue the glaring match. Everyone took a step back, and Moriah and Jes took a step toward each other. Sure, Jes was a great fighter. A gargoyle who knew how to kill and knew it well, working as one of Zel's enforcers. But the chances a gorgala could beat a one-winged angel in a fight were pretty damn small.

Moriah took a deep breath, stretched out her good wing, and nodded.

"Very well."

Jes smiled. "Great. Thought I was gonna have to kick your ass for a second there."

David braced for an explosion. None came. Moriah rolled her eyes and stepped away.

"I am well enough to use batlam and fight, at least somewhat," she said. "But I cannot fly."

"None of us can fly," Caera said.

"An angel relies on flight for superiority. Maneuverability is key."

Daoka nodded and clicked, but gestured around, picked up a piece of armor, and put it back on. No one had completely removed their armor, and the translation was clear: time to get ready.

They did. Everyone put back on what pieces of armor they'd taken off, checked their weapons, wings, hooves, and got ready by the door. Acelina had closed it for them, and someone had to open it.

Someone did. Azailia returned, with Timaeus, Laoko, and her right hand Silvain, and at least forty demons. No, wait, more. Some were from Timaeus's group, but plenty of others David had never seen; not that he was good at telling demons apart, but they sure looked new. Brutes and vrats and gargoyles, a tiger, and a satyr. All wore armor, bent chunks of black metal on random body parts, held to limbs by leather straps. All stared at David and Moriah like they were dangerous-but-delicious meals.

The new demons weren't just regular demons. They had more pieces of armor. Some had trophies hanging off belts. All wore more armor than the typical demon. Even the brutes, who usually went naked, had a few pieces of armor on them.

"Hello, my dear guests," Azailia said, smiling.

Jes snarled and stood in the front of the group. "That's a lot of demons to say hello."

Caera crept closer, got on David's side, and stayed there, tail deadly still behind her.

Azailia nodded. "Indeed. They are some of my best enforcers, and they will join you across the border. They will take you to the Scar all the way to Tarkissa, assuming Tarkissa's bailiffs do not give you trouble."

Daoka joined David's other side and clicked once into his ear. Again, no need for a translation. He didn't trust any of that.

"We going now?" Caera asked.

"After the feast. You must cross the Dead Lands and the Amisius Forest to reach the border of the Scar. And while there are pockets of activity where souls are frequently dumped, you must travel between them. We should eat before you go." She smiled, soft face wielding a scalpel of a little grin, and she gestured for them to follow.

David looked at Laoko. Normally, the tetrad had her own little smiles and grins, but not this time. She frowned slightly, eyes pointed down in classic thinking mode, but she met David's gaze for a moment, and her frown only grew. But she followed her ruler.

Moriah sucked in a slow breath and stepped out in front. Demons backed away, nudging each other to get out of her path. They hadn't expected the one-winged angel to go first, especially without her armor, but Moriah marched on like she could incinerate every demon around her if they so much as looked at her wrong. She was smaller than every one of them, and yet, bigger.

Jes traded a surprised glance with Dao. Dao shrugged, and followed her. Everyone else followed, too, the Las taking the back and huddling together close to Caera's tail.

They went up a couple floors, and everyone, all sixty or seventy of them, stepped into a giant room of metal walls with flesh pulsating between ribs. Not nearly as much flesh as down in the hatching pits or lower, but enough flesh the room smelled of blood. And in the center of the room, a large section of the floor was wet muscle, slowly beating, and a pile of hearts waited to be eaten.

"Come, eat," Azailia said. "I cannot join you on your journey, but Laoko and Silvain will."

"Not Timaeus?" Jes asked, marched up to the pile, and took a heart from the top. Maybe she wanted to show off her ego, or be strong and commanding like Moriah. Either way, she didn't even glance back. Rude. David followed suit. If David had waited, or asked for permission to eat, that would have been showing weakness. He took a heart, too.

Moriah joined them, filtered through the hearts, and found a large one that couldn't have come from a human. She devoured it quickly. Maybe demon hearts were affecting her, because she was getting more comfortable eating them, and not being squeamish about it, either. She ripped through the flesh with her teeth all too much like a demon, and stared around at the other demons who slowly approached the pile like hungry pack animals, waiting for their turn.

Dao and Caera got their own hearts, but Caera also played caretaker and gave the Las a heart each. They cheered. It wasn't every day the Las got a whole heart for each, tiny as they were.

Laoko smiled at the little ladies and fetched a heart, too.

"It's a long journey to the Scar," she said. "But we must leave quickly before the rider attacks. Two days was probably too long a stay."

"Can he assault a spire solo?" David asked. "Last time he attacked a spire, he had a giant hellbeast and a couple dozen demons in aera armor with it. I mean, if he comes in alone, can you capture him?"

"Many have tried," Azailia said. "No one has captured the rider. He always escapes. No matter how many demons come at him, he always survives. But he is a wild animal, chasing whatever scent catches his interest. That scent is you, so it is best you stay on the move." She folded her four arms across her chest, and her tail flicked once to the side. "Not that I cannot fend off the rider if I have to, but I would prefer to not waste demons on a pointless affair."

"So Timaeus is going back?" Jes asked, and she threw the huge tetrad a squinting eye along with a small flap of her wings. He returned the eye squint, and the wing flap, grinned, and swallowed down a heart.

"Yes," Azailia said. "Ultimately, we decided he cannot leave his district for too long. Factions war and cause chaos without a shepherd to punish their misdeeds. You understand. Laoko will be your guide, as will Silvain."

The group looked at Silvain. Somehow, despite how similar he looked to Timaeus, a ten-foot demon with a tail, dinosaur feet, giant wings, and four enormous black horns, he looked considerably meaner. Maybe it was just the stoic attitude, but David immediately put him on the 'do not trust' list.

They ate, David's group, and everyone else. No one looked comfortable with each other. The brutes, in particular, looked at Moriah and David like they wanted a fight. Sure, Moriah could win that fist fight, but David couldn't, not inside the spire. Once they were out on the road, he'd feel more comfortable, but right now the tension felt like a wire ready to snap.

Nothing happened. Everyone ate and went down to the ground floor. David snuck some glances with Caera and Jes, and they both shrugged. Moriah couldn't stop glaring at the demons, daring them to try something; subtle, she was not. But no demon so much as got close to them.

They stood in the spire's entrance where the fog pooled. First out went Silvain, then David and his group, and then Laoko and her demon entourage. A lot of demons, ready for battle, ready to protect David and the group on their perilous journey.

Yeah right. What the fuck was going on?

Another fifty demons waited for them, all wearing armor.

"Uh..." David tilted his head.

"You must be protected," Azailia said. "A force this size will give the rider pause, at least."

"You're announcing our location," Moriah said.

"Hardly. Unlike angels, we do not need the sky to move silently. Make the effort to remain hidden, and the fog will hide you. Or did you not think there are forces of similar size between you and your goal?" Azailia shrugged and folded her four arms across her huge chest. "I know my province well. There are dozens of groups that could attack you, and no angel testing the fog could separate them from yours at a glance. You will be hiding in plain sight, in a sense."

It was like medieval Europe, or ancient Greece, or ancient China, or... lots of places, now that he thought about it. Small, warring states, who treated combat like a natural part of life. And they were going to pretend to be one of those states, just nomadic?

"My warriors," Silvain said, shot a hard glare at David over his shoulder, and gestured to his troops with a flick of his tail. "Respect them."

David glared right back. Showing weakness wasn't allowed, and he marched forward after the tetrad like he wasn't scared at all.

He was fucking terrified. It was so many demons, all glaring at him, red eyes piercing the fog, all twitching their claws or scraping said claws across the nigh blunt edges of their swords and axes. If they jumped him, the best he could do was summon his armor on the spot and maybe block an attack. In a brawl, he was fucked. He needed distance, and having an entourage of nearly a hundred demons he didn't trust was the opposite of healthy distance.

A brute gently thudded the tip of their stupidly enormous sword on the ground. David knew why no demon bothered with spears or halberds. The fuck was the point in killing someone if you didn't get to feel the splitting of flesh or the breaking of bone under the weight of your swing? It was a wonder none of them used giant hammers, so they could feel a skull crush the way a rock could crush.

He looked down at his hands and squeezed them. He knew that sensation. It wasn't a good sensation.

