Chapter 05.088

~~Day 150~~

~~David~~

Everyone was sleeping in the cave he’d built for them under the surface, below the soft ground of Navameere Fields. A tiny hole in the ceiling let in a trace of the amber light of the night sky, and enough air for them to breathe. He sat back against the wall and stared out at the girls while he stroked Pegasus’s back, taking extra time to rub where his wing met near the spine. The muscle was developing fast there, and Pegasus swished his spiked tail whenever someone rubbed the spot, settling his head on David’s lap.

Only Laoko was up. She sat nearby, looking at the girls, too, wearing her armor and idly checking each of her swords. Satisfied with the weapons, the tetrad set them aside and got to work on her ponytail, the longest hair in the group. She pulled the huge swath of black tendrils over her shoulder, undid the small bit of leather keeping the ponytail together, and idly combed her fingers through the thick strands. Demon hair, for those who had it, was less hair and more tendrils, an inch thick, black, with a smooth but leathery texture.

It was strange. Acelina was more the type to idly comb her hair and try and look pretty, except she had no hair, only four horns. Laoko had four enormous horns and more hair than was probably a good idea for a warrior. And there she sat, combing, cleaning, adjusting.

Caera had a bit of that. She’d tried to hide it, but there’d been a couple of times she’d worried about what she looked like, like when she’d lost her eye. The fact that Moriah had taken it with her sword? No big. Not looking sexy for David? That’d bothered her a bit. It was… had been cute.

“David,” Laoko said.

David gave his head a little shake. “Yes?”

“You are watching me.”

“Yeah. Sorry. Just…” He shrugged and let his eyes drift to the side. “Zoned out.”

“Zoned?” she asked, finished with her hair.

“I started thinking about other stuff.”

“About Caera.”

“Maybe.”

Laoko rolled her eyes. “You think about nothing else.”

“Excuse me for… nevermind.” Not worth it.

With a scrutinizing squint, Laoko crawled over toward him and sat beside him. Damn, she was tall. A ten-foot demoness with big horse hooves, no tail or wings, and four arms that could each rip him to pieces. And like other female tetrads, her nose was subtle, more flat against her face so she almost looked like she was wearing a full-face mask or something. A beautiful, alien-ish mask.

“You do not even argue with me anymore,” she said.

He looked up at her. “Yeah, I know.” Lifting his head was draining, let alone arguing.

“I miss arguing with you.”

He smiled, a little, and a tiny chuckle came out of nowhere. It felt good.

“Sorry.”

“Do not be sorry. Return to the man you used to be. I feel as if I could breathe on you and you would fall over, David.”

Wincing, he looked back down at the horse on his other side, and ran his fingers over and between the spikes on his neck. Pegasus was asleep, or near it.

“I will, eventually. I just need time.”

“Time is not a luxury we have, unmarked.”

He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. You can’t force me to recover faster, Laoko.”

Apparently, he’d issued a challenge, because the tetrad shifted around and knelt directly in front of him.

“I could do much to help you recover faster, David. I would happily spend every night with your length buried inside me, and your head between my breasts. It could even be slow, gentle, tender sex, if that is what you desire.”

“I don’t—”

“I could have every woman in this cave strip naked, and focus all their attention on you, David. We could create a sea of skin for you to lie upon. You would turn, lost in our breasts, and your cock would find a home in a new wet, hot, inviting slit every minute.”

“Laoko, it’s not—”

“I could be a bed for you. I would strip, lie back, and let you rest upon me. You could suckle on my breasts and softly fuck me until you have had many pleasant, quiet orgasms. Would that not make you feel better? Hours of simply being inside me, barely moving, lying upon my stomach while I rub your back.” She held up her four hands, proving she did indeed have four, each capable of monumental back rubs. “Slow, tame. Each orgasm would take time, my insides gripping and milking you over the hours while you lie somewhere between sleep and wakefulness upon my body.”

He stared at her and gulped.

She returned it with a warm smile, and less of the analyzing eyes that often accompanied it.

“I will happily do whatever you want, David. Anything at all, if it will help you recover. All the girls here would. Even Sazillia, who I am sure is hiding a volara’s sex drive under that warrior exterior. You need but ask, and even the angels would do what they could to make you happy. Especially the angels.”

Credit to Laoko, she got his mind off Caera for a minute.

“It’s not about sex, Laoko.”

“Would you prefer to watch, then? Jeskura and Moriah are strangely similar, are they not? Angry, volatile little women.” Little for her, maybe. “And both winged, too. Would you like to watch them rub their slits together? They would treat it like a battle, I am sure, the first to orgasm, the loser. A wrestling match. That would be a spectacle.”

Again, David couldn’t help but gulp.

