The Pleasures of Hell 03.048

~~David~~

The demons collapsed on each other, and everything turned into a frenzy. Auras drowned the area, uncontrolled, unbridled, pure heat and rage and bloodlust that poured over the graveyard and its tombstones.

Laoko stayed with David, swords drawn, and she spun and cut down a vrat that jumped for her back. A tiger leapt around, bounced off tombstones, and threw her massive weight at the tetrad, but Laoko stabbed up with her bottom hands into the tiger's exposed belly sides, roared into her face, and threw her corpse on the ground in front of David.

David met the tregeera's eyes for only a moment before she died. There was nothing in there but rage and bloodlust. The fact she looked like Caera knocked the wind out of him.

Another demon burst from the fog, a smarter one, dodged around tombstones and hid behind the closest mausoleum. David stared, waiting for him to run around the black building's other side, but the vrat jumped over the mausoleum, over the decapitated angel statue, and fell on Laoko's torso.

She fell to her back, and two swords fell with her. The vrat got a single swipe of his claws on Laoko's shoulder, enough to draw blood, before Timaeus cut the demon in half. Blood splattered, splashed over the black and white dirt, and over Laoko and David's body.

David sat down and didn't move a fucking muscle. With his back to a tombstone, he pulled his knees up to his chest, and stopped existing. One of the few times being a tiny guy was helpful.

Snarling, Timaeus walked past, got ten meters, and faced off against a dozen demons. They swarmed him, but he didn't hesitate to meet them. He went for a brute first and brought his sword down on the huge demon's shoulder. The devorjin's skin and body were too tough for the even bigger demon to cleave him in two, but Timaeus got his sword deep enough it past the shoulder and got stuck in the brute's chest. He kicked the dead brute off his sword, spun, caught a leaping gargoyle on the side, and cleaved her in half. A massive black sword made of meera metal, and like all meera metal David had seen, it wasn't smooth, or terribly sharp. It cut through the woman less like a scalpel through flesh and more like a metal baseball bat hitting a branch.

Silvain and Cullius were the center of attention. Demons surrounded them, looked for opportunities to interfere, but the two tetrads were too big, too strong, and they flared their wings and sent nearby demons back. But Silvain didn't have enough demons with him, and Cullius's swarmed over them, turning most fights into a two-on-one, no matter how much Timaeus tried to help.

And the ones Timaeus couldn't distract, came for Laoko.

Laoko got back up, four swords in hand, and cut down another vrat diving for her legs. She spun, kicked a satyr in the face hard enough her hoof broke through bone, and her sword cut the satyr's head off. A brute dove her from behind, but she spun and swung all four swords together. Two hit the brute in the arm, one in his side, and the other hit his skull. None penetrated deep enough to kill, but the brute fell, roaring in a frenzy, but unable to stand as his blood gushed over the dirt.

"I could use some help, unmarked," she said, standing over him and daring nearby demons to approach. Blood trickled down her arms and legs, some hers, mostly not.

"Yeah," he said. "I wish I could." And he might be able to, if he really tried. There was an inkling of energy in there, some scrap of power left in his guts he could draw on. He might even do something big and fancy, before he passed out.

"We are surrounded by corpses! Eat something."

He gulped and looked at the bodies around him. Not wrong, but he barely had the energy to stand up, let alone hack away at demon flesh. It didn't matter, anyway. It took longer than a few seconds to absorb the energy from a heart.

"I don't think--"

Another gargoyle took a risk, and Laoko cut her down. The next two gargoyles jumped up, but didn't dive her, and Laoko turned and faced them. Mistake. A brute dove her from behind, sent her to the ground on her stomach, and smashed his giant fists down against her armor. Slabs of meera metal, bent into curved shapes and strapped on with leather bindings, weren't exactly protective against impact, and Laoko coughed up blood by the third punch.

She lifted her head, and unleashed hellfire. David found enough strength to get away from the waves of heat and crawled on the dirt, but the gargoyles charging Laoko's face disappeared in a cloud of fire mixed with hot specs of amber. Nearby demons turned and stared. The brute on her back paused, and Laoko pushed off the ground. Brutes were gigantic, thick, all muscle, but she was bigger, and she sat up and forced the brute back.

She spun, grabbed a sword from the ground mid spin, and cut into his calf. Blood squirted from the muscle, the demon's own weight sending it out until he collapsed on his side. Laoko got her hand on another sword, and sank the blade up through the brute's open, roaring mouth, and out the back of his head.

All David could do was crawl away and find another nearby tombstone to sit against. He wasn't afraid; well, he was terrified, but not frozen with it. He just didn't have any fucking strength to do anything. He was useless.

And the rider was going to find them again if they didn't get out of here now.

"Laoko!" he yelled. "We can't stay here! We're making too much noise!"

"I know that! But if--" Back on her hooves, she swung four swords down at a vratorin, but the demon jumped back and circled around, looking for another opening and allies to exploit it. "We can't move until Cullius is dead!"

"We--" Demon claws grabbed his ankle and yanked him around the tombstone. He didn't have time to yelp. The gargoyle grinned at him, eyes wide, evil smile on full display. A single flap of the wings announced her position, and Laoko jumped her and cut her into pieces. For a split second, he'd thought she'd been Jes, and his stomach jumped up into his throat.

"I know!" Laoko said. "We must weather this storm. Unless you think you can help, stay down and be silent!" She spun again and met a brute face to face, but the tank ran into her, elbows up, and she fell on her back. The brute died for his efforts, his falling momentum driving one of her swords up into his side. She'd planned it, with the sword's hilt jammed hard against the ground under her.

That was not a move a demon would have learned naturally. Laoko knew how to fight and knew it well.

"The rider is going to find us!" he half yelled, half whispered.

"You buried him!"

"He'll get out. He did last time. He can't fly but he gets around fast."

The tetrad sighed and pushed herself back to her hooves again. "Then we--"

She turned toward Cullius and Silvain. Big as Cullius was, Silvain held his own fine, and any demon stupid enough to get between them got Silvain's tail or Cullius's hoof to the face. These two guys did not like each other. But it wasn't them she was looking at.

It was the silhouette of a man in armor on a goort's back she stared at.

"Already?" she asked, panting, swords hanging in limp hands at her sides. "How?"

Demons backed away from Cullius and Silvain, and the two tetrads stopped their fight. The dozen demons clawing and stabbing Timaeus froze and stared, and Timaeus slowly turned and faced the silhouette. No one spoke, roared, snarled, or breathed. Everyone watched the bronze, red, and gold armor of the rider come into view.

Cullius pointed his sword and broke the silence with a battle cry. The demons swarmed and fell upon the rider, and the man disappeared behind a tide of black and red.

The rider's aura was strong. David, on his ass and half leaning against a tombstone, felt the pull of it, demanding he pick up a sword and kill something, anything. But it wasn't only his aura. Silvain, Cullius, and who knew how many other demons were in full berserk mode, roaring and shrieking, and drowning the area in their desires. Fight. Kill. Devour.

The demons swarmed inward and fell on the rider like fruit tossed in a blender. Only the tetrads resisted, backing away. Timaeus worked his way around the tombstones, rejoined Laoko, and growled toward the violence. The blood seeping down the hundred wounds on his body didn't matter to him. His playful eyes had switched to full on psycho, and the longer he watched the chaos, the faster he breathed.

"Timaeus," Laoko said. "We have to get out of here."

"Our crews--"

"Are dead. Yours and mine. David cannot stop the rider as he is. We must flee." Her eyes didn't agree with her mouth. The bolstara tetrad stared at the rider, her fangs bared, eyes wide, and four hands tight around her sword grips. She wanted to fight.

It was the same thing as last time. The demons were too caught up in the aura to not throw themselves at the rider, and he cut them down like he was hacking through wood. Fast, direct, efficient. He said nothing and held no reins, but the horse-like hellbeast twisted and turned with the rider's heavy chops. A seamless dance, with each kill announced by a demon's scream of rage, pain, and a burst of flame where his hellfire axes met demon flesh.

A brute tackled the goort, but the goort jumped with the inertia, landed, and charged back in. It drove a horn into the brute's chest and continued, charged through the group of demons, and collided with a tombstone. The brute, pinned to the tombstone, got a couple swings of his claws in on the hellbeast's armor that did nothing, and died.

Cullius didn't like that. He charged in and did the same as his dead devorjin, tackled the goort's flank, and pushed it onto its side. It landed with a heavy thud, and the rider rolled off and landed on foot and knee. The demons took that as an opportunity to attack, and again, they collapsed on him. The goort got back up and took off; it must have known orders to get out of the way if the rider fell off. And the rider again disappeared behind flesh, the large man tiny compared to the demons burying him.