Taking a deep breath, he walked forward, and his girls followed. A look back showed Azailia watching, and she slowly disappeared behind a veil of god, grin unending.

He already missed Acelina.

"Laoko," he said once they had some distance, "you trust these demons?" He didn't whisper.

"I trust Azailia."

He frowned up at her over his shoulder. That wasn't what he asked, but it was a clear enough answer. No, she didn't, not really.

Moriah cracked her knuckles and marched on ahead of the group. Jes hopped after her, and Dao behind her. David walked with Caera, Las around him, and Laoko followed directly behind David. Silvain stayed in front, and the nearly hundred demons working for him and Azailia circled the group.

Entourage, or prison guards.

They began the march. Other demons watched, younger ones, smaller ones, some perching on metal pillars that stuck out of the ground, and some gathered in groups, imps and grems that stared with wide eyes. The Las waved.

"The rider is going to find us," Jes said. She slowed down and walked with Laoko instead, directly behind David. "This is way too big a group."

"Azailia knows what she's doing," Laoko said. "These are many of her best enforcers. Some are centuries old."

They looked it. Some brutes had scars, not a common sight; demons usually healed. Plenty of them had trophies on their belts, or hanging off chest or back straps. One gorgala who might have had a century or two on Jes had tiny bones hanging off her wings' fingers at the claw. He had no idea if that meant she was a better fighter than Jes, but it certainly gave him reason to keep the woman in sight.

They gave him his space. With him in the back and Moriah up front, the demons didn't get close, most on the edge of the fog with only Silvain truly directly in front.

They managed an entire hour before trouble started.

"Silvain," Moriah said. "Go further up."

The tetrad turned and growled down at the angel. Yeah, he was a lot grumpier than his fellow tetrad, and he flared his wings and turned, full stop.

"Do not give me orders."

David checked behind them. The spire was out of sight, all buried in fog, and Azailia wasn't around to play referee.

"It wasn't an order. It was a threat. I do not want you near me. So you will stay good and far away, or I will smite you down." Moriah stepped closer. "Understood?"

Silvain glared down at the angel. She was shy of seven feet tall, and had one wing. Silvain was ten feet tall, with two enormous wings, bulging muscles, four enormous horns, and a demony skull-ish face showing off his many teeth. He made her look irrelevant.

She stepped closer, and he growled and braced. What would Mia say? His pride was on the line, and if he backed down, he'd have a bunch of demons questioning his authority.

He made a good show of being big and scary, but after a long staring match, he snorted, turned, and followed his fellow demons deeper into the fog, giving Moriah and the gang more space.

"That girl," Laoko said, "is going to be trouble."

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

They created three groups. David's group, Laoko's group, and Silvain's group. Silvain's took the front, David's in the middle, Laoko's in the back, and they all found places to hide for twilight hours. Problematically, there weren't any good places to hide. But with a hundred demons, the group was bold enough to find empty areas to sit and get ready for sleep.

Black dirt with hundreds of white pebbles, all broken off the enormous white tombstones sticking up from the ground. A single mausoleum stood nearby, so David and the girls took it. It didn't have a basement, but the room was large enough, tall walls with shelves stacked full of black skulls. A couple real ones, too.

They sat in the big, empty room of sculpted death, and huddled close.

"Anticlimactic," David said.

"Yeah," Jes said. "I expected to have to fight our way out of there."

"We're surrounded," Caera said. "Fighting our way out is still a possibility."

David traced the black stone floor with a finger. "I can fight out here. I can use the music, like I did with the rider."

Caera grumbled. "Last time you did that, you fainted."

"I feel better about it, this time. Getting better at playing the music."

"Good enough to take on a hundred demons? From all sides? While we're in the fight?"

He winced. "Probably not. But maybe we can change that? If we just kinda... get ourselves in a different position, maybe we can--"

A clopping hooves sound outside shut him up. Laoko poked her head around the entrance of the mausoleum, and smiled at the group.

"La!" The Las said. They hopped up from playing in their corner, ran through the group, and jumped around Laoko's legs in a circle. "La! La!"

Laoko smiled and patted each of their heads once, each with a different hand.

"You four are terribly cute, far cuter than most imps and grems I have dealt with. What is your secret?" She squatted down and tugged on their wings and tails.

The Las giggled and hopped around some more.

"Las older than most imps and grems," Lasca said, and she poked her temple. "Smart."

David choked down a laugh.

"Laoko," Caera said, "visiting?"

"Of course. I wanted to see how you were fairing."

"You," Jes said, "just wanted to make sure we were still around, and not plotting some way to escape."

Laoko frowned, stood in the mausoleum entrance, and leaned against the side, upper arms folded across her breastplate, lower on her hips.

"Why would you want to escape? I promised you we would see Azailia, and she would help you with your journey. Is this not help?"

Daoka shook her head and gestured at the walls and beyond them.

But Lao shook her head harder. "They're not your jailers. They're--"

"And you promised us to tell us more about you." Jes slapped the floor with her tail. "We seemed to skip that part. So if you wanna sit and chat with us again, how about you tell us a little more about yourself, miss Azailia's favorite?"

That was a good point. In all the changes and commotion, David had forgotten. He looked at Caera and Dao, but both looked up at Lao, waiting. They were on board with forcing her to speak.

Laoko growled, but sat down by the door and leaned back with palms behind her against the floor.

"I am old. I helped Azailia take this tower during the Spire's War."

"Fuck," Jes said. "That is old."

"Yes. Back then, tetrads were far more common, and children of the Old Ones were not extinct. Battles were... extreme." She gestured to her throat. "I could not breathe hellfire then. That came with age."

"So you were a part of the biggest war Hell's ever seen," Jes said, "since Cain's war?"

"Yes. Azailia, myself, and many other tetrads cooperated and fought for control of the Grave Valley."

"Teleius," David said.

"Yes." She frowned, looking down. "And others, over the centuries."

"Why'd you leave the spire?" Jes asked. "Sounds like you and Azailia were close."

"I met a man."

Jes choked on a laugh. "Wait, you're serious?"

"Yes. Angels came to investigate the aftermath of the Spires War, and once they realized Azailia was no child of the Old Ones, capable of uniting all of Hell, they let us be. I got to know some of those angels, and..." She smiled, looked down, and twisted to sit in that classic feminine sit-on-hip way. "The gabriem were interested in us. They wanted to know why we were so insistent on fighting each other. The rapholem and mikalim, not so much. But the gabriem asked questions, and I answered."

"You," Moriah said from the opposite end of the room, "spoke with angels?"

"Yes, or at least, the gabriem. And over the centuries, gabriem have visited the Grave Valley and spoken with me and others. Sometimes we had sex. Gabriem are very talented." Nodding, she traced one of her many claws down a leg. "But they also enjoyed talking with us, learning about us, and I learned about them."

David tilted his head. "You got along with angels?"

"Yes. They are not so different from us. Yes, demons crave violence, but we still have many similarities. We are... different from humans, in a way humans will never understand, but angels do."

Jes had said similar. Gulping, David snuck a glance Caera's way, but if Laoko's words affected her, she didn't show it, gaze still on the tetrad and waiting for more.

"And," Laoko said, "you could say I lost the taste for conquest, because of those conversations."

Moriah snorted. "I find that hard to believe."

"Do you? Is it so hard to believe that gabriem, who devote their lives to helping souls overcome the scars of their surface life, could instill a change of thought in a demon?"

"Yes, it is hard to believe."

Laoko sighed and shook her head, and her long dreadlocks gently bounced around her shoulders.

"I have befriended many angels in my lifetime, if only briefly. The last angel I met, decades ago, was one angel named Liel. He had friends with him, Galon and Symons, and the three of us were friends. Liel and I even shared... a close friendship, mentally, emotionally, and physically."

Moriah stood up straight. "You knew Galon? Of Avinoam?"

"Yes, in passing. He was a funny man, always making jokes, always flirting. He slept with many demons from my and Teleius's group. I spent many nights laughing with him. Did you know him as well?"

Someone might as well have kicked Moriah in the stomach. She glared at Laoko, but looked away and squeezed her fists hard.