“I’m serious, Laoko. It’s not about sex. I just need time, okay? I know I’m depressed and it’s fucking me up, but if we have to fight something, I’ll be fine.”

Laoko leaned toward him. A ten-foot-tall, curvy woman with an athletic physique, enormous breasts barely contained in a breastplate, inches from his face. His third gulp caught in his throat.

“We miss it,” she said.

“Miss it?”

“Yes, you fool. We miss it. I miss it. I miss the feeling of your little body between my legs, surprisingly firm. I miss the feel of your cock growing inside me and stretching me until I feel I am about to burst. I miss feeling your cum fight for room inside me until it fills my womb. I miss seeing your sweet, stupid little face twitch as you tremble in bliss, and your muscles shake as you pour heat into my depths. Tsila has yet to feel the way your cock can fit and stretch a woman’s insides, and Sazillia is drooling at the thought, no doubt. They wish to feel it, too.”

He couldn’t gulp any harder, and resigned himself to just staring at the gigantic woman.

“I miss the touch of your lips on my breasts,” she continued, “to say nothing of Acelina, who wants to feel your suckling kiss upon her nipples more than any of us.”

“Uh… yeah?”

Laoko’s old, manipulative, subtle, and obscenely sexy smile returned. “Acelina. She is not the first zotiva to have such fetishes, David. But she is the first I have known of to grow fond of a soul. The fact that she has become quite attached to you has only amplified her desire.”

“Attached?”

“Of course. We all see it. The spire mother would love to lie upon a mountain of silk on her back, and let you fuck her bosom, David. She wants you to massage her breasts until her milk soaks your length. She wants to feel you suckle and drink her until she climaxes, and then fuck her breasts until you have coated her in layers of thick white. She wants the others to join in, to hold her breasts and use them to massage your girth, and for the Las to kiss her nipples and lick her slit, all while you rub your length along her mounds and drown them in cum.”

“I uh… um…” He was blushing, hard. Inner vibration pulsed, and he got his hidden fingers around his aura before it bubbled out. “I mean, Acelina one time, did get a little… uh, dominant with me. Before you were in the group. Woke me up in the middle of the night and—”

“Oh yes. Do not mistake me. Acelina wants to dominate you, David, but not with whips or claws, like a volara might. She wants to see you reduced to a hypnotized fool, utterly entranced by her beauty and unable to resist her charms. I can imagine, some night in the future, she will try to seduce you, wrap her breasts around you, and make you hers. It will be her way to connect with you, or at least, attempt to do so. A connection she likely never found with Diogo or Zelandariel. I suspect the zotiva wars with herself internally frequently about how she feels about you, especially since she told us she has known Mia killed Zelandariel.”

David outright squirmed. “You’ve got us all figured out? Old tetrad spent all these months analyzing us?”

“I am old, David, far older than even I realize. And unlike most demons, I spent many years talking with demons, souls, and angels, learning about others. Do not underestimate me.”

Right. For all Laoko’s history as a leader of battle, she also had a history of befriending angels like Galon. The woman was diverse.

“I’ve never underestimated you,” he said. “You’ve always been at the top of my ‘be wary of these people’ list.”

Laoko’s smile grew, and she laughed and leaned in closer. Foreheads together, she gave his little nose a kiss; it was little, her head was almost twice as tall as his own.

“You know just what to say, young boy, to make a woman grow warm. I will make sure you are treated like a spoiled king the next time we touch.”

He forced himself to look away. “Not—”

“I know. I know. Not tonight.” She nodded and sat beside him again, gesturing out at the girls. “They want to respect your situation, but I am not exaggerating when I say they do desperately miss touching you, David, even without sex. Jeskura, for all her attitude, cares for you deeply. Daoka wears her care for you on her skin, sincere and genuine, and I suspect much of what pleases Acelina would please her as well, domination not required. The Las idolize you. Moriah cares for you, more than she wants to, and I know she craves eye contact, as all angels do. Tsila too, though with the gabriem, I am half convinced she merely thinks of you as a patient, and seeing her patient grow appeals to her. And then there is Sazillia, who respects your power. To a warrior like her, respect and sexual hunger go hand in hand.”

This was a level of analysis David hadn’t expected. Sure, Tsila probably knew all this stuff, but she’d have said it much more diplomatically. And, much as David respected Laoko, that was because he knew the woman was smart enough to be a great ruler, a forced to be reckoned with. This was a conversation he hadn’t seen coming.

“And you?”

She tilted her head and looked down at him. “What of me?”

“How do you feel about me?”

“I thought that would be obvious, you silly little boy.”

He frowned. “Well, it’s not. Half the time I think you like me. Half the time I think you’re going to usurp me.”

“I cannot do both?”

“I mean, I guess?”