Cullius fought. Silvain didn't. The gorujin backed off, each step slow, like he was fighting his instincts. The korgejin gave into his desire, and brought his sword down on the rider, two handed. The rider blocked, with one axe, and slashed for Cullius's stomach with the other, but Cullius was big, had longer reached, and stepped out of the way. The demons with him, most from his crew, some from Timaeus and Laoko's, jumped in the moment the tetrad backed off. And the rider hacked through them one at a time, ignoring their attempts to break through his armor. Sparks flew as meera swords and axes bounced off aera metal, until it sounded like a thrash metal drummer.

"We go," Silvain said. He jogged toward David and the two tetrads, leaving behind everyone. "We go now."

"The three of us?" Laoko asked. "Across all the Grave Valley?"

"We can handle it," Timaeus said. "But we have to go now. We--"

The group turned, each lifting their weapons. Another silhouette came out of the fog, someone tall, with huge wings. Someone with a sharp, slender jaw, and four mighty horns. Their purely black, featureless face pushed through the fog, and a spire mother wearing slabs of meera metal armor stood beside a mausoleum.

"Acelina?" David asked.

Laoko lowered her weapons. "Acelina, what are you --"

Silvain roared. Laoko, Timaeus, and David spun and faced him, and the tetrad fell to his knees. A sword stuck out from his side, and a gargoyle hung from his back.

Jeskura didn't shriek or roar. A snarl was good enough, straight into Silvain's ear as she pushed the sword deeper into his insides and sawed up through ribs and guts.

"Fuck you," she said, pushed off, flapped her wings hard, put a tombstone between her and the tetrad, and used the white slab of stone to block his spinning swing. There one moment, gone the next, only the trail of Silvain's blood on her sword telling where she'd run off to.

Something warm touched David's shoulder. The ground pulled out from under him, and something landed between his legs. No, he landed on something. A demon clicked in his ear.

"Daoka?" He half fell toward her, but she caught him and pushed him back up. Someone else was between his legs. "Caera?"

Laoko and Timaeus spun around long enough for David to see the blur of their shocked faces before Caera took off. He almost fell, but reflexes and familiarity kicked in, and he grabbed her back spikes.

"David!" Laoko yelled after him. He looked back. Shock, and anger. And fear?

"David, you okay?" Caera asked. The sound of battle slowly died in the background.

"Was that Acelina I saw?"

"Yeah. She found Cullius and told him where you'd probably be."

He froze and squeezed harder. "She what?"

"We needed a distraction. She knew she could convince a faction to--"

"She's still back there! And Laoko!"

Caera looked up at him, panting. Talking while running wasn't easy.

"Acelina knew to run the moment we got you. And Laoko betrayed us. Let her die."

"She didn't want to. Neither did Timaeus."

Someone snarled, and David whipped his head left. Jes ran alongside them, wings half spread and catching air.

"Doesn't matter," Jes said, "if she didn't want to or not. She still did."

"She was going to help me out," he said. "I'm sure of it!"

Daoka, hopping alongside Caera, gestured back, clicking several times.

"We're not going back for her. Not doing it," Jes said.

Daoka clicked louder.

"I'm not doing it!"

Caera shook her head, too. "Moriah and the Las are waiting for us up ahead. We're getting out of here."

"Caera," he said, leaning forward. Hard to do while riding a running tiger, especially one with spikes covering her back, but he squeezed and held on hard. "Laoko was going to help. And maybe Timaeus, too. Please."

Caera stopped, and Jes and Dao skidded to a halt past her. Sighing, the tiger let her head drop before turning it and looking back the way they came.

"Oh no," Jes said. "No no. We're not going back there. The rider's back there, and a bunch of pissed of demons."

"You stabbed Silvain," Caera said. "You got him good."

"The fucker deserved it!"

"I know. I'm saying he's wounded and won't be a threat."

The fact she was talking about him like that wound didn't guarantee his death was startling. She'd stabbed him deep in the guts and sawed upward. What did it take to kill a tetrad?

Daoka nodded, clicking and gesturing back again.

"Acelina's going around the other way," Caera said, eye aimed up at David. Knowledge for him, not Dao. "If we go back, what do we do?"

"Just... tell Laoko and Timaeus to follow us," David said. "We need all the friends we can, and I'm sure Laoko is smart enough to do the right... well, do the smart thing, at least."

"Bad idea," Jes said. "The rider will catch us! Bad bad bad--"

Caera turned and bolted back toward the sound of combat. Inertia pulled the world out from under David, but holding on tight out of reflex kept him on the sprinting tiger. His thighs hurt. His crotch hurt. But he held on for dear life.

This was some serious déjà vu, riding back into a battle like this. Didn't they already do this dance some days ago?

It took only moments to get back and find the finale of the fight. Dead demons were everywhere, burning corpses filling the air with ashes. Blood soaked the ground. Limbs decorated tombstones and mausoleums. And the rider stood in the center of it all, both axes at his sides and dripping with steaming, sizzling blood.

Cullius stood in front of him, clutching his side. Blood flowed down his leg, buckets, but the tetrad stood strong, giant sword in his right hand and tip on the ground. Silvain stood behind the rider, clutching his side as well, but he fell to a knee and sank his sword into the dirt. Timaeus and Laoko stood around the rider, too, eyes wide, fangs out, weapons pointed at the man in armor. Blood oozed down their bodies, Laoko with a dangling arm, and Timaeus with a shredded wing and a chunk missing from his tail.

This was Acelina's plan? Convince Cullius to attack Silvain, knowing the battle would attract the rider, and then use the distraction to get David to safety? It was a smart plan. It relied on Acelina convincing Cullius, though, but Acelina was the political princess who could convince a demon to do anything. The plan had worked.

And now David was ruining it.

He looked around. No Las. No Moriah. No Acelina. Somehow he, Caera, Jes, and Dao had to put the rider on his ass and get Laoko out of there. Timaeus, too, if they could.

Laoko looked back, spotted him, and her expression softened. For a moment, it'd been pure bloodlust, as mindless and hungry for violence as every other demon, but when she met David's eyes, she froze, and her bared fangs disappeared behind her lips.

All four of the tetrads were in the rider's aura. From a distance, it was overwhelming, and David felt the disgusting desire for violence bubble up his throat. For the tetrads so close to the rider, it must have been crushing.

"Plan?" Caera asked.

Plan. Plan plan. What the fuck to do? There wasn't anything they could do. Every demon was dead, every last one of them except the tetrads. Demon blood boiled on the rider's axes, sizzled and steamed, leaving dark red stains. He stepped over the corpse of a gorgala, stepped on her head, casually walked over it, and let the weight of his armor pop her skull like a grape.

They couldn't do anything to stop him. They could only run.

"I'm going to help them," David said. "I might pass out. No, I definitely will. When I do... just run."

Daoka shook her head and rubbed his arm.

"I'll be fine," he said. "I'm getting... better at the music. I can do... I can do something. It's just..." The idea forming in his head might just get them all killed.

Silvain snarled and pointed his sword past the rider at David.

"Laoko, seize him! We must return to Azailia and regroup!"

Laoko didn't move a muscle. She stared at David, fists squeezing her sword grips, lungs panting. What was she thinking? He could never tell with her.

"Girls," he whispered. "Get ready to bolt."

He didn't summon batlam. He couldn't. Wearing a knight's suit of armor -- or evil wizard's -- was too much to ask right now. It was simply too heavy. Wearing the armor meant he had the staff, and when he wielded the staff, it made playing the music easier. Finding the specific notes and arrangements, the cadence, tugging at specific strings that moved specific pieces of Hell, being precise and exact, it was all easier with the staff.

Without the staff, wielding anything large was going to be messy.

He raised his hands up, both of them, and took a deep breath. Wind picked up, poured over the graveyard, its tombstones, its corpses, carried the smell of burning flesh and blood, and buried David's ears in thunder. He reached higher, broke through the fog, and exposed the graveyard to the fire sky, its burning embers, and the swirling flames of its clouds.

"David," Jes said. "The fuck are you doing?"

He listened for the voice, and the voice found him. He asked her to dance for him, to be ready to play with him, to unleash something for him. Even as each note he played sucked the energy out of him until blood trickled from his nose and his vision blurred, he dove deeper into the ocean of vibration, deep into the depths with the presence, and played for it. For her. His mind melted away, thoughts disappeared, left behind on the surface of the water, while he sank deeper.

Dao clicked, stared up at the sky, and gently shook David's shoulder.

"Be ready," he said between pants, "to run."