"My point is," Laoko said, "that is why I am... content, to not help Azailia in her inevitable wars with the other spires. I need not engage in battle every moment of my life." She leaned forward and tapped the center of the floor with her claws. "Could I be a spire ruler, if I strove to be? Perhaps. So could Timaeus, or Silvain. But that life does not interest me anymore. I cannot summarize centuries of spontaneous visits from angels in this conversation, but yes, that is why I am the way I am."

Talk about introspective. Either Laoko had herself figured out, or she was delusional. But it was a classic story, someone from another world bringing fresh views to a different group. Historically, those ideas often ended with the visitor getting decapitated, but that wasn't so easy to do to an angel.

"I believe you," David said. "I mean, I don't know if that's saying much. I'm not the best judge of character. But I believe you."

Caera nodded. "It fits. We found you out alone with your friend Teleius, and Azailia treats you like a sister. You could have stayed with her."

"This is absurd," Moriah said. "Do we seriously believe this bolstara tetrad, a being thousands of years old, has become less a violent, bloodthirsty creature, because she's spoken with angels?"

"Angels ever try to do that?" Jes asked. "I mean, come down and make a big show of diplomacy for all the spires? Chat us up, make friends? Maybe get Heaven and Hell on better terms officially?"

"Of course not. Thanks to Lucifer, Hell is an abomination, poisoned and tainted. Demons were never supposed to exist. This land was meant to purify souls before they are returned to the Great Tower, but demons use it like leeches, feeding off the cycle of souls to become powerful, always with the goal of piercing Heaven and Earth to eat their full. Monsters."

Laoko glared at the angel and dragged her claws across the stone. "What else do I need to do to prove I am not trying to betray you all?"

"I--" David got halfway into a word before Dao stood up.

Clicking up a storm, Daoka squatted beside Laoko.

"It's not the same," Moriah said. "You are not a tetrad, Daoka. Tetrads are powerful, and capable bringing war. They thrive on conflict. They--"

Daoka clicked some more, a string of noises that almost had David wincing. She shook her head, sat down beside Laoko, and patted the woman's thigh.

"I think," Jes said to Moriah, "angels like you should get their sticks out of their asses, and maybe think the gabriem were onto something? Maybe not all demons are the monsters you think we are?"

"Galon was not right!"

Glass shattered. Everyone traded glances.

"You knew Galon well?" Laoko asked.

"I..." Clenching her fists again, Moriah leaned back against the wall, let her body drag until she sat ass to floor, and hugged her knees to her chest.

The Las stared at her, tilted their heads, and approached, but Dao chirped at them and gently tugged on their wings. Message clear: leave the angel be.

"Considering everything that's happened," Caera said, "I vote we give Laoko a chance."

The tetrad smiled and waited.

"Five Las!" Lasca said, and she flapped her wings.

Daoka clicked twice and gestured to David.

David put up his hands. "I'll take any help we can get. I thought Timaeus was coming with us, too. Guy seemed nice enough."

"He is," Laoko said. "I am... not sure why Azailia dismissed him. It is true bailiffs serve a purpose. They are strong enough to keep the small wars between the many factions of the Grave Valley from growing unwieldy."

"Like Death's Grip," Jes said. "Diogo, the annoying fucker, stepped in frequently to shove groups around if they got too uppity and slaughtered each other."

"Yes. The provinces need to be strong. Fighting amongst ourselves and culling the weak breeds strength, but only to a point." Laoko looked back over her shoulder, out the mausoleum door to the graveyard and fog beyond. "But that does not mean he could not have left for some time, and returned later. I wonder why Azailia insisted he return immediately." Silence was her answer. "We have avoided factions so far, but I am sure we will run into some on the way. We will avoid many, but the journey will take longer. Two weeks to reach the border of the Scar."

David sighed. "Sounds like each province takes a month to cross."

"The Red Pits and Navameere fields will take longer."

He winced. "Mia will reach False Gate long before we do."

"Maybe," Laoko said. "But regardless, I will help you on this journey as much as I can. When we arrive at the Scar, Silvain and his demons will escort us to Tarkissa of the Scar and--"

"Can't we just... not?" Jes asked. "I'd rather we avoid meeting every spire ruler on the way."

And David agreed with her. If every spire ruler they ran into was a potential opportunity for someone to betray them, it'd happen eventually.

"You think," Laoko said, "that every spire ruler is so shortsighted, they think it'd be better to eat the boy, perhaps gain immediate power, than save us all from annihilation?"

"I think it's a possibility," Jes said. She looked Moriah's way and waited, but whatever was bothering the angel kept her from joining in. "Whatever allows us to sneak around better, I'd rather do. We got angels on our asses, too, and the rider."

They all peeked out the door, and listened. No clop of goort hooves, or clink of metal armor.

"Azailia has decided against that," Laoko said. "This group will take you to Tarkissa."

"And we if decide to go on our own?" Caera asked.

"I..." Laoko tilted her head, eying them. "I suppose Silvain would try to stop you. It's his mission to escort you."

The group traded glances again. Suspicious. Not Laoko, who seemed honest enough, but Silvain and Azailia weren't.

"Another question," David said. "Acelina. You seemed like you knew her more than she realized."

"I didn't, except what you know. I met her when she was a child, many centuries ago."

He tilted his head. "You uh... you seemed kinda..."

Laoko grinned. "When I lived in the spire, I spent much time with the spire mothers. Can you blame me?"

Caera and David glanced each other's way. Nope.

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

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

~~Day 67~~

~~Mia~~

"The idea is absurd," Julisa said.

Mia laughed, riding Kas's back beside the tetrad. "Tell me about it."

"And you're forced to wear... cotton sticks inside you?"

It took every bit of willpower she had to not burst out laughing. "I mean, yeah? You never noticed that in the scrying pools?"

"If this only lasts for several days a month, why bother?"

"Because otherwise I'd stain my clothes with blood?"

Julisa snorted. "They are your clothes to stain."

"True, but anything I was sitting on would get bloody, too." She put up her hands. "Girls on the surface do everything we can to hide the fact we're mammals."

"Why?"

"Societal standards, I guess. And it's not exactly hygienic to get blood all over you and your furniture." She hadn't had a period cramp or anything since arriving in Hell. Small miracles. She could bleed from a wound, but not her womb.

"Your surface world sounds like nonsense."

"You don't watch the scrying pool a lot?"

Julisa shook her head. "So I can learn my meals once wore pointless clothes that accomplished nothing?"

Mia looked down at herself. Other than the sandals, her potram clothes were purely for fashion. Everyone else wore armor.

"Zel wore some silks for fashion," Mia said.

That got her. Julisa scrunched up her nose and whip cracked her tail. "She also wore jewelry. Pointless. She would not have liked it if an angry demon ripped her nipple piercings out, would she? What next? Makeup?"

Mia smiled. Demons weren't impervious to the pull of fashion. Julisa didn't want to admit it, but she'd probably be wearing skulls on her armor right now if the Damall weren't constantly moving place to place. And skull trophies were just another form of fashion. Which came first, demons wearing skulls as trophies, or humans?

Now that she thought about it, would Zel have worn makeup? Demons didn't really need makeup. Their skin complexion was always perfect, smooth reds and dark reds, and unless she was crazy, they had mascara, too. It wasn't mascara, just a hint of black around the edges of their eyelids; they didn't have any hair, anywhere, eyebrows or eyelashes, and their skin compensated by making those places dark. And lots of demons had black hair tendrils that kinda looked like dreadlocks. Demons always looked sexy. Or scary. Or both.

"What about angels?" Mia asked, and she looked back at Noah and Azreal.

Azreal grunted. "We're covered in remnant innards right now," he said, "and you ask about fashion?" How the younger looking of the two angels was always the more terse and grumpy, she didn't know. Azreal looked in his mid twenties, tan skin, medium messy dark hair, and amethyst eyes. Compared to Noah, he looked like he should have been the rapscallion lad of the two. But, nope, both were grumpy types, and Azreal was especially so.

In the past, she'd have winced and apologized for upsetting him. Not anymore. She smiled at him and shook her head.

"You know what I mean. In Heaven, do angels care about fashion? Do souls?"

"Gabriem care," Noah said. "Potram"--he gestured to himself and her--"does well to make any who wear it beautiful, but gabriem will sometimes engage with souls in games of fashion. It is possible to sew clothes in Heaven, and while angels cannot create new clothes, souls can."

"Can't create new clothes? I don't understand."