She shrugged and traced a claw down his back. “You, you stupid, silly little boy, are too precious. I have seen you fight wars and lose a lover. I have seen you trip and stumble and succeed in the next step. You are delightful, and I feel Hell would be a worse place without you, David, for more reasons than this mission we embark upon. When the alien is defeated, I hope to see you often and hold you in my arms. I want to squeeze you between my thighs until you pop like a… watermelon, I believe is the word.”

He winced. Scary image.

“Love me and squeeze me and call me George?”

She tilted her head. “What?”

“Cuteness aggression. You think I’m cute and precious and it’s so overstimulating, you kinda get an urge to violently attack the thing you find cute.”

“Oh. Well, yes, I suppose that fits. I do sometimes wonder how delightful it would be to hold you in my arms, feel your cock filling me, before I bite your head off.”

He winced again. Scarier image.

“You can’t open your mouth far enough to—”

She opened her mouth, wide, revealing a mix of fangs and human-like teeth in an otherwise human-like mouth. Wide and wider again, until she’d practically unhinged her jaw, and her long serpent tongue came out by more than a few inches. Holy shit.

She fixed her jaw and grinned at him. “I suspect most of the girls have to resist the urge to bite you during sex.”

“Y-Yeah. Caera mentioned that.”

“Do not take it personally, and do not worry. It will not happen. Probably not.” Nodding, she rubbed his back with two hands, using her two arms from the same side. “I miss her, too.”

“You miss Caera?”

“Yes. Had I not lost my brood to the angels, she could have been my right hand. Tregeera are powerful, dextrous and stealthy. But Caera was more than that. She—” Laoko shook her head. “I am sorry. You know all too well.”

Sorry. The tetrad said sorry.

“Yeah, I do,” he said. “But… thanks, for saying it.”

Laoko smiled down at him and gestured out to the girls with her free hands. “Daoka is a curiosity, is she not? I wonder about her. She has a secret.”

“Secret? I mean, talking—”

“We all know she is capable of speaking Estian, and shares it only with Jeskura—and perhaps you. What I wonder is why Tacitus kept her caged? What would a bailiff of Death’s Grip want for, that a single riiva could give him? Do you know?”

“No idea. I never asked.”

“And there was that time in the Grave Valley where she wished to be alone with a scrying pool. Did you ever learn the reason?”

“Nope. Her business.”

Laoko tapped her chin and then a horn. “She is the sweetest demon I have ever known. Were this the surface world, she would happily be your demure wife, spending her days doing nothing but looking for ways to make you happier.”

“What about Jeskura?”

“Jeskura would be her wife. You would be her husband. Or pet? Husband pet.”

David laughed. Quietly so he didn’t wake the others, but a nice, proper laugh, and it felt glorious. He sighed into Laoko’s back rubs and leaned into her when she used her claws to scratch.

“Thanks,” he said, “for making me feel my sex drive again. I miss it, too.”

“You are most welcome, little boy. And please, when you do feel like indulging in our bodies again, tell us. We will happily make all your dreams come true. And you know very well Caera would want you to move on.”

Hearing that hurt more than he’d thought it would. Laoko was right, sure, but Laoko wasn’t the sort of woman to have these sorts of conversations. Manipulate, scheme, and control, that was Laoko. Not this. Not being… empathetic.

But the tetrad leaned down over him and kissed his forehead. He looked up at her, and froze as she leaned in deeper and put her lips to his.

She smiled into the kiss, her red eyes, black sclera and pupils, delving deep into him. No blinking. Her tongue found his lips, tasted them, and she nodded as she pulled away, crawled back to her side of the cave, and sat down like nothing had happened.

David looked down at Pegasus’s head still in his lap, and petted the horse’s neck. Either Laoko was manipulating him, or being sincere, or both. And in her mind, she was probably thinking: Can’t I do both?

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

~~Day 151~~

He woke to someone curled up at his side. And for just a fleeting second, he thought it was Caera. But each morning, that fleeting moment grew shorter and shorter. How long until it didn’t happen at all?

Daoka. She’d taken off her armor, and was facing him, lying beside him. More than just facing him, she was up against him, her breasts against his side while he slept on his back. The hard ground didn’t bother her pinned shoulder at all, and she smiled and chirped at him as she woke up, too. Rock wasn’t a fun sleeping surface, but honestly, after all these months sleeping on it, he wasn’t sure he missed his bed.

Nah, he did. Maybe he’d take Laoko up on that bed offer sometime.

On his other side was Jeskura, and the gargoyle sat up with a stretch of her wings. Naked, too. He’d gone to sleep while they were in armor. Maybe they’d wanted to cuddle him properly while he slept? Or maybe Laoko was right, and they missed the skin-on-skin contact.