Something clicked, and it wasn't Daoka. Hooves galloped in from the fog, from behind Cullius, and dashed around the titan straight at the rider's back. Without looking back, the rider jumped. He didn't jump high compared to what a demon could manage, but he got a couple meters, enough for the horse-like creature to get its head under the rider's legs, and he landed on its saddle. And the creature and rider dashed around Laoko and went straight for David.

"David?" Caera asked. "David! What--"

Someone in gold armor flew past and crashed into the rider's side. Moriah. Half flying, half jumping, she threw her weight into the rider and goort's flank. Her wing glowed a subtle gold, but the woman had no sword, no shield, and she collapsed to the ground on her knees.

The goort fell over, and the rider fell to his side, landing with a thud hard enough he cracked a tombstone and shattered it into rubble. The hellbeast clicked furiously, scrambled back to its hooves, and faced Moriah.

Screaming a death cry, Moriah jumped at the goort, and in a flash of gold light, summoned her sword. The mirror blade shot forward, and the goort froze like a deer in headlights as the one-winged angel sank her blade up into its open mouth to the hilt.

The four exhausted tetrads, probably happy for any opportunity for a breather, stared, mouths dropped, while the goort toppled over. It twitched twice, and died.

The rider stood up. No one moved. The man in armor aimed his shadowed gaze down at his dead mount for five seconds, the longest pause the rider had ever made, and marched his way toward Moriah. She stood back up, but stumbled back, sucking in hard breaths. Her sword faded away in a gold puff, and her armor followed.

"You'll never catch the unmarked now," she said, and she sat on her knees. Ruby eyes staring daggers up at the rider, she squeezed the dirt around her, and her single wing drooped to the ground. There were tears in her eyes. "Filth."

The rider raised an axe, and David pulled down the sky.

A flash of white and red ripped through the fog, blanketed the area in blinding light, and David, Caera, the tetrads, and Moriah flew back. The world disappeared in a tumbling mess, and something hard smacked David in the face. The ground.

Weight pulled on his head, but he pushed himself to sitting and touched his nose. More blood. Thoughts snapped back, pulled above the ocean surface, and clicked back together with his other self in his brain. He looked around and breathed relief. Caera was down, so was Dao and Jes, but all were already pushing themselves back up. Jes came over, squatted in front of him, and mouthed words. No sound.

A ringing sound kicked in, and David blinked at the gorgala. Deep sounds found their way to his ears, pushing through the high-pitched ringing. Words. He took her hand and stood up, and collapsed, but Jes was more than strong enough to keep him standing. Nausea took him, half from apparently having gone deaf, half because the hunger in his gut overwhelmed him, danced as white spots in his vision, and blurred the edges of his sight with darkness.

Moriah stood up and stared at the crater the rider knelt within. She'd been blown ten meters away from the strike zone, and a hundred little scraps and patches of burned skin decorated her body. The tetrads hadn't been knocked so far, but all four were down, and Laoko and Timaeus climbed to their feet first.

The goort's corpse sat on a mausoleum twenty meters away, draped across a broken statue, upside-down, unmoving. But it was the rider everyone stared at, a man on his knees, head slumped forward, fists still squeezing the grips of his axes, but otherwise just as still as his dead horse. Smoke leaked from the joints of his armor.

"The fuck was that?" Jes asked. Finally, he could hear again. Barely.

"Lightning," he said between pants. "Hellfire... lightning." There wasn't anyway he could explain the music. Everything was connected by strings, but obeyed certain laws his brain could only interpret as different instruments. And pulling down lightning had been like smashing crash cymbals together so loud, they brought every other instrument in the symphony to a standstill and deafened the audience.

He knew Hell could do it. He could feel the fire sky above, something real, something that existed as a part of Hell as much as her lava veins and her rock skin. Or he could before. He had nothing left, now, and every breath burned his lungs.

Caera came up beside him and pressed against his side. "Get on. We have to get out of here. Angels saw that."

Daoka clicked up a storm, hopped over to Moriah, and scooped her up, literally. The satyr was the smallest of the group, save for the Las, only a bit over six feet tall, but she easily picked up the angel woman, laid Moriah horizontal on her arms, and hopped back to David.

Moriah groaned, closed her eyes, but held on.

"Laoko," Jes said, helping David. "You coming?"

Laoko gulped, looked at Timaeus, and looked back at Silvain.

Silvain snarled. "You wouldn't."

"I... I think I would, Silvain." She turned, faced him, and squeezed her swords. "I think I would."

Silvain and Cullius shared similar glances, turned, and disappeared into the fog. Tetrads, even horribly wounded, bleeding tetrads, could run damn fast, and the two men vanished behind the veil of white, but not before Silvain spared a quick glare for Jes.

Laoko jogged after them, but got two steps before Moriah snapped at them.

"Angels will be here in minutes! And the rider will rise again in similar time. Are you coming or not?"

Laoko traded looked with Timaeus again. "And Timaeus?"

"You trust Timaeus?" Caera asked.

"I do."

David opened his mouth, but slumped to the side and fell off Caera's back. The hunger swam out from his stomach, into his limbs and up into his skull.

Everything went black. Again.

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

His eyes snapped open. His throat swallowed. He gasped and sputtered on blood. Alien memories flooded his brain, a human, a man, a rapist and drug dealer.

Reality slapped him in the face. It was dark, everything a blur, and enormous silhouettes stood over him.

"It's okay," a woman said. Caera's voice. Thank god.

"Caera?"

"Just chew and swallow. We're safe here."

He relaxed and melted back to the ground. Not ground. He was sitting, ass on the ground, but his back was against something warm. Caera's side.

He chewed and swallowed. Each bite gave him a nice flash of all the horrible things he never wanted to know happened in real life, but he ignored them and filed the memories away. Compared to all the shit that'd happened in the past few days, some god awful memories from a fucked up soul barely registered.

"We got away?" he asked and ate the rest of the heart under his own power.

"We did." Laoko's voice. He turned his head and smiled up at the tetrad squatting nearby. "You do this often, young man? Use your abilities until you pass out?"

He laughed, choked on a piece of heart still in his mouth, and finally looked around at the walls. A mausoleum, with a scrying pool in the center, and black corpse statues on the shelves.

"He does," someone else said. Acelina's voice.

"Acelina?" he asked.

"It is," Caera said. "You owe her your life." With a heavy sigh, she turned her head and nudged it under his arm, his back still against her side. Her tail curled around his other side, nudged onto his lap, and he stroked it out of reflex.

"I do?"

"You do." The spire mother nudged the four Las around her aside, and squatted in front of him. She had her armor back, and her giant axe, too. "I realized Azailia was plotting something. I do not know what, but I spoke with my kin, and they're convinced Azailia has a strange deal with Tarkissa, something... odd. Whatever it is, they hinted that you would not like it. I spoke with Azailia, and she dodged the question. So... I came looking for you."

"Alone," Jes said, squatting beside her. "Bitch came out of the tower, alone, with nothing but her axe and tits, and found our trail. Probably asked a demon or two, right?"

"I did. I am no tracker."

Laughing, Jes poked Acelina's wing with her own. "She found us. We explained what happened. She had the idea of asking a nearby faction for help."

David coughed. "She was the bitch Cullius mentioned?"

"She is," Laoko said, standing and cradling her wounded arm. "Caera and the others were quite busy the day after they'd fled."

"Yeah," Jes said. "Ran around like... headless chickens is the expression, right? Ran around all over the place, trying to figure out what to do. We--"

"David!" A high-pitched almost squeaky voice drew his eyes. Four little ladies ran around the scrying pool and jumped him. With him on his ass, legs out, and fucking exhausted, he was defenseless and could do nothing to stop the two impas and two gremlas from pouncing him. They were not gentle. He oofed and groaned, and they rubbed their faces into his shoulders and neck as they fought for space around him.

"David," Lasca said. "We saw the lightning, even from far away. Super bright! Cut through fog." Big smile relentless and perfect, the little lady lifted his hand, set it on her face, and rubbed her forehead into his palm, all too much like a dog looking for pets. He obliged.

"You saw it from far away? The fog's been doing a good job hiding us so far. I--Moriah!?"

"I'm here." The woman stood up from the opposite corner of the small room. Little blisters and cuts covered her skin. "You nearly killed me."

"Shit, I'm sorry. I... I couldn't think of anything else. I was running on empty, and it took everything I had to summon that lightning, and... and..."

Sighing, Moriah stepped around the scrying pool and joined everyone surrounding him. Daoka followed. Had she been caring for the angel?

"You came back for Laoko," Moriah said, squatting beside him. He was completely surrounded. "You risked your life for her."