"Creativity is the gift of souls. Those of us of grace or sin cannot do it, not to the same degree." Noah shrugged, like what he'd just said was the most obvious thing in the world. "As much as all souls in Heaven are treated with respect, and given full access to all the pleasures they could want, it is the artists who garner the interest of angels."

"Heaven likes artists? What kinds?"

"All kinds. What is more God-like than to create something from the depths of your soul? To summon thoughts and through skill and experience, turn them into reality?"

She scrunched up her nose, looked down, and tapped her chin with her fingertips. Thinking mode, David called it.

"I hadn't thought about it like that. You can't do that?"

He shook his head. "Not like a soul can. Angels can imitate, but..." Frowning, he looked down at the muck his sandals sank through. "There is a spark that's missing."

She tilted her head. That was sad.

"I mean, I've created some random stuff in my life," she said. "Idea pops in my head and I write it down. Drew some pictures of random things, dreams and stuff, and--do angels dream?"

"No."

"Oh. Demons don't, either." And neither did she, anymore.

He nodded. "Dreams are for the living. It is how muses instill passion into souls. They harness the creativity found inside and bring it to the surface of the soul's dreams."

Julisa snorted, shaking her head, but she didn't retort, either.

So, angels couldn't create, not the way humans could. Neither could demons. Something about being a soul meant the unique ability to envision original concepts and ideas. And--

"I've done plenty of creative stuff! That means I'm human, right?" she asked. The angels shrugged. The demons shrugged. "Well, I'm putting plus one on the 'I'm a human' column."

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

The Mound was terrifying.

They'd run into hundreds of the bone pillars on their march through the Black Valley, each one always the same. A strange tower-like structure, sometimes five, sometimes fifteen meters tall, half as wide, with layered rings of giant bones for its construction. The rings were covered in sharp, bony spikes, and the rings turned in opposite directions of each other. Remnants grew on them, and got ripped apart in seconds, like ground beef on a shredding machine.

The Mound was different. It was the size of a large building, something that could fit hundreds of people, and it had holes in its sides where it grew from the swamp, bone archways where the bone rings that circled the giant structure twisted over them. Doors. The archways opened up over small trenches that connected to the giant main Trench the building stood next to.

And demons were everywhere. They walked through the muck, dragging their bodies like they didn't have a rush to get anywhere. Conserving energy, maybe. Thousands of them, nothing but blurs in the black fog, but Mia could hear them, quietly clicking or trading barbs as they moved from the Mound to the main Trench. From the trench, they either walked back the way Mia's group had come from, or went in the other direction. And this deep into the Black Valley, the main Trench line was a good thirty meters deep and wide. Black remnant innards poured into it and flowed off into hidden tunnels and holes, and the giant remnant-churning Mound replaced lost muck with new, fresh, red muck.

The Black Valley was more dark red than black, near the enormous meat grinder of doom.

Mia frowned down at the red streaks running through the mud. Everyone had frozen, made sure they were completely drenched in their mud disguises, and went silent. After an hour of silent recon, learning absolutely nothing, they backed off deeper into the fog away from the Mound, and Mia gently sculpted them a big hole they could hide in.

"No sign of Xela," Adron said. "The one time I came through here, I avoided all this as best I could. You sure you want to poke the hornets' nest?" The demons and angels raised brows and looked at the demon. "It's a human expression."

Mia gulped, rubbed her hands together, and peeked up over the edge of the hole.

"Yes, I want to see what's going on. If Xela really has an unmarked captured here, we should save them."

"But," Julisa said, "you are to avoid close contact with them, as well?"

"Yeah."

"How close?"

"No idea. The girl in the armor literally put a canyon between David and me, but for all I know, twenty meters would have been fine. And when David showed up, the hellquakes didn't start instantly. It took time."

The demons and angels traded more looks, and frowned down at their feet in thinking mode.

Julisa flicked her tail. "And we aren't simply going past, why?"

"Because an unmarked might need rescuing?"

"And?"

Of course it had to be like this. God forbid they save someone who might need saving just for the sake of saving them, someone who might not deserve Hell's punishment.

Noah gestured with a wing. "I agree with Mia. We should make the effort, if only to learn more about the unmarked."

Vin grumbled and peeked over the hole's edge; he didn't have to stand up to look.

"This plan," he said, "is foolish."

"Vin does have a point," Adron said. "We got no idea what's in there, or how close Mia can get before there are problems." Like Noah, he gestured to the Mound, some ways off in the distance and out of sight behind the fog. "We're what, a mile away?"

"Almost two kilometers," Mia said. Everyone looked at her. "Oh shut up. Metric is better."

"I think," Faust said, "we should all just sit tight for a bit and figure out what our options are. I've never met Xela. Have any of you?" They shook their heads. "We don't know anything about her, except that she supposedly has an unmarked captured here. We don't know how many demon enforcers she has, either. Let's just watch for a bit, and see if we can get a bearing on the situation."

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

Twelve hours later, all they'd learned was that a lot of demons liked to come and go. Mia did her best to make the hole hard to notice, and it worked, so far. Hundreds of demons, each covered in scars, each walking or crawling through the muck like they'd lived in it their whole lives, went to the trench, followed it, and disappeared into the fog. Some came back with more energy in their step or wings, and a few still had red blood on their teeth. Someone was feeding them. Maybe Xela?

And just as Mia was about to go stir crazy, some roar cut through the black fog. It was evening twilight, and hellbeasts liked to hunt at twilight. Maybe the big dragon had come back?

"To the Mound!" someone screamed. "Before they get away!"

Mia and the group jumped to their feet. Fuck, this was not happening. A whole day of just sitting on their asses, scouting, and--

"Shit shit," Locutus said, and he crawled out of the hole. "Let's go!"

"And do what?" Azreal asked.

"Interfere?"

Noah shook his head. "Get down, and hold still."

"I--" The advice kicked in a second later, and he threw himself face first into the muck. Noah grabbed his foot and dragged him back down into the safety of the hole.

The rest of the group stuck their heads up enough to peek, and in the distance, blurred by the fog, shadows cut left and right, coming and going from the Mound.

First, there were roars, more demon roars that boomed in the swamp. Then the clang of metal on metal. Then screams of pain.

"What do we do?" Faust asked.

"Mia," Adron said, "can you do something about the fog?"

"No. I can affect the swamp and the sky, but not the air." Why the sky didn't qualify as air, or vice versa, was still a mystery.

"Then do it indirectly," Julisa said. "Summon the fire sky and bring it down."

"I... I mean, I could do that." Another fire storm, like last time. Mia shivered. "But that'll be a beacon to any angels nearby."

"And to any not nearby," Noah said. "It will be seen for many miles."

Mia paced, clutching her egg tight. She couldn't help, not without seeing what was happening, but if she got close to the Mound and the other unmarked, she risked another canyon getting ripped open underneath her. But something was happening, and they had to get involved now.

"Vin," she said. "Can you take the demons and... and do what you do best?"

The dragon tilted his head and looked down at her, waiting.

She gulped down the boulder in her throat. "Take Julisa, Adron, and Kas, and slaughter everyone who gets in your way. Get the unmarked, and get them somewhere safe. If I'm right, they'll probably hit the trench, but we know that's where everyone will look. So I'll go ahead with Noah and Azreal down the trench toward Angel's Spine, and we'll make sure it's safe. You come that way, meet up with us, and if we have to, we can split into two groups so I don't get close to the other unmarked." She found the courage to nod. "Hit and run."

Noah and Azreal looked at each other. Whatever silent conversation they had, it convinced them to agree, and they nodded.

"And us?" Gallius asked.

"You four stay in the shadows and follow Vin. There's no way we can cover all our sides in this fog, and there are demons hiding everywhere in the swamp. Vin will be the distraction, and you four will kill anyone who tries to get him and the others from behind." She clutched her necklace and looked up at the child of Belial. "Vin..." No words needed. If she couldn't see what he was doing, she couldn't enforce good behavior. He couldn't run away from her, the leash wouldn't allow it. But he could do whatever else he wanted, and she'd have no way to stop him.

He might eat the unmarked, for all she knew.

Vin managed the tiniest little grin, but it vanished under a quiet rumble. He hardened his eyes, flexed his fingers and claws, whipped the muck with his gigantic tail, and climbed out of the hole.

Adron and Kas looked at Mia, each other, and Mia again.

