Chapter 255 – No One There to Tuck You In

Lilyth - Now

‘Wait!’ Aki interrupted me. ‘You’ve met Dain in Hell?’’

‘Is he coming back?’ Caei quickly added.

‘We were planning for that to be a surprise,’ I said carefully. ‘Or for that question to be asked slightly later, when I have had a chance to explain some additional context.’

‘Are we now on a timer again?’ Sav asked.

‘No, no, no,’ I quickly shot it down. ‘Dain paid that particular debt in full when he helped to get me through that quest.’

‘So why isn’t he here then?’ Caei pressed.

‘Because I still need to explain some things…’

‘I don’t care if you two fucked,’ Aki said. ‘I mean, you have our permit for him. Just bring him here!’

No helping it then. Ere?

‘You tried, sweetie,’ she tried to console me.

Dain appeared in the room.

He looked normal… except for a pair of straight bone-white horns growing out of his forehead and a long arrow-tipped tail.

‘Allow me to introduce you to Dainyir, Marquess-Consort of Hell,’ I sighed.

‘H-hey g-guys,’ he stammered and tried to walk over to my wives who were getting up to greet him, only to trip over his tail and fall on his face. That in turn caused his hair to go dark blue and a drop of ink to fall from it onto the carpet.

‘S-sorry,’ he grew flustered as Aki rushed to help him. ‘I am still trying to get the hang of keeping it all under control. It was much easier in Hell.’

There was a lot there to keep under control too, as what I couldn’t share with the others was that Dain wasn’t a fourth-generation Hellborn like Persephone or me, or even a third-generation like Deirdee. While we will get to how exactly he pulled it off later, he somehow managed to get a transformation into a second-generation Hellborn as part of his “come back to life” deal.

I was both impressed and horrified once I got all the deets.

Also, if you are wondering why Dain’s voice lacked the typical “booming” quality the rest of us have in our fully powered form? That’s because he wasn’t in his. If anything, that was an underpowered version of the underpowered version.

After all the welcomes were handled and Dain was comfortably seated in an armchair Nyxie brought, we were ready to continue the story.

Well… almost ready. Aki asked a question I lowkey dreaded someone would ask.

‘If you had Dain’s help, why… why did you return in such a sorry state?’

We looked at each other with Dainyir.

Wir brauchen keinen Hurrikan, wir brauchen keinen Taifun…

‘We’ll get there,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘Remember, we are only at the beginning of the story…’

Lilyth - Mission Day 1 (relative time)

Dain wasn’t idle while I was unconscious and went through the loot piles left in the place where the bodies of the Demon soldiers once were and assembled a nice store of emergency ration bars for us, as well as other items like grenades and gun mags. He was also able to find my satchel.

This reminded me of the Pendant, and in a panicked gesture, I reached for my chest.

To my relief, it was still there.

Thank fuck.

‘Everything okay?’ Dain asked, so, without taking it off, I pulled the amulet out from beneath my shirt.

‘I need it to survive down here. If I lose it, I’ll become a permanent resident.’

Dain replied with a nod and reached down to pick up one of the rifles that the soldiers had.

‘Do you know how to use it?’ I asked.

‘Y-yes,’ he answered. ‘It’s not the model I trained with in the Purgatory, but I imagine it is similar enough.’

Huh. Explains why some of the pile was spare rifle mags.

‘Putting one of those on?’ I asked, pointing to the suits of armour that lay discarded where the bodies of the Trueborn fell.

‘No,’ he shook his head. ‘You damaged them too much a-and if I die, I just go back upstairs.’

So, realising I would likely regret it, I conjured a tactical vest for him. Then again, the ration bars reduced the mana conservation stress on me.

‘So that you can carry the ammo and your share of rations,’ I explained, and he facepalmed.

‘Of course,’ he sighed. ‘I assumed you would just carry those in the satchel.’

That elicited a smile from me.

‘Yeah, makes sense given the circumstances. Me being able to just create items is a new development.’

‘Really?’ he asked. ‘It seems I missed a lot.’

I pointed at my horns with my magitek hand.

‘You have no idea.’

As we set out, I noticed a bunch of large rusty metal plates lying against one of the gravel pit walls. Some of them had head-sized holes inside of them.

Da fuck?

I pointed them out to Dain, but he had no idea what they were for.

‘Maybe plugging holes?’ he wondered. ‘But resources here should regenerate like in Purgatory, from what I’ve heard. Unless…’

He paused and grimaced.