He froze. For the first time, Moriah looked at him with what could only be a soft expression. It looked weird. Ruby eyes glaring daggers into him, he could take, but Moriah looked broken, sad, upset, guilty, a whole bunch of things he couldn't begin to understand.

"You're one to talk," he said. "You came out of nowhere, took the rider head on, and killed his goort. Which I'm hoping isn't immortal like the rider apparently is."

A hint of a smile crossed her lips. "The rider cannot be killed; many have tried. But without his mount, perhaps we will now have time to put distance between us until he finds another."

"Another?"

She shrugged. "The rider has always rode hellbeasts, for thousands of years."

"Either way, you really... really took a risk."

"It had to be done. And beside, this..." She stood up and gestured around at the group. "This group has surprised me."

Daoka smiled up at the angel and hugged her from the side. Moriah didn't even struggle.

"We are pretty surprising," Jes said. "Shame we had to meet your bitch ass under the circumstances we did."

"Yes, well..." Moriah looked away. "We were enemies, then. You were right about Shaul, as well. He was... We... He changed, long ago, and took Tzipporah with him on a path of rage." She turned away completely. "And me."

Everyone went silent. So much for celebration and jubilation, Moriah's confession sucked the joy out of the room, until even the demons looked down with the heaviness of it. But Laara got up, crawled up to the angel on all fours, squatted by her leg, and tugged on her toga.

"Friends now, right?"

Moriah groaned and nudged the little impa away with her wing, but Laara got back in there, still squatting like a gargoyle, tail swishing left and right behind her. Again, the angel pushed on Laara with her wing, but Laara held on, and Moriah gave up. After another heavy sigh, she patted the little lady with her wing instead, and Laara cooed.

"Enough of this drama shit," Jes said. "We're on a fucking magical fucking journey to save the fucking world." She stood up, flared her wings, hopped on the scrying pool, and faced the group. Her horns almost hit the ceiling. "The rider can't be fucking killed, but you killed his ride. We should at least get some distance on him, and stop playing this awful game of tag with him for a bit. We got Laoko and Timaeus, and--"

"Timaeus?" David asked.

"He's keeping guard outside. Don't interrupt me. We got a crew, a powerful one, and two of them know their way around this province. We'll get to the Scar in no time." She flapped a wing at Moriah. "You've earned your place in the group. You can relax." Instead of a wing, she jabbed a tail at Laoko. "This one, I'm still not sure about."

Sighing, Laoko stood up and faced the gargoyle. Even standing on the scrying pool, Laoko was taller, and she had to lean forward and keep her horns clear of the ceiling.

"I spoke with David. He understands my situation."

"Your situation is no fucking excuse! You sold us out."

"I made sure you lived. Silvain wanted to hunt you down when you fled."

Not to be intimidated, Jes puffed up her chest and glared up at Laoko from point blank.

"You let Silvain capture David, and hurt him! After he took on the rider!"

"I... I was not sure what was happening."

Jes poked the tetrad's stomach with her tail. "You didn't need to know. You should have just defaulted to helping us."

"What would that accomplish? Silvain would have stopped me, and most of the demons in that entourage worked for him, not me."

"You--"

"Acelina," David said. Best to interrupt that argument before Jes and Laoko tore into each other. "You left the tower to come help me. Why?"

The group turned, Lao, Jes, and Moriah included, and looked at the woman squatting beside Caera and the Las.

"I..." Acelina turned away, all too much like Moriah. "I have my reasons. Saving the world to spite Azailia's ambitions is one."

"And the other reasons?" Caera asked.

"Not important."

Daoka chirped, hopped over to Acelina, tenderly stroked her closer wing, and the spire mother leaned into her touch and lifted the wing. With a bright smile, Daoka hugged Acelina's side, and nodded David's way. Whatever she said, it made Acelina's tail wag a little, but she said nothing.

He watched Acelina, waiting for her to say something scathing, something to dismiss how vulnerable she'd just made herself. She didn't.

"Thank you," he said. "I... Really, I mean it, Acelina. Fuck me, thank you. You had a good thing going at the spire, right?"

"I did."

"Azailia looked happy to have a fourth spire mother to help with picking eggs and stuff."

"She was."

"And... you gave that up for me?"

She groaned, flapped her wing opposite of Daoka at him, and hit his face and the three Las with him in the back.

"I did not do it for you. I did it for larger, more grandeur reasons."

Caera chuckled, but didn't say anything, either, and nodded toward Jes instead.

"David vouches for Laoko. Leave her alone, Jes."

"And Timaeus?" Jes asked. "We barely know him at all."

"Timaeus is smart," Laoko said. "He knows this is important, more important than his position. And besides, Silvain escaped, as did Cullius. Azailia will learn of our betrayal, and if Timaeus goes back to his region to be bailiff, Azailia will kill him. He is trapped by circumstance." Laoko leaned in close, close enough her breastplate hit Jes's. "And if you haven't noticed, Timaeus is not the brute Silvain was. He is amenable to my ways."

"Your ways?"

"Yes, my ways." She poked Jes with two of her four hands. "I am the oldest one here. I am the one who has..." Sighing, she set her hands on Jes's shoulders and arms. "I want Hell to continue to exist, gorgala. I wish Hell and Heaven would cooperate instead of battle. And maybe if we succeed, that could happen. Imagine a Hell where angels visited frequently, with open arms. Imagine a Heaven that let demons visit?"

Moriah raised her head, eyebrow quirked, but instead of berating the tetrad, she glanced David's way. All he could do was shrug.

"I don't know about demons visiting," Moriah said. "But... it is true that Heaven has no innate issue with Hell or its legions. We are not at war, yet, and have no reason to be. If demons are willing to control their hungers, and if Heaven herself would let them, then... then perhaps some -- some! -- demons could visit? It would take decades, perhaps centuries before angels would dare let a demon get close to a soul in Heaven. What would happen if a ravenous demon tried to eat a heaven-bound soul?"

The demons shrugged.

"Exactly. No one knows. You ask a lot, Laoko. But... But..." Moriah rubbed her arms, looking away again. "Azoryev, my home, would be the hardest to convince. If you can convince me, then perhaps it could happen."

"Have I convinced you?"

"No."

The demons groaned. But at least Laoko laughed after, and shook her head and sat against the wall.

"Give me time, then. Perhaps I can convince you, eventually."

Moriah nodded and sat not too far from the massive tetrad. "Perhaps."

Jes raised a wing. "Okay, enough with this friendly chitchat bullshit. I wanna talk about the rider. We just can't kill him?"

"He is immortal," Moriah said. "You saw it as well as I."

"We can't rip off his armor?"

"Demons tried," Laoko said. "Many demons, just in that last battle. They could not."

Not a good enough answer for Jes. She paced around the scrying pool, flapping her wings in slow, heavy beats.

"It's not like his helmet was latched on with something. It should be easy to take it off, right? Then what the fuck? Is the armor merged to his body?"

"Maybe it is his body?" David asked.

Moriah shook her head. "When I stabbed him, I felt flesh and bone. I do not know how he is able to revive from such damage, or why it only takes him minutes to do so, but that is how it has been for thousands of years. Many angels have tried to kill him, even the reapers, to no avail."

Caera perked up. "Reapers? I've read a few things about them, taking on hundreds of demons solo. Never read about them fighting the rider."

"Reapers actually exist?" David asked.

"The reapers are..." Moriah shivered and rubbed her arms. "They are not the reapers from myth. Death is not monitored or controlled by some individual. It is a part of the cycle of the Great Tower. But there are reapers, all mikalim. There are guardians, all rapholem. And there are muses, all gabriem. In rare circumstances, any of these three can indirectly affect the surface world."

The info bomb yanked David up from his stupor and he sat up straight. "I can't believe they actually exist. Reapers, guardian... guardian angels, I guess, and muses? They did things on the surface?"

"Yes, but again, only indirectly. Muses can affect the dreams of souls. Reapers and guardians can lightly touch and guide the physical world, from changing the weather to adjusting the speed of a falling rock." Again, the angel shivered and looked down. "To affect the world of the physical is a talent only they possess, except for perhaps the council. And such an ability is the result of great power. They are formidable, even the muses." Formidable didn't do it justice, from the way Moriah kept her eyes on the floor. "I know reapers and guardians have tried to kill the rider, long before my birth, but they failed. He is relentless. Reapers can slay demons in droves, far faster than the rider and his axes ever could, but they are not immortal." She gestured to David. "If the rider could fly with his wings of flame, there would be nothing anyone could do."

Immortal. Truly immortal. The word didn't even make sense. If archangels could die, how the fuck did someone like the rider become immortal? And that was assuming he was ever mortal in the first place.