"I'll be fine," she said. "I got two angels with me. If they went with you, they'd have to put on their armor, and then everyone would see and it'd ruin the whole stealth thing and... I'll be fine. It's you two I'm worried about."

Adron grinned down at her, winked -- or blinked -- his single eye, and climbed out of the hole.

Julisa rolled her eyes and followed.

Kasimiro stood there, long arms hanging in front of him so his claws pressed to the muck, a gorilla pose save for the long tail behind him slithering left and right. But his tail stopped, and he leaned in close enough to Mia his dragon snout almost touched her.

"Be careful," the dragon dinosaur said. Without eyes, she had to rely on his lips, cheeks, and voice tone to read him. Barely any facial expression at all, as always with Kas, but his voice was deeper and softer than usual.

She gulped again and patted his shoulder. "I will."

He turned and climbed up over the wall of muck, and followed after the group. The incubi went last, each taking a moment to wink at Mia on the way. Handsome devils.

Noah joined her and offered a hand. "How you convinced demons to care of you, I do not know."

She took it and climbed out of the hole. The angels followed, climbing instead of using their muck-smeared wings.

"Vin, I have the leash. But the others, I didn't convince them. I just... I don't know. I've been nice to them, usually."

"They're demons," Azreal said. "They don't understand nice."

"Hard disagree. I've seen them be nice, in really meaningful ways, too. Maybe not as obviously nice as humans, but still." She smiled back at the two angels and pointed ahead in the fog. "This way... right?" They had to walk past the Mound at a distance, then curve around it to get the Trench back into view. That meant going deeper into the fog, and losing their guiding landmark.

"Yes," Noah said. He touched her shoulder, walked past, and smiled back at her. A tiny smile, approving, and she caught it and smiled back.

Demons ran past, shadows in the fog. A few ran from the Mound. Most ran toward it, weapons drawn, fangs bared, roars out. Demons in the swamp erupted from holes they'd dug, lined with bone to keep from filling with more remnant innards. Some sprinted across the mud, using speed to keep from sinking, or used wings if they had them. Whatever was going on, it was a frenzy of demons all cutting through the fog and running to the Mound.

A demon ran right at Mia. A diloja, a bat girl. The angels froze. Mia froze. The bat girl froze.

"Yulia?" Mia asked.

The bat girl's eyes widened, hunger and bloodlust printed clear across her face in red. Not Yulia. Whoever she was, she'd been running to the Mound, half gliding, and accidentally ran into Mia and the angels.

The diloja sprinted for her.

Mia reached out with a palm, pointed it at the bat girl, and played a song. A sharp, heavy note, surprise and subversion in a single moment, followed by a rising scale, played fast. She played it hard, hard enough the presence hiding in the ocean currents of vibration would respond.

The presence did.

A sharp bone stuck up from the swamp with explosive force, launching buckets of remnant innards away in a spray of black blood. The bone, a few meters tall, was as thick as Mia's arm at the tip, as her leg at the bottom, and it struck through the diloja's front, up through her rib cage, and out through the back of her neck, the girl's forward momentum driving the bone up at an angle.

Mia stared at the dead girl. Dead, instantly. She dangled there on the bone spike, wing arms drooping, and Mia forced her eyes away. She'd told the song to grow a weapon and summon it under the enemy. But she hadn't been sure what that weapon would be like.

Of course it'd be bone. A white bone, freshly grown from below the muck, now coated in streaks of red. At least it was smooth, and had stabbed the demon so cleanly and quickly, it hadn't looked like the diloja had realized what'd happened before she died.

"She didn't even let me say anything," Mia said.

"Most demons are like this," Azreal said. "Concerned only with eating, getting stronger, and ruling over others. Mindless. Do not feel sympathy for them. Demons don't."

She glared back at him, but the angel kept his purple eyes on her, unphased. She glared a little harder. He didn't flinch or look away.

No point in an arguing, not with some ancient holy warrior, not right now in the middle of a swamp with demons running around. But he wouldn't be dealing with the demons. She would be.

Another demon appeared. Everyone froze. The vrat looked too much like Adron, and he stared at Mia from a distance.

He ran off, and she sighed relief.

Noah grunted and traded a barbed look with her, but she glared right back at him.

"If they come for us," she said, "I'll do something. But I'm not going to kill them if I don't have to."

"They will regroup and come at us in hordes."

"Maybe."

Azreal came in closer and half yelled, half whispered into the back of her head.

"Each demon you let live is a demon that might kill your friends."

Fuck.

Another demon came out of the muck, someone who'd been resting in a deep hole. A brute, a big one, skin almost perfectly black.

He brought his head out of his hiding hole, spotted Mia, and Mia summoned a spike up underneath the brute hard. The notes of the musical scale were loud, sharp, and the bone spike it summoned was broad, tall, and sharper. It punched through the devorjin's almost impenetrable skin, and raised him into the air to dangle, spike puncturing his stomach and coming out his mouth. It took him a few seconds to die, a few seconds too many.

They trekked along. Mia was a tiny thing, barely five feet tall and weighed down only by her flimsy red silks, her sandals, and her egg, making each step only a little problematic. As long as they kept moving, she didn't sink too deep, only six inches. Six inches was enough to have her groaning and glaring down at the remnant innards coating her feet, sandals, and getting between her toes.

Another demon cut across the fog, heading toward the Mound, hidden in the distance, and Mia skewered them. Another appeared, and Mia skewered them.

A half dozen hellhounds stalked in from the fog, and Mia froze. The cannams stared at her, at her egg, growled, and came closer.

"I... I don't want to kill hellbeasts," she said. "I don't--"

The hellhounds dashed for her. If they could tell she was carrying a cannam egg, they didn't care. Snarling and barking, they sprinted for Mia like cheetahs, their paws striking the muck hard and fast enough they didn't sink an inch.

She summoned bone spikes, and skewered each hellhound. Each spike came up with a tilt, erupting from the muck in front of the wolf-like creatures and pointed forward toward them, so their momentum collided with the spike. Each let out a yelp way too similar to the sound of a kicked dog, and she winced with each one.

A hellhound, the last hellhound, dodged around its spike and closed the distance on her in a heartbeat. She stumbled back, summoned another spike, and missed. It reached her and went for her throat.

Noah tackled the creature, got his arms around its neck, and wrestled. It wasn't much of a wrestling match. Cannam were strong, terribly strong, gigantic wolves capable of fighting vrats and gargoyles, and even giving tigers and brutes trouble. Noah twisted his arm, something went crack, and the creature went limp. Still alive. He twisted his arm again, something else cracked, and the cannam no longer twitched.

Armor or not, angels were strong.

Sighing, Noah stood up and checked his arms. No major wounds, but some blood dripped from his side and legs where the creature's spikes and rear claws had nicked him.

He nodded to Mia, helped her back to her feet, and kept walking, as if she hadn't just failed to kill, and he'd had to make up for her mistake with his bare hands because it'd be a bad idea to summon his armor.

She looked back at Azreal. He spared a second to look at the dead hellhound beside her, and then gestured for her to follow Noah. No harsh words or stern 'do better' remarks she'd half expected.

She checked her egg, looked down at the dead cannam, the others she killed, and pressed on. This sucked. This absolutely fucking sucked.

To her right, far in the distance and behind what had to be over a kilometer of black fog, she could hear battle. Metal on metal, demon roars, and... and... a song?

"I can feel it," she whispered. "There is an unmarked nearby. Or at least, someone's playing the strings."

Noah nodded and pushed on. No questions, he just marched, ignored his bleeding legs, and kept his hands in fists.

"You can keep track of where we're going?" she asked.

He nodded.

Right, stop talking. Focus.

They pushed on, and on, until the sounds of battle fell into greater distance and died. How much of that was the fog blocking the sound, or increased distance, she had no way of knowing. Every minute they gained enough ground that all familiar lines in the muck, bones, holes, all were gone. They could have accidentally turned around and she'd have had no idea.

A dozen more demons came across their path, and Mia killed each one of them. Another bat girl, some gargoyles, vrats, brutes, and a tiger. No satyrs; maybe the larger hooved breeds avoided the swamp. Each kill required a song. Each kill, she had to look at her target, think of the strings to play, the notes, and how they resonated with Hell. Each kill drained her.