‘Unless what?’ I pressed.

‘An unpleasant thought occurred to me. You could use those to seal a dugout with a person inside. They would then be crushed to death by the regenerating gravel.’

The mental image of that happening to me was…

I collapsed onto my knees and dry-heaved.

Aki - Now

‘So that’s how you learned about the “Sand Grave”?’ Nyxie asked in a very concerned voice.

‘We didn’t know it by that name then,’ Dain answered.

‘It was one of the subjects discussed with the people who gave me my new teeth,’ Lilyth said in a tone more appropriate to talking about the weather.

No wonder they wanted her alive for this, then. If people in Hell “respawn”, then subjecting someone to that is…

I lacked the words to describe how monstrous the torture/execution was. Especially for the Hellborn who are actually alive down there.

Fuck me.

Lilyth - Mission Day 1 (relative time)

‘Do you think my dad and brothers are somewhere out there?’ Dain asked, pointing at the distant lights of the city.

‘Probably not,’ I answered truthfully, taking a much-needed break between the nibbles on the ration bar. ‘There are… deeper levels of Hell.’

It was exceedingly difficult to eat those when you only had half of your teeth. For all it was worth, it felt as if some of them had grown back, but there was still a sizable void on the right side of my mouth.

Still, I had to eat something. Once the nausea mostly cleared, I began feeling hungrier than I’d felt in a while, so as we had made a bit of distance, we stopped for a breather by some rocks in the badlands we were traversing.

‘Are you sure?’ Dain asked.

‘Your family ran a kingdom based around slavery,’ I answered without cushioning the blow.

‘I know… I just guessed that since we were in Hell…’

‘I getcha. I’m not sure how this stuff works, but there are degrees of bad and…’

I told him about Kaidan and the other Damned cases I had learned about from Ere.

‘This is… a lot,’ he summed up.

‘Welcome to Hell,’ I laughed. ‘This place fucking sucks.’

‘Maybe, at least Nillar ended up here,’ Dain tried to find a silver lining. ‘He wasn’t such a bad guy. Relatively speaking. Did you know he was sweet on a slave girl when he was younger?

Oh. Oh no.

I had ambiguous feelings about Nillar, the middle of Herlicht’s three sons, as we didn’t interact much with him, before I killed him during the revolt. Still… the heartwarming anecdote made me feel nauseous again. Something must have shown on my face because Dain quickly added:

‘Oh, he didn’t force himself on her. As far as I know, at least. Father quickly found out about it, and the next day she was gone from the estate. Nillar was devastated.’

‘Gonna go with… “poor girl” on this one,’ I shook my head.

Dain didn’t respond to this, though I could see he was conflicted.

‘You know, my mom came down to see me a few times,’ he chose to change the subject. ‘She died when I was ten. I always remembered her as a kind soul and a source of warmth…’

‘The reality didn’t match the expectations?’

‘No,’ Dain shook his head mournfully. ‘I thought s… she would be p-proud of me. Or at least sad that I died. Instead, she was mostly interested in father and Piken, her precious baby boy.’

Ah yes, a baby boy so precious he was castrated, crucified and set on fire.

The fact that Nillar didn’t get mentioned wasn’t a point in favour of my “mother-in-law.”

‘I gather she was less than pleased with what had happened on Varlia.’

‘Yes,’ Dain said quietly. ‘And once she learned that I befriended you and died for you… she stopped coming down to see me. You would think she would have been happy that I survived and found someone who tried to make an honest man out of me…’

Tears began to well in his eyes. It was hard to see their colour in my [Darksight], but they definitely weren’t normal.

Come to think of it, how the fuck can Dain see?

It didn’t matter at the moment, so I walked up to Dain and hugged him.

‘Don’t worry,’ I said softly. ‘I am here for you. And for what it is worth, I am sorry I cost you another person.’

‘You didn’t,’ he shook his head. ‘At first, I had blamed you, but then… well… I had a lot of time to think about it, and after the initial shock and grief passed, I realised that I was being unfair to you. You were sent to Varlia against your will and then enslaved by my father. Blaming a slave for freeing herself… No. Just no. And thanks to you, I didn’t end up down here. Or worse. So, no. You didn’t cause me to lose my mother. She chose to remove herself when she somehow lost track of slavery being bad.’

Making me wonder why she ended up in Heaven, rather than down here with the rest of us. I guess being a spoiled Karen isn’t Hell-worthy.

I kept those thoughts to myself. Dain didn’t need my snark. Just me to be there.