"Reapers really exist," David said. "Wow. Are they born reapers, or do they become them somehow?"

"I do not know. Only they and the council know. It has been many--"

Jes rolled her eyes. "Many thousands of years since one has been born. Yeah, we get the theme."

Moriah eyed the gargoyle, but didn't correct her, either.

Daoka sat with David, scooted under a Las' wing so she could lean against Caera's stomach with him, and clicked at him and poked his shoulder.

"She wants to know if you're still hungry," Caera said.

"I... Yeah, I am." He looked down at his gut. Laria was in the way, but she rubbed his belly for him, giggling. "I don't feel like I'm going to pass out anymore or anything, but using the music empties me out completely."

Sighing, Daoka took off her breastplate.

He tilted his head. "Uh, Dao, whatcha--"

She picked him up. The Las giggled and got off him, and Dao set him between her legs, facing away from her. His ass on the floor between her thighs, she pulled his head against her chest right onto her breasts, and stroked his head. She'd turned so she had her right side against the tiger's stomach, both of them facing Caera's head, and she rubbed his chest in a warm hug, kissed his hair, and scratched his scalp.

He melted into her and closed his eyes. Breasts were amazing pillows.

"We'll go get more food," Jes said. "Come on, girls." Chuckling, she poked the Las with her tail, and the four little ladies whined but got up and followed her. "The rest of you lazy fucks, sit down and recover, I guess. Except you, Acelina. You and your tits are coming with."

"How dare you. I am--"

"We dropped your ass off at a spire like you wanted from day one, but now we gotta carry your useless giant ass everywhere? I'm gonna teach you how to hunt. So come on."

Acelina got up and eyeless-ly glared at the much smaller gargoyle. Flared wings, shark mouth showing gritted teeth, everything. But she sighed, glanced David's way, and reached down and picked up a couple Las from his lap.

"Very well. Come along, my pets. You will protect me come the inevitable moment Jeskura fails and her foolishness risks my neck."

The Las giggled, hugged her giant thighs, and dashed up the spiraling stairway on all fours. Jes followed, and Acelina followed her.

Maybe it was something Jes said, or David, but Acelina stopped and looked back at David, and the two stared at each other, saying nothing. Did she want to say something? Nothing. She followed Jes, and the room became a lot emptier.

"I am beyond surprised about her," Laoko said. "Spire mothers do not leave their spires. Ever. She must truly care for you, David."

"You think?"

"Acelina's a bitch," Caera said, "but she's smart. She knows this journey is important."

Daoka clicked several times and gestured to the stairs. Whatever she said, it got a chuckle out of Caera.

The tiger grinned. "Yeah, I think she likes David, too."

He smiled at Caera, closed his eyes, melted back into Dao's breasts, and sat up with a jolt.

"I... I should tell you now," he said. "Promise you won't say anything, Laoko."

The tetrad tilted her head. "What?"

"It's a secret about Zel. Promise."

Moriah lifted her head, but David gave her an affirming nod. No need to demand a promise of an angel.

"I... I promise."

He squinted his eyes at Laoko, but it didn't last. If this was a good idea or not, he didn't know, but he had to say something. It was fucking killing him, and they deserved to know.

"The rider didn't kill Zel. Mia did."

They all sucked in a breath.

"Shit," Caera said. "That's what you wanted to tell me?"

"Yeah. Sorry I didn't tell you sooner. I've been wanting to, but it was never the time, and I didn't think it was a good idea for the Las to know, and then we dropped Acelina off and the rider attacked and..." There wasn't any point in trying to justify it. He relaxed back against Dao again and ran his hand along Caera's side. "Sorry."

Daoka chirped into his ear.

"She already knew," Caera said, eyebrow raised. "Jes told her."

He whined and buried his face in Caera's stomach, but Daoka chuckled and pulled him back into her hug.

"It is a good thing Acelina does not know," Moriah said. "And I think it shall remain that way. Shall it not, bolstara?"

Laoko gave Moriah a side-eye. Those two were not going to get along.

"Zelandariel did speak of Acelina on several occasions," Laoko said. "She enjoyed the woman, her words, her body, and thought of her as a pleasant distraction. But loved her, as Acelina loved Zel? I don't know."

"Doesn't matter," Caera said. "Acelina definitely loved Zel. If she found out, she might take it out on David. She might not have helped today at all."

David groaned again, but Daoka was on the case. Chirping softly into his ear, she scratched his scalp, combed his messy shag red hair, hugged him close, and made sure he was snug and cozy against her body.

"Yeah," Caera said to the satyr. "We're not upset you didn't tell us... mostly." She poked him in the stomach. "Actually, I'm kinda upset you did tell me. Now I might treat Acelina different, and she might ask why, and... Dao, this why you've been so nice to her?"

Dao smiled, chirped, and tugged at the necklace she still wore. A gift from the spire mother.

Caera rolled her eye. "She said she's always nice."

That was true. He rubbed his cheek against the top of her right breast and closed his eyes again. Dao chirped some more, and with his ear against her skin, the clicks had a unique sound, like water droplets on water.

"I think," Laoko said, "that with time, Acelina will come to change her mind about Zel."

"That depends," David said. "Will you change your mind about Azailia?"

With anyone else, they'd probably have been blindsided by the reversal. Not Laoko. She met David's eyes, held them, and got stuck between a subtle smile and a hidden frown.

"I suppose I must. I will not jump to conclusions about her from Silvain's actions, but I must consider that you are right about her, young soul. She... She may have orchestrated all of this, so that you could be taken to Tarkissa as a prisoner."

"Why?" Moriah asked. "Of what Heaven knows of Tarkissa and the Scar, there is nothing unique about it that would demand an unmarked prisoner. Tarkissa's rise to power was strange, true, and how he navigates for peace with the Grave Valley and the Red Pits is unusual. But why would a self-involved, narcissistic, sex-obsessed tetrad who cares for nothing but indulging his vices care about the power of an unmarked?"

"No idea," Caera said. "But I guess we'll find out when we get there. Everywhere David goes, people get involved."

He shook his head. "Not this time. Let's avoid the Scar, go around it."

Caera mirrored his head shake. "Can't. The whole province is a giant canyon, two slopes that funnel into a line along the middle. And the more toward the edge of Hell you go in that province, the more you're on jagged mountains that make Death's Grip look gentle."

Because of course everywhere in Hell, everything did all it could to make every step of this journey harder. He thudded his forehead on Caera's side until Dao laughed and pulled him back to her chest.

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

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

~~Mia~~

"They're all dead!" the demon said. He dangled from Romakus's hand, a dozen vrats just like him dead in the muck, and what was left of his leg bled into the swamp and disappeared, red into black.

Growling, the gorujin tetrad threw the vrat down, and stabbed him through the back. The sword was a giant thing, blunt, and far wider than a sword should have been. It less stabbed the vratorin than burrowed through him.

"I guess that settles it," Romakus said. "The Damall here in the Black Valley are dead."

Mia crawled up from her hole, wiped off remnant guts, and crawled back onto Kas's back. No one had been injured save for a few scrapes, thanks to Mia opening up some holes under the demons that'd ambushed her and the crew. They hadn't known anything about Xela or James, which was good. It meant Mia and the crew were ahead of the knowledge wave. Thank god for no phones in Hell.

"You okay?" she asked Yosepha.

"I am fine." Not a lie. The angel had killed a vrat with her bare hands, and watching a small -- relatively speaking -- woman in skimpy white silks punch a demon to death had been oddly amazing. Gross, disturbing, but also amazing. She had a few cuts for her trouble, but none looked bad.

Mia raised a finger. "I know I told Noah and Azreal you angels probably shouldn't use your armor, because in all this black, it might attract attention. But I dunno. It's pretty dense smog. I wonder if the angels above would notice it at all."

"Why risk it? It may be but a twinkle, but that twinkle could summon a host of angels, and I doubt even you could defeat five hundred angels if they fell upon you can and gave you no time to use your abilities."

That was very true. The more Mia played the music and the better she got, the more the limitations became obvious. Doing anything instantly was pretty much impossible. Quickly, sure, but not instantly. She couldn't play a song out of reflex, like dodging a punch. Every note had to be thought about, felt, arranged.

She really did feel like the party wizard. David was probably loving it.

Noah flew back and joined them, and he looked around at the dead demons with a raised eyebrow.

"Trouble?" he asked.

Romakus glowered down at the man, knelt, and ripped the heart out of his kill.

"The Damall in the Black Valley are dead," he said, and munched down the heart. And he made a mess of it, too, big teeth tearing the muscle apart like a hungry crocodile. Probably just trying to gross the angel out.

Some blood splattered on Noah's chest, but he didn't flinch or look away.