They found the trench, the big Trench, and she sighed relief. No more killing? No, there'd be more, just not right now, and she had to be ready.

Noah stood at its edge and pointed right.

"That way to the Mound. A mile."

She almost inserted a kilometer correction. Bad time. She looked down the trench the way he pointed, and squinted. All she could see was the huge trench, a good thirty meters deep and wide, with edges constantly flowing with thick, black ooze, remnant guts that'd been melted into mulch by time.

Demons ran up the trench from the other end, and Mia and the angels got low. She clutched her egg, held it to her side, and sunk into the muck on her other side while the demons ran through the trench and its thicker muck toward the Mound. Some demons followed them outside the trench, some on the opposite side from Mia, some on her side.

Stealth attack.

She played the song, and pulled the demons on the trench's edges down into the ditch. They all roared with surprise and collapsed onto their companions below. Tribal scarring, bone piercings, bone jewelry, the demons looked ready for war, and for sacrificing someone and cutting out their heart under an eclipse. Scary. It made it a little easier to kill them.

She opened the ground up underneath them. A deep song, heavy, wide, something that'd shake the walls in an opera house, full of cellos and double basses. A haunting melody. The presence in the ocean below listened, mirrored it, turned her little song into a full orchestral piece that pulled the demons below the muck. Their heads, horns, and claws disappeared below the swamp.

She closed the ground together. The tougher ones could have swum out, or climbed out, or used each other as ladders. Or, they would have drowned, and she couldn't stomach the idea of them drowning to death. The song moved Hell, and Hell pushed the walls of their tomb together, squashing them into paste from out of sight. Blood pushed up from underneath the muck, red against the black.

A couple seconds to die, instead of minutes. It was the best she could do.

She stood up, got halfway, and collapsed to a knee.

"Mia?" Noah asked, kneeling beside her.

"I'm fine. Just... tired." Panting, she took Noah's hand and got to her feet. She held on, wobbling. Little white spots danced across her vision, and sweat dripped down her forehead. "Okay, not fine. I am... wiped."

"You summoned a firestorm before," Azreal said. "Did you not?"

"This is different. That was a big symphony, and the presence helped me. This is more like... like playing a solo. I have to create a new... intention, and pour... I guess my essence or resonance or something into it, each time. A bunch of little songs, instead of one big one. It's draining."

Azreal leaned over her shoulder and looked at her, but she kept her head down and stared at the Trench, and the red blood that bubbled up from the muck. Something warm touched her chin. Azreal guided her head up until they were face to face, and he held her gaze.

"If you cannot play your music," he said, "tell us. We will defend you."

Of course the rapholem would be the one to offer to defend her and send some tingles into her stomach with that hard gaze of his. She gulped and stared into his eyes. Intense eyes. And something about angel eyes demanded her brain notice them, and notice his weren't simply purple, but amethyst.

"I can still play," she said. "It'd be easier if I used my staff, but we're trying to be stealthy. I'll make it work." She squeezed her bicep and pumped her fist, like she'd walked out of an anime. Of course Azreal didn't have the slightest clue what that meant, and he barely raised his right eyebrow in surprise. "I'll be fine. Let's just find a place where we can hide. And be ready to run if you feel a hellquake."

The two angels nodded, and everyone got cozy on their knees. You couldn't get cozy in mud. All they could do was kneel, and let the remnant guts, the intestines and other soft, warm chunks of meat coat their feet, their calves and shins, their knees, and their asses. Azreal and Noah got even lower, straight onto their stomachs, drenched wings spread, and Mia stared at them.

"I expected angels," she said, "to be more careful about... I dunno, cleanliness."

"Why?" Noah asked.

"Cleanliness is next to godliness, right?"

Noah snuck her a half grin. "In the medieval ages, forks were considered sinful."

"What? Really?"

"Yes. But neither is true. The physical does not matter, presentation does not matter, and angels strive to ignore it." He sighed and looked down at the muck burying his elbows. "To a point."

She bit down a giggle. Yeah, there was something sacrilegious about a handsome, tall-dark-and-brooding kinda angel -- blonde hair aside -- getting black remnant guts all over his beautiful body and wings. Same for Azreal, but something about his constant, intense gaze almost fit the situation, like he was a World War I soldier hiding in the trenches, covered in soot, sneaking around at night.

Noises in the fog. She whipped her head around, waited, and shrunk back down into the muck. No wonder so many demons hid underneath the swamp. With the black fog blinding everyone, every step was a potential encounter with someone who might eat you. Every noise was terrifying. More noises, barks, and she whipped her head around again. No one came.

More noises along the trench. They grew louder, roars, metal on metal, and squelching muck. Louder again, and a mad, deep cackle joined them.

"Weak! So weak!" Someone, a demon, was laughing.

She knew that voice. So much for stealth.

"Romakus?"

Noah and Azreal traded glances.

"I thought you said your Damall friends would likely be at the main intersection of the Trench," Noah said. "Two days away."

"I thought they would be. I mean, they'd have to go there if we got separated, right?"

Noah got up to a crouch. "Unless they heard an unmarked was being kept by the bailiff Xela. And thought it was you."

"Oh... Oh shit." She got to a knee and nudged Noah. "Shit shit. What do I do?"

"I don't know. Has the plan changed?"

"I don't know! If Vin and the others got in contact with them, no... unless every single demon in the mound is now chasing Vin and Romakus." Maybe a good thing. Maybe a bad thing. "Noah, if the Damall are there, and they're the reason the unmarked is escaping, they might have every demon in the area on their ass."

"You want me to join and help them?"

"I... don't know! If you use your armor, everyone's going to see."

"Everyone is already coming to join this chaos." He sighed and frowned at the ground. "But you are correct. If I use batlam, the light could pierce the fog enough for even the angels above to notice. Maybe."

Stealth sucked. Everything about this trip was made infinitely harder by having to avoid literal armies of angels that could easily kill Mia and her friends if they got the drop on them. And considering what happened in Death's Grip, the angels wouldn't make the same mistake twice. No formation. No grand battalions flying side-by-side, blowing horns. They'd drop in on her like bombs and kill her instantly. No conversation, no negotiation.

"Stay with me," she said. "If things get bad, use batlam, and we'll just trust the fog goes high enough to at least stop angels from seeing it." Teeth clenched, she sucked in a hard breath, stood up, and faced the direction of the sound. And maybe Romakus's voice.

She played the music. Nothing yet, a background harmony, a harmless chord, something to summon the presence deep in the ocean to join her and be ready. The presence listened and flowed to her music, turning Mia's ripple into titanic waves. All she had to do was play a song that meant action, that'd do something, resonate with Hell's body, and the presence would mirror it.

A woman burst from the fog, dark skin, and short curly hair, almost an afro. She wore white silks.

"Yosepha," Mia whispered. The poor woman had no wings, no armor, and no weapon. She'd apparently thought the same as they all had, that it was too risky to use batlam. Covered in slight cuts, she favored her right shoulder.

Behind her came Romakus, sword out and drenched in blood. New tears cut through the base of his wings, and his trophy skulls dangled from his belt.

Several more Damall followed, all of them in the trench, all of them covered in cuts. Yulia, thank god. And beside her, Livian, the bolstara tetrad. And in the tetrad's arms, she held a man.

"Yosepha!" Mia yelled, waving an arm. "Run! Keep going!"

Yosepha half tripped, but Romakus grabbed her and threw her forward. The angel landed on her feet again, half running, half dragging herself through the muck, and she stared up at Mia with wide eyes as she passed her.

"I knew it!" Romakus said, laughing, and staying directly behind Yosepha. "Got a plan, unmarked?"

"I do! Just keep going. Livian! Be careful to--"

The ground shook. Mia fell back into Noah's awaiting arm, both angels already on their feet.

"By Lucifer, what is this!?" Livian asked, staring up at Noah and Azreal as she ran past.

"Don't worry about it!" Mia yelled. "Just keep going! Where--"

The ground trembled, and the swamp boiled. Muck launched into the air, splashed, whipped strings of guts across Mia's legs, and again she stumbled back again. The two angels with her relied on their wings to stay upright, legs braced, and Noah again saved her from taking a swim.

It got worse. Livian and Yulia jumped back, hissing as the ground opened up in front of them. Shadow below devoured the black swamp, swallowing the tainted ooze.

"Livian, run! Now!" Mia yelled. "Get him away from me as fast as you can!"