"How did they die?"

"Apparently," Livian said, "Xela caught them wandering close not long ago. They'd likely heard about a captured unmarked and investigated. With everything going on, they got bold, and made a mistake."

"I'm sure other groups live," Romakus said. "Smaller Damall groups, hiding on the edges of the Black Swamp. Useless to us."

When Mia first heard about the Damall, it'd given her 'rebel force' vibes, like it was Star Wars or something. Sure, they were understaffed, just a disorganized bunch of ragtag groups, but if they had someone to get them organized, they could be a real force. It was quickly proving to be very much not that. Just a bunch of ragtag assholes mostly concerned with their own shit, and while they all agreed it was best the spires never get control over each other or cause another spires war, they weren't willing to devote their lives to the cause.

It did mean if the crew found some, they'd be allies, at least until the crew moved on. Most demons just didn't give a shit about things that weren't immediately affecting them. Bunch of assholes.

She laughed and shook her head. Yeah, because it was only demons who gave a shit about the immediate and what was in front of them. Humans were sooooo much better.

"So I guess we just keep going?" Mia asked. "James is probably at the main Trench intersection, right, Noah?"

"Yes. Azreal waits with them."

"Then we cross," Adron said. "Which... won't be easy."

"What's it like?" she asked.

The vrat groaned and gestured ahead in the smog.

"Thousands of demons, coming and going, all the time. Giant bone structures. Vicente sits in the middle, a korgejin tetrad. A fiend. If he knows about what happened behind us, he'll have demons patrolling every inch of the trench."

"Then we go around," Kas said. "We need not cross the Trench intersection at its center, not with angels to guide us."

Vin stepped up. He'd been following in the back of the group for a while, but he looked healthier, and nodded toward Noah.

"We have no time."

Noah sighed, but nodded. "The child of Belial is correct. Thousands of demons pour over the swamp as we speak, heading toward the main Trench, the Maze, and Alessio's spire. They will be here soon, and then demons will swarm the Trench from end to end. If Alessio is inclined, she may summon the horde, and order them to guard the trench with... ravenous intent."

Mia gulped. When she'd used the horde call before, all she knew was: it gave the demon's a target, and it made them go crazy with bloodlust like some kind of drug. Controlling that had been basically impossible. If Alessio, or any spire ruler, could give more specific directions to demons, and seal in that order with a horde seal so it lasted for who knew how long, then that was fucking scary.

"The horde call," she said. "We... We have to worry about that, don't we?" She gestured around at the group. "If Alessio uses it, it hits all demons in the province, right?"

"Yeah," Romakus said. "It gets weaker the further from the spire we are, but yeah, it'll hit everyone. That's one reason spire rulers seal them in with tools before sending armies off, so the other spire can't use a horde call against them."

She squeezed Kas's back spikes. "Which means, if Alessio uses a horde call, it'll hit you guys?"

Romakus nodded. "Yeap. Tetrads can resist. I'm sure the ragarin can, too." He gestured to Vin. "But the rest of the group? That will be a problem. So we're racing through this province as fast as we can."

"Alessio," Kas said, "won't use a horde call just to catch us."

Romakus was not having it. Laughing, he squatted down beside the shark dinosaur and poked him in his flat head. Much as Kas's head was flat like a shark's with no eyes to speak of, and the head was hard black bone, getting poked by a claw couldn't have felt good. Kas snarled at the tetrad and shoved him back, a little more physical contact than Mia expected, and she squeaked and held on.

Walking on his short-ish legs and long-ish arms, Kas usually moved with a gorilla-like casual strolling squatted posture, with the bonus of a giant crocodile-ish tail. It meant he was always low to the ground, betraying his size. His arms were just as big as Romakus's, and he shoved hard, hard enough Romakus flapped his wings and half stepped back, almost tipping over.

Adron joined Kas and nudged his side.

"Whether Alessio thinks it worth it or not," Adron said, "we have to worry about it, right? If she doesn't use it, good. Or she uses it and we resist it but still have to deal with tens of thousands of demons hunting for us and blocking us. Or she uses it, we don't resist it, and you'll need some way to restrain us."

Livian smiled and flicked Adron's shoulder with a claw. "I'll restrain you. Do not worry." Unless Mia misread her, that was a flirtatious smile.

Romakus laughed. "I won't. Free meal."

Mia rolled her eyes and looked Vin's way. "Vin's strong. He'll keep Kas and Adron under control. Won't you?"

He looked down at her, and she braced for some sort of mean comment, or snarling, snorting remark. But the titan met her eyes and nodded. Barely.

She squirmed. That was a different response than she'd expected, too.

"What is the plan, then?" Noah asked.

"Push forward," Romakus said. "We'll meet you on the other side."

Noah set his silver eyes up on the tetrad and folded his arms across his chest. It wasn't like the angel would let his dislike of Romakus stop him from doing the obviously correct thing. Right?

"Please," Yosepha said and patted her fellow mikalim on the arm.

Please, the magic word. Demons couldn't use it, but angels could, and Noah sighed like he'd just lost a bet. He nodded, turned, and flew off.

Mia didn't ask about the extra gore on the man's body. Some of it was still red. He'd run into demons on his flight and said nothing. Azreal had probably done the same.

"Think we should mix the groups up?" Mia asked. "Maybe get Faust and the boys back?"

"Who'd you trade?" Romakus asked.

"You, duh."

"I'm not leaving Yosepha alone with you!" He buried the woman against his side with a wing. "You evil unmarked slut. You'd seduce her."

"I'll have you know, I'm straight!" Mostly. There was something about Julisa, her bitch attitude, and her giant tits squashed on Mia's body that'd been stimulating. And sure, Mia had been filled with incubi dicks at the time, but still. Julisa was hot. Yosepha was, too.

Yosepha groaned, escaped the wing prison, elbowed Romakus in the leg, and gestured ahead.

"Enough games. Let's go."

Romakus could not be dissuaded. He picked Yosepha up, turned her around, hugged her snug to his chest, and buried her neck in big, slobbery kisses. The male tetrads, gorujins and korgejins, had demony faces, sort of a cross between a skull and an overly masculine human face, with big jaws, defined eyebrow ridges, flat-ish noses, and big crocodile teeth. Someone with a face like that, scary but kinda hot in a weird 'hear me out' sorta way, had to be careful they didn't bite the person they were lavishing love on.

Yosepha groaned again and pushed on the huge man's chest, but Romakus held tight and licked her neck all over. At first it was romantic neck licking, then it devolved into demon-over-the-top licking theatrics. Yosepha looked Mia's way and rolled her eyes.

"I am covered in dead remnant guts," Yosepha said, "tainted by this land, if you haven't noticed! Have you no control?"

"Nope." He growled into her neck and buried her with his hug, complete with a wing-wrap around her.

Mia bit down the urge to swoon.

Yosepha squirmed more until Romakus had no choice and let her go. She brushed herself off, glared up at the man, and started the march as if nothing happened. Much as Yosepha was a badass warrior, she had all the signs of a girl easily caught off guard by romantic stuff, and she stood a little straighter, like she could brush it off with said badass-ness. She was so damn cute, no wonder Romakus was all over her.

Plus, it was obvious the demon was obsessed with her ass. Romakus followed directly behind her, crouched, looked back at Mia, and gestured to the angel's large butt and the way the wet silk hugged it like. It was big. Mia frowned at the man and gestured for him to stop gawking. Romakus grinned back and doubly gestured to the angel's ass. Adron chuckled.

Yosepha snapped her head back, but Romakus stood up straight at the same time and shrugged his shoulders and wings. What a mischievous asshole.

No wonder Yosepha liked him.

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

"Let me kill them all," Vin said.

Mia glared up at the titan and poked his leg. "No. You're wounded. You're always wounded."

He glared back at her and rumbled in his throat, but he kept it quiet. They all kept quiet.

Ahead was the main Trench, where the two giant trenches that cut across the province crossed each other in the center of the province. A big X, with each point touching one edge of the province. The intersection looked about fifty meters wide and deep, a canyon instead of a trench, and enormous bone structures stood within its center and along the four trenches that connected to it. Mia had imagined the bone buildings would have been built, like as if someone had taken giant bones they'd found and tied them together. Nope. Hell grew giant bone structures, and the demons had used them as buildings.

The bone in the center looked like a warped ribcage big enough to be Asmodeus's. It extended out further than the center of the trench, spilled over into the black swamp beyond, and towered over everything.

"As big as Asmodeus," Adron said, reading her mind.

"The Old One was this large?" Yosepha whispered. She lay in the muck on Mia's other side.