Livian snapped her head back to the path, and jumped. The canyon had opened only a couple meters wide, but from above, Mia saw deep into its recesses, deep into the darkness below.

There was only silence, down in the depths. True silence. Silence only Mia could hear, and probably the man in Livian's arms.

Livian cleared the canyon and didn't look back, but it only grew larger as another hellquake ripped through the ground. More canyons split across the swamp, some cutting through the trench, some across the empty swamplands above and around. Giant bone structures, alien, grown, tilted and raised up from the muck as the ground underneath them tore away. Geysers shot black into the fog, and waves of gore gushed and flowed from cracks in the swamp like freshly torn, festering wounds. And remnants screamed a chorus.

Mia played no song. Whatever was beneath them in the infinite black caused this, not her.

Whoever Livian held, he peeked up over the tetrad's shoulder long enough to meet eyes with Mia. The boy in her arms was in worst shape than any of them, blood seeping down his naked body. Dark skin, shaved head, he lifted his head up long enough to meet her eyes. Dark brown eyes. He looked young, as young as her.

And then he was gone.

Yulia stopped, flapping her wings to stay standing. "Right behind us! We lost a lot of us, but then Vin barged in and saved us!" She waved at Mia and chased after Livian.

Vin saved them?

Julisa and Adron charged forward from the fog, along with Yulia's unnamed brute, and a tiger from the Damall.

"Adron!" Oh thank god. "Where's--"

The incubi ran past, but not in the trench. They ran along the other side of it, and all four managed a quick wave at Mia before they disappeared back into the fog. Smart devils.

"Kas and Vin are behind us!" Adron yelled. "I don't know where the rest of the Damall are."

Right, the rest of the Damall. They'd had more demons with them, gargoyles and vrats and another brute, she was sure. Where were they? Yulia said they'd lost them?

The hellquakes continued, but softer. As Adron and Julisa disappeared down the trench, following the others, the swamp rumbled and canyons continued to tear open, but the swamp no longer boiled, and long-buried gigantic bone structures no longer rose from the grave by the shifting ground. It took five minutes of the demons bolting down the trench as fast as they could, putting greater and greater distance between Mia and the other unmarked, before the ground stopped rumbling entirely.

But there was no Kas, or Vin. Demon roars raged on, screams and snarls from beyond the fog, down the trench toward the Mound and Xela, but no sign of either of her bodyguards.

She stared at the fog, waited ten more seconds, and marched along the trench edge toward the sound.

"Mia," Noah said. "You're--"

"I'm not letting them die." She turned, gave Azreal her egg, and sprinted into the fog toward the noise.

"Mia!" Azreal's voice, trapped in a whispered hiss. She didn't turn around.

She got twenty feet when someone got their hands underneath her, and lifted her. She almost screamed, looked up, and froze. Black wings, white feathers covered in tar, flapped overhead, and lifted her several feet in the air.

She was flying. A whole meter off the ground, but she was flying, and the ground zoomed underneath her like she was in a car.

If the angels could just fly her to the Forgotten Place, this whole journey would have been over in a few days. They couldn't. Angels, thousands upon thousands of angels, would shoot them out of the sky. Seeing the ground zoom underneath her now slapped her in the face with that reality. How infuriating it had to be to be Azreal and Noah, or Yosepha, forced to walk everywhere.

They didn't have to go far. He stopped, set her back in the muck, and got flat to the swamp with her, wings spread, elbows and knees in the black.

Ahead, slowly backing up in the trench below, was Vin and Kas. Both were covered in gashes, and left long streaks of blood as they moved backward. They faced an oncoming tide of demons, and tore into any that were brave enough to pounce. But the smaller demons spread and let larger demons run past, brutes wearing armor, and vrats and gargoyles wielding swords and axes. They ran over the corpses of demons of the swamp and jumped Kas and Vin.

The trench was filled with the dead, remnant and demon alike.

Vin went down, a brute tackling his legs while another crashed into his chest. Kas turned to help, but backed off and knocked aside swords with his forward horns. Demons surrounded him, pushed him to the trench wall, and lunged.

Mia summoned death. She stood, summoned her armor, risked the red light piercing the fog, and wielded her staff. The demons looked up at her, and she glared down at them.

She reached down, played the song, and weaved a tune for each kill, each a horrific melody played on sharp, screaming violin strings. The sound was shrill, tore up her spine, sent ice through her veins, and she played it four times. The four demons in front of Kas launched into the air and stayed there, bellies skewered on bone spikes.

Vin was harder. The titan was on his back, and the brutes were on him, locked in, clawing at him. She couldn't get them, not without risking kill him, too.

She didn't need to. Roaring louder than she'd ever heard, Kas threw himself at the two brutes. They were big. He was bigger. He rammed his two horns into the back of one, lifted him up into the air, and threw him to the side. The swamp exploded where he landed, as if someone had dropped a car into a pool. One demon off was enough for Vin to deal with brute still on him, so Kas turned and pounced the brute he'd skewered, landed on him, and tore him open.

Kas usually spent so much time crouched and walking with his half gorilla, half dinosaur posture, it was sometimes easy to forget how big he was, almost as big as a tetrad. He rained his giant fists down on the brute hammer style, crashed in his face, and bit out the squirming brute's throat.

Vin got four hands on his brute and bit him as well, teeth in shoulder, and yanked out a big enough chunk the titan had no trouble ripping the connected arm off. Roaring to match Kas's, he threw the brute down and stepped on his head hard enough the demon almost turned upside down as his head sank below the muck. Vin's leg ceased for a second before it drilled another foot into the muck. He'd popped the brute's head like a grape on the ground underneath the mud.

Vin and Kas stood with each other, bleeding and panting, and looked up at Mia and Noah. They'd been covered in wounds before the tussle, and now they both struggled to stand.

"Behind us," Kas said between pants. "Xela comes. We--"

Mia aimed her black staff and its ready ruby, and played a song. She couldn't pull down the fire sky without alerting the angels above; she probably couldn't right now even if she wanted to, sweat dripping down her forehead, and lungs burning. But she could at least buy her friends time.

The swamp was decorated in canyons, now, her short encounter with the other unmarked enough to pepper the region in craters, ditches, new trenches, and canyons big and small. A quick glance around showed upturned bone structures, forms thick enough their silhouettes were visible through the fog. What was one more canyon in that chaos?

She weaved the unheard song into a crashing crescendo, something menacing and heavy, something with smashing cymbals, trumpets blasting, and double basses shaking the walls. The presence listened, and Hell shook. And the demons running out from the fog, including one very angry tetrad woman with four arms, all came to a stop as the ground ripped open in front of them.

The ground boiled once again. Noah held Mia's shoulders, and she braced herself in the muck as best she could as it tried to toss her on her ass. The music had to be played. They needed time, space, an opportunity to get away, all without telling the angels above exactly where they were. And the only way to do that was to affect things below the fog.

She ripped Hell open. Two meters. Five meters. Ten. Twenty meters, she ripped the canyon wide, a perpendicular cut across where the main Trench line connected to the Mound beyond the edge of the fog. She cut it long, tore the ground for a kilometer in both directions, held the song until it buzzed in her skull and ripped the air out of her lungs.

A couple hundred demons stood at the canyon, mouths dropped, each wearing armor, most carrying weapons. They all parted for the tetrad woman, and she stared down at the deep pit before aiming her gaze at Mia. The pit didn't reach the bottom of Hell, not even close, but any demon who fell in wouldn't survive without wings.

Mia met eyes with Xela. She shouldn't have. There was enough rage in the demon's red glare, Mia stumbled back, and Noah caught her again.

"Let's go," Noah said, "before angels come and investigate the sound, if they heard or saw. Vinicius, Kasimiro, follow the trench. I'll take Mia ahead, and we can find some way to--"

"I'll stay with them," Mia said. "If you fly me too close to the other unmarked, that"--she gestured to the canyon she created--"will look like a tiny crack in comparison."

Something flickered across Noah's face, and he squinted down at the two bloody demons still in the trench.

"Very well." He looked at her long enough for her confirming nod and took off.

"Can you guys get up here?" she asked. She couldn't help them with platforms or something. Standing was proving trouble enough.