"He was much bigger," Mia said. "This looks like it could be an Old One's rib cage, if it... grew up from the swamp somehow." It had a spinal cord and everything, and demons had attached rope, tarps of leather, and created some sort of makeshift tower with floors. Mia reached out, closed her eyes, and tapped the strings for a peek with her sixth sense. The giant ribcage was not a corpse, but a part of Hell. Hell had grown it. "Yeah. It's not a corpse."

"Hell does love to make monuments," Romakus whispered. "We sure Julisa and the others got past this?"

Mia shrugged. "Noah said they did, right?"

"He said they'd arrived," Yosepha said. "I see no commotion. They snuck past, and so must we."

They were under a time limit, and they had no idea what that time was. The group had gotten here pretty fast, but Xela and her crew wouldn't have been delayed by Mia's canyon for long. And unlike Mia's crew, they didn't have to sneak around everywhere. Vicente might already know they were coming.

"Noah came from a kilometer inward," Yosepha said, gesturing left and toward the center of the Hell donut. "Less demons that way. Either we cross quickly here, or risk dealing with more demons in the future, or maybe even Alessio, if we take the detour."

They'd come close to the Trench intersection to get a read on how bad crossing it would be. There wasn't as much fog near the center, which made it easier to see the giant bone buildings, but harder to avoid being spotted. They'd spent hours crawling along in the mud, and if they went inward, they'd have to spend many more.

"Fuck that," Adron said. "Mia, can you carve a tunnel for us?"

"A tunnel." That actually wasn't a bad idea. She reached out and listened to the world around her, felt the holes in the muck where demons probably hid, felt the trenches, felt the bone structures growing up from the various kinds of rock below, and shook her head. "I don't think I can. It'd be hard, draining."

"It doesn't sound like it would be," Romakus said. "Miss Firestorm."

"That's not the same. A tunnel would have to be subtle, right? I'd have to move rock out of the way, muck out of the way, shift rock and keep shifting it as we moved, and keep some kind of orientation, all while trying to find a way to keep us from asphyxiating. That's not like making something go bang." There was a difference between slamming sounds together to make something super loud, and playing the Free Bird solo a hundred times over. "Maybe... Maybe if I was better at it, I could. Maybe. Making those caves we hide in is hard enough." And that only took a few minutes and didn't have any of the complications.

"Your gift," Livian said, "is sounding less and less useful."

Mia glared back at the bolstara tetrad. "Got a better idea?"

She smiled. "If your gift cannot perform long, enduring, subtle tasks, then use it for what it is good at. Make something go bang."

"You... want us to attack Vicente?"

"Not us. You."

Mia groaned and looked at the rest of the crew. Romakus nodded like a child offered a firecracker. Even Vin had a little, hungry smile. Yosepha shook her head, thank god. Adron and Kas said nothing, and the vrat frowned and looked at the distant tower.

"It... might be necessary," Adron said.

The angel shook her head again. "We must lean on stealth. We told Noah as much."

Yeah, they did. This was the problem with crossing Hell with two parties that couldn't get close to each other. When one group ran into a problem, the other couldn't do anything about it. If it weren't for Azreal and Noah, they'd be completely screwed.

"Stealth," Kas said. He squatted in the muck directly behind Mia, chest over her feet, and he set his eyeless gaze on the distant tower.

There were hundreds of demons around. Plenty of them hunkered down in the muck, same as Mia and the crew, so as long as she and her friends didn't get close, they'd be nothing but similarly shaped blurs at the edge of the smog. But plenty also climbed the bone structures around and watched the swamp from their perches.

Lots of demons of all shapes and sizes climbed the structure in the middle, and they shoved each other, fought over trophies, and roared and growled at each other. Monkeys or apes in trees, fighting over food and mates. They had bone necklaces, bone jewelry, and more than a few sat and carved their flesh with what had to be a sharp rock. One brute sat near the top of the giant spinal cord and drew a line into his chest over and over.

That's how they were scarring themselves and making tribal tattoos. One cut didn't do it. They had to cut the same place dozens and dozens of times to get the scar to form. Fucking yikes.

Vicente sat at the top, wings spread and hooves on the bone of the spinal cord beneath him. A korgejin tetrad. Too far for Mia to get any detail on him, but if he was anything like the other korgejins she'd met, he'd be just as big and scary as Romakus, except hooves and no tail, and with maybe a slightly more skull-ish, scary face. Hooves meant problems with the muck, though. Maybe he stayed in his tower of bone all the time?

"Let's go inward then," she said, and pointed left again. "And scan for a place we can cross."

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

It took an hour, but they found a place, way further from the intersection than they'd hoped. If Azreal and Noah couldn't find them, they were screwed. Even when Yosepha had her wings back, she wouldn't be able to find them if they couldn't find her.

But Noah and Azreal could probably see, even through all the smog, the portal opening in the sky.

"Get down!" Yosepha whispered, and the group dropped. Flat to the muck on all fours, the group disappeared, buried up to elbows and knees. Even Vin disappeared, turning into yet another pile of muck like the hundreds that surrounded them.

The sky ripped open, someone with an invisible scalpel cut a colossal tear in reality, and a lamprey's mouth came out. Big enough to swallow a stadium, it hovered high overhead, its presence breaking the smog and scattering it in the wind, while the fire sky above swirled around it. And souls, so many souls, fell onto the trench and the black guts of a billion remnants.

It was like someone had rung a dinnertime bell. A mean, cruel bell, meant for summoning mean, cruel people. Demons popped out of the ground, roared with glee, and what were once lethargic, borderline lazy beasts, became a frenzy of rabid monsters, all running for the portal. Many wore bone jewelry. Many were covered in scars. All looked giddy as they sprinted across the muck fast enough they stayed above the remnant guts their feet slapped against.

This close to the main Trench intersection, there were a lot of demons, and they fell on the fresh souls like piranha. No hesitation, and no consideration. They shoved each other out of the way and fought over screaming souls they ripped in half, but didn't cut each other down. They wanted to. Even from a distance, that was obvious, lots of snarling and more than a few mishaps with some demons cutting each other, but it never devolved into cannibalism.

"God threw us a bone," Romakus said. "Let's go."

Yosepha eyed the man for half a second, but everyone got moving. Crawling through the muck, they put distance between themselves and the frenzy feast.

A late bloomer jumped out of a hole, and Adron tackled the fellow vratorin. One second, the group was on their knees, looking a stranger in the eyes, and the next, Adron had pinned the man into the muck hole he'd half climbed out of it. Adron didn't have time to draw his sword, but he got his claws into his fellow vrat's throat and tore it open. The other demon sank back into his hole, all too much like a soldier falling back into his foxhole after getting shot.

Romakus grinned. "Fast little fucker, aren't you?"

Adron climbed out of the hole and moved on all fours, a fresh batch of cuts on his shoulders. Adron was the smallest demon in their group, now that Faust and the other incubi were with James, but he was huge, bigger than most vrats, almost eight feet tall. Size differences were a big deal in demon culture. Only the biggest demons got to be in charge.

It made sense. In a society that didn't iterate, didn't grow, didn't change, didn't make any effort to organize, all that mattered was who was the biggest and strongest. David would have said something about orks.

"Don't be a dick," Mia whispered at Romakus, loudly.

Adron grinned at Mia, winked at her, and crawled past and took the lead. Romakus was right. Adron was a fast demon. Well, way to make it work for him. He got ahead, approached the trench, and slid down the immense wall of muck.

Mia reached out with her sixth sense. She could feel holes in the muck, the giant bones that grew from it, the cracked ground beneath, but the sixth sense couldn't feel demons. If anyone was waiting in the trench for them, she had no way to know.

The portal swirled in the distance, and the fire sky burned. And angels dropped out of the sky.

Everyone froze at the edge of the trench and stared down its length at the colossal ribcage. Some demons had come back, climbed the structure with hearts in hand and gave them to Vicente, while the tetrad stood on top of the spinal cord and spoke with angels.

"What the fuck?" Mia asked.

Yosepha got to a knee and peered at the distant meeting between Vicente and what had to be at least a hundred angels. More hovered above, all in armor, all slowly flapping their wings.

"No time," Romakus said. "Go. Now!" He slid down the trench slope, used his wings to catch air, and descended into the deeper mud.

Everyone followed. Mia went down like going down a water slide and clutched her egg snug. Adron caught her at the bottom and did a quick check of her body.

"I'm fine," she said, and she risked a peek down the trench to the distance portal, the parted smog, and the angels. "I don't understand. Why are they--"

Kas picked her up, put her on his back, and she held on tight as the demon climbed up the next slope. Sliding down a wall of ooze was a lot easier than climbing one, and Kas snarled between each slam of his claws against it. Each time, he sank up to his elbows, and remnant guts splashed against his chest and dragon snout. But he climbed, while all she could do was stare at the distant angels.

Angels were here, lots of them, and talking with Vicente? Had they waited for a portal to open up so they'd see what was going on? Whatever the reason, they were talking with him, not fighting him. They were dots in the distance, but with Vicente's wings and the angels' wings all out, and some serious eye squinting, she could see they were standing and talking.

Demons feasted, but once the portal was gone and the thousands of humans were dead, they surrounded the giant ribcage and waited, looking up. Mia stared. Even imps and grems stood with the bigger demons, mostly grems, few imps; probably because of the hooves. Thousands of demons, all with their backs to Mia and the crew, all looking up at the hundreds of angels above, angels that could easily wipe them out.

Angels wouldn't do that. They had no reason to do that. The two floors of the Great Tower weren't at war, had no reason to be at war, and that meant angels could come down whenever they wanted and have a chat.

That was a problem.

Kas climbed over the edge of the trench, turned, and helped the others. It was almost polite, but he wasn't gentle, borderline throwing Livian up to him, and she stumbled and fell in the remnant guts. Again, because of hooves.

Slowly, the smog fell back into place and hid the distant bone tower behind veils of black. The portal was gone. Demons would come back soon, find their holes or tunnels again, and find Mia and the crew. The crew knew it, too, and once everyone had climbed to freedom, they crawled, borderline jogged ahead.

"Noah and Azreal," Mia said. "We're so off course, will they find us?"

"I don't know," Yosepha said. "We head toward the maze, as agreed. Once Vicente is behind us, we move closer to the trench line that connects to the Maze, as we were before."

The maze. Lots and lots of trenches, bone walls, and apparently it covered the border between the Black Valley and Angel's Spine. There was no going around it. The damn thing reached from coast to coast, and according to the crew, wading into the water to swim around it was not an option. Why? Hellbeasts. What kind of hellbeasts? They didn't know.

Demons. They just didn't give a shit about details. David was probably going out of his mind trying to plan his journey, and his was twice as long as hers.

Roars blasted to the right, hidden behind the smog veil. Thousands of them. Mia and the crew flattened to the muck again, and she rolled off Kas's back, right onto her own. Back, butt, hair, ankles, all of it splat into the endless layers of black remnant guts.

She sat up and scanned around. "Oh god. Oh god oh god oh--"

Yosepha covered her mouth, with a black, wet hand, and Mia sputtered into her fingers.

The roar poured over the swamp, punched through the smog, echoed through the trenches, and almost stirred the muck to a boil. No one moved, only stared as the sound continued, demons ending their battle cries only for other demons to pick up where they left off. Each roar came from where the angels were, and each was primal, filled with bellows and extra grunts. If they could see the demons, no doubt they'd have been pumping their fists or weapons in the air.

"Go," Adron said.

"Why are they screaming?" Mia asked, climbing onto Kas again.

Adron gestured to the noise. "Someone's getting them stirred up. You saw what they did when the portal opened up?"

"They swarmed."

The vrat nodded and crawled ahead on all fours. "Demons like to do that when something gets their attention. And I'm guessing angels just told them an unmarked is around, and probably would be a tasty, empowering meal for whatever demon finds them."

Gulp.

The roars stopped, silence followed, and soon after, churning muck torn apart by thousands of sets of claws, and the thud of armor on flesh from thousands of demons on the move. Mia couldn't see them, no one could, but from the sound, she had a wonderful guess where they were going. The Maze, to cut Mia off.

"The others," Mia said. "If this group finds them, then--"

"James can hide them, same as you," Yosepha said.

"But that won't help if we have to hide in holes in the ground for weeks! We need to get to the Forgotten Place yesterday!"

The angel met her eyes, and Mia froze. Her obsidian eyes cut through Mia, shut up her, and splashed ice water on her face at the same time.

"Go," she said. "That is all we can do. We race against the unknown, and we navigate unpredictable obstacles every step of the way. All we can do is push forward. Go."

Mia bit her lip, nodded, and lay flat across Kas's back and shoulders with her egg at her side.

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

"What happened?" Mia asked, sitting back against the wall of her little cave. She'd made it extra deep, and hopefully the little chimney it had was enough they didn't suffocate.

Yosepha shrugged and sat on Romakus's lap. Apparently, she'd gotten comfortable enough doing that around them, plus it was a good way to save space in the little cave. Romakus, asshole that he was, took full advantage, made sure his legs were between Yosepha's, grabbed her hips, and pulled her back so she sat even more snug against him. She slapped his fingers and he let go, but she didn't get off him, either.

"I don't know," Yosepha said. "With that many angels, it could not have been a group of defectors like Galon and myself. That was an official group, speaking with Vicente."

"I figured this would happen," Adron said. Everyone looked at him, an eyebrow raised. "Come on. Angels want the unmarked dead, but they don't know Hell well enough to comb it themselves. They're more than strong enough to bully demons, though, and there's plenty of them, too. It only makes sense they eventually come down and demand demons hunt and kill the unmarked."

Kas grunted. Vin grunted. Livian shrugged.

"Maybe," Romakus said. "It could backfire. You think angels would trust demons? They could threaten, sure, but half the demons in Hell would love to do the exact opposite of what an angel tells them to do."

"Not all demons," Kas said, "are interested in defying angels."

"Point," Adron said. "We're not at war, right? I'm sure plenty of demons will take advantage, capture an unmarked, and present them to an angel if the angel promises a reward. Or if the angels told them eating the unmarked would give them power, I bet most demons would do it."

Vin's grunt turned into a snarl, but he said nothing, folded his four arms across his chest, and rested back against the wall.

"It's a risk, then," Romakus said. "Either the angels keep looking and failing to find a needle in a haystack, or they ask for help. You've seen unmarked die in your visions, Mia. That's three so far, right?"

"Yeah. Two to angels."

"The angels are hunting," Adron said. "But maybe they're getting desperate?"

Yosepha nodded. "Perhaps. It has been over two months since the first unmarked was seen. If the council has given new orders, I have no way of knowing, but it could be the angels are growing worried."

Mia threw up her hands. "So now all of Hell knows about us, and knows the angels want us dead. Which means, literally every single demon we run into from now on is gonna want to either capture me, kill me, or eat me."

Rumbling, Kasimiro got down in classic crocodile position and flicked his tail. "It changes little. All demons in our path must be dealt with."

"It does change things," Livian said. "Now they know we are coming."

"Then we kill them," Vin said. "All of them." He closed his eyes, and let sleep take him.

Mia watched him, frowning. The big guy was still beat up, she could tell. After all the times she'd seen him wounded, she knew what it looked like when he hid how wounds underneath the skin were taking time to heal. That fight in the trench must have been worse than he'd let on. At least in the Black Valley, there were so many remnants it was easy to summon a forbidden tree and grow fruit.

She did it now. Food, for when he woke up.

Adron smiled at her. She smiled back. He grinned, and his eyes flicked between her and Vin. She didn't grin back, but raised a brow. He shrugged, grinned again, closed his eyes, and went to sleep. Kas did the same, and so did Livian.

No one had to keep watch, but it was still better to stay put for twelve hours, and they only needed eight hours of sleep. Boredom was a problem, but it wasn't so bad with someone to talk to, and she smiled at Yosepha and Romakus.

Yosepha smiled back, but Romakus had his eyes aimed at the angel on his lap, and he rumbled down at her, a half purr sound, and again set his giant hands on her body. He squeezed her, pressed her to his chest, fingers squashing her silk, her skin, her breasts, and he winked at Mia. The angel rolled her eyes and squirmed, but she didn't slap his hands away, either.

If Mia woke up to those two having sex, that'd be bad. They were so cute and sexy together, it'd send Mia over. She'd bury the room in her aura, and they'd drown in an orgy in their little cave.

Don't think about sex. Don't think about how amazingly hot Yosepha was, how obviously obsessed Romakus was with her ass, and how she'd probably wake up to see the demon fucking said ass. Which Yosepha loved, from what Mia had seen that one time.

Stop it. Exercise some self control. The world was out to kill her, demons and angels and aliens included, and here she was, imagining what it'd be like to sit on Kas's lap like Yosepha was with Romakus, and feel his cock in her guts. Or, maybe Vin? If he could fit. She wasn't even super into anal, but Kas had made her enjoy it, a lot, and... and...

She hugged her egg, stroked its shell, and whispered to the leathery surface.

"Your owner is a hopeless nymphomaniac. When you hatch, you're gonna need to be that angry bulldog a girl owns that barks at any man who gets too close, because I cannot be trusted."