They both looked Xela's way, snorted, came up to her side of the trench, and climbed. It wasn't easy. Their limbs trembled like they'd spent a couple hours in the gym, and each meter they scaled earned fresh drops of blood from the gashes in their body. Kas had it easier than the juggernaut beside him, climbed faster, and Mia helped as best she could. She dismissed her staff, got her hands around his horns -- they pointed forward around his dragon snout -- and pulled. Pointless with how heavy he was, but she pulled anyway.

He came up over the edge, she fell on her back, and the two sat there, panting. Before he could say anything, she got up, grabbed Vin's ridiculously gigantic hand, and helped him, too. She might as well have been pulling on a parked semi-truck, and Vin growled at her. She glared back at him and kept pulling.

He got over the edge, and looked back at the canyon she created, and the growing army of demons on the other side.

"You did that?" he asked.

She nodded, stood tall and proud for a whole half second, and lurched forward, hands on her knees and more sweat beading down her nose. Her armor faded away in a tiny glow of red, leaving her once again in skimpy red silks and gladiator sandals. Not in her whole damn life, despite hundreds of intense workouts, had she sweated this much, or burned this much in her lungs. White spots danced in her vision, threatened to knock her on her ass, and she breathed deep.

"Yeah. Let's go." She got two feet and fell on her hands and knees again. Vin did not catch her, unlike a certain sexy angel. "Can someone--" Kas knelt beside her, hands in the muck. She sighed at him, patted his shoulder, and climbed on. Gashes on his back bled over her legs, and her thighs and calves rubbed at the cuts. "Sorry! Sorry. Are you okay? I--"

All she got was a grunt, and the shark dinosaur pushed forward.

"Vin," she said. "You okay?"

He grunted. Of course, it was the two stoic assholes who'd stuck around to fight the greatest number of demons. Presumably a 'run, we'll hold them off' sorta situation. Kas probably did it because he'd felt compelled to help. Vin probably did it because he wanted to indulge in violence. There was blood on both their mouths, but knowing Vin, he'd eaten a few of his kills mid fight.

Demons behind the canyon roared, one of them shrill and dominating. Xela. But a glance back showed only black fog.

"The rest of the Damall?" she asked.

"Dead," Kas said.

She sank on Kas's body, almost laying on his back, and she put her weight on her palms against his shoulders. She squeezed some of his back spikes, stroked his shoulders, and looked back at Vin again.

"Thank you," she said.

Again, Vin gave her the look he did whenever she was nice to him, but she held her gaze and tried to read his. He was exhausted, bleeding from a couple dozen deep gashes, but unless she was going crazy, there was a slight bounce in his step and a grin on his short dragon snout. His tail wagged, slightly, but it did.

Kas, on the other hand, would have been slumping if he hadn't already been walking on his hands. His tail dragged in the muck, and his head hung lower than usual. Tired, but she'd seen him tired before. This was different. Sad, maybe?

"The others are gonna wait up ahead," she said. "Noah knew what side of the Trench I'm on. He'll probably come back and check on us. Then we can figure out how to get moving with the other unmarked. It's looking like he has to be a kilometer or two away before the hellquakes stop, at the very least."

"James," Kas said. "The unmarked's name is James."

She sat up straight and stared ahead in the fog. James. He had a name. Something about a name changed everything.

"Was he... Did he seem like a nice guy?"

Kas tilted his head slightly. "What?"

"Did he seem like a nice guy? Did he... Did he seem like he should have had a mark, but didn't? I had that vision of David smashing another unmarked's head in, and--" She shivered. It'd been more than just seeing the experience. She'd felt it. "I never stopped to think maybe he's not a good guy, you know? Maybe we should have--"

"He seemed nice," Kas said. "Calm yourself."

She looked back at the fog and the roaring demons far beyond. More demons dead, and Vin, Kas, and the others injured. But if they hadn't had done something, all the Damall would have died. Good plan, or a bad plan? She'd only had a minute to come up with any plan at all!

David would have liked the plan. He'd have been proud of her, thinking on her feet quickly and putting something together that worked.

A figure ahead on black wings lowered to the muck. Azreal. And he set a woman down with him. Yosepha.

The angel walked up to Kas and Mia, and smiled up at her. She stepped around him, up to Kas's side, and patted Mia on the leg.

"You survived."

So much to tell her. Mia opened her mouth, ready to rant and explain a billion things between her pants and gasps. But no rant came. Tears came instead, blurring Mia's vision, and she rolled off Kas straight onto Yosepha.

The angel caught her. Maybe she'd expected Mia to collapse on her, or she'd caught collapsing humans often in Heaven. She caught her and held her, and Mia hid her face in the angel's neck and sobbed.

After a moment, Yosepha rubbed her back, stroked her hair, and Mia melted into her hug.

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

"He crafted a cave, like you instructed," Romakus said. "Barely, but he did. Him and the others will be safe for the night."

Mia sighed, nodded, and did the same. She found the notes to tell the earth to spread apart, gently, and to guide curves in the rock that moved the swamp away. Beyond exhausted, it took time for her to craft the cave, but she managed, and ignored the aching pain in her guts telling her she was running on empty.

They were a couple kilometers from the Trench, closer to the inner edge of Hell, where Xela and her wandering demons wouldn't be able to find them too easily. It also meant it was super easy to get lost, but the angels apparently had amazing senses of direction, and Azreal and Noah flew between the two groups to keep communication flowing. If Yosepha had gotten lost with Mia, they might not have gotten lost at all.

Azreal and Noah stayed with James, along with several of the Damall, including Faust and his incubi. Mia sculpted a cave for herself, Romakus, Yosepha, Vin, Kas, Adron, and the other tetrad Livian. A bolstara, unlike Julisa, she had hooves and no tail, but otherwise looked very similar, four arms, ten feet tall. Julisa was hairless, while Livian had short dreadlocks. She sat beside Romakus, hip to hip, and only grinned at Yosepha when the angel rolled her eyes at her and sat on Romakus's lap. Limited room, after all.

"He's been in Hell longer than me, I bet," Mia said. "Maybe he's better at playing the music than me."

"If that were true," Yosepha said, "shouldn't he have been able to orchestrate his own escape? We found him bound, beaten and tired, but alive."

"Maybe. It takes a lot of resonance -- or essence -- to play the music." Mia sat between Vin and Kas, and patted both their legs. "I--wait, let me get food first."

"Food?" Romakus asked, gesturing around, and up. The cave was complete, a tiny hole in the ground that sealed overhead, with only a skinny, hidden chimney for air. Everyone was cramped. "I don't see--"

Mia found enough strength to play familiar strings. Her inner fingers ached. Her inner everything ached. But her soul fingers were developing calluses or something, something that let her play the strings more often with less pain. The issue now was energy. She was drained, but she played anyway, and grew a forbidden tree in the center of the cave.

"By God," Yosepha said. "What are you..."

Mia played more. If only she could share the song with the others, let them hear the way the strings vibrated, like standing in a temple filled with Tibetan monks, throat singing so the walls resonated. Like standing in a concert hall while a symphony serenades with soothing, harmonizing melodies. And Hell danced to her tune and sent nearby streams of resonance and essence from the swamp into the tree. It grew fruit, and plenty of them.

With a gesture to the tree, Mia plucked a fruit, ate it, and relaxed back against the stone wall.

"So, first, we got attacked by invisible alien monsters that turned into eldritch squid things as we fought. Pretty sure they're the ones that cracked Death's Grip in half when I got too close to David. It started happening again, when James ran by, but thankfully no monsters, and we weren't close long enough for the province to crack... anymore than I cracked it, stopping Xela." Breath. "Then we got pulled under the swamp by someone else playing the music. I thought it was another unmarked at first, but turns out it was actually an Old One. Asmodeus. He's below the swamp, deep deep super deep in a cave, royally injured and fucked up, and being worshipped by cultists I guess. He was going to eat me, so he could gain control of my song." Breath. "We ran into Azreal and Noah, and they wanted to talk to me about all this crap going on. Well, they'd actually been captured by Asmodeus, because he could feel the song on them, my song, like I'd left a residue. So I guess you all got that on you now. Sorry. Anyway, they want to help, because they're convinced something is wrong with the council in Heaven, too. Then we jumped some demons, got directions to the main Trench, then we found Xela's Mound. I wasn't sure what to do, but then a fight broke out, and I thought, maybe if there really is an unmarked in there--"