It wasn’t sexual. Well, maybe a little. But the two demons weren’t cuddling him looking for sex, and both tightened their grips around his waist as they woke up. Maybe they were filling in for Caera on purpose? Like, maybe they didn’t know what to do to help him, and this was all they could think of? Maybe they thought he wanted to wake up to the feel of a warm body snuggled up to him, even if it wasn’t Caera?

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” Jeskura said, and leaned over and gave him a kiss.

Daoka chirped at him, gave him the same kiss, gave her lover a drive-by kiss, and both ladies got to work putting their armor back on.

David watched. It’d only been a couple of weeks since the battle, and his sex drive warred against the cold ache in his gut. But it was nice to feel a kernel of that warmth again as he watched the two ladies get dressed, the ones who’d taken his virginity. Jeskura, nearly seven feet tall, lean, with breasts surprisingly large considering her athletic frame. And Daoka, busty, curvy, voluptuous, yet somehow still had some of that athletic physique all demons had.

Jes looked back over her shoulder at him, grinned, wagged her tail at him, and got dressed without saying a word.

Acelina got up, spent time with the Las, adjusting their armor, and spent a little time with Pegasus too, checking his hooves and wings. She spared an eyeless glance for David, but whatever she had on her mind, she kept it to herself.

“So far so good,” Sazillia said. Up on her clawed feet, she did some stretches; completely unnecessary, but probably something she picked up watching scrying pools. “We’re getting closer to the River Styx than I’d like, but I suppose Morgana is the bigger threat.”

“Perhaps,” Laoko said, standing up with her fellow tetrad. “The hellbeasts of the sea could kill us all, easily.”

Sazillia shook her head. “Not with David here and his magic.”

David held up a hand. “Playing music takes time. I can’t do it instantly. If we get ambushed, I need you girls to save me, not the other way around.”

Khazeer’s bailiff sighed and gave her tail a flick. “And you still can’t transform again?”

“I’m trying. It’s not working.”

“Think you’ll be able to transform in the future when it’s convenient?”

Head tilted, David squinted up at the tetrad as Pegasus nudged against his arm. “What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked, using Pegasus’s neck to help him stand up. The horse was getting bigger every day.

“Nothing,” Sazillia said. “But it would be strangely convenient if you could transform when it was needed, and only then.”

“I told you, Sazillia. Far as I can tell, the transforming thing isn’t something I can just do. It happens when I feel it. After what happened last time, let’s hope it never happens again, okay?”

Sazillia met his gaze without so much as a blink. “I wonder. If you truly are part archangel yourself, and your body responds to your emotions, if others die—”

David took a step toward her. And for all her courage and resilience, the tetrad took a quick step back.

“If it comes to that, then maybe something will happen,” he said. “I don’t know. Okay? I don’t fucking know. But we’re not going to operate under the pretense I can use this strange ability at all. Because I can’t.” He held out his hand to his side and told it to grow. Nothing.

“I was just thinking out loud,” Sazillia said, shrugging. “I would be a fool to not consider your power, David. And you would be a fool to not wonder how to harness it.”

“I’m thinking, I’m thinking. But if something like… last time, has to happen again? No. We’ll get to False Gate without it.”

Sazillia nodded, almost a bow, and found her old smile again. “As you wish.”

David nodded, did a slow turn to check on all the girls — everyone was fine — and held up his hands. A simple tune to open the cave ceiling and guide them back out into the Navameere Fields.

They couldn’t see the River Styx yet, not with a million sharp trees blocking them, but at least they had a road to follow. No more chopping down foliage like explorers working through a jungle. Instead, every step was black sand, shifting under their claws and hooves, and black scarabs rose to meet their toes, biting and clawing.

It wasn’t long before David was on Pegasus’s back again. Was he bigger than yesterday? A little? Hard to tell from day to day, but Pegasus’s appetite was endless. How big would he get?

And riding him wasn’t so bad. Sure, David had to find a very specific spot to sit, and leaning forward was still a problem, testicles in the way and all that. But for now, he could sit mostly comfortably and avoid the nibbling teeth and scratching claws of the dozens of large bugs at their feet.

“I’m not an arachnophobe,” he said, looking down at the black sand and the scurrying creatures dying under Pegasus’s hooves. “But this is gross.” Despite the size of the group, most of the bugs came for Pegasus. For him. Maybe they could smell him?

Pegasus whined, stomped his hooves, and bugs crunched and splattered under the mount’s growing weight. A centipede-like creature worked its way up Pegasus’s leg, turning his whine into a loud whinny. But Acelina was at his side in a moment, snatched the creature away, threw it down, and stomped it. Hooves were the weapon of choice in this land.

A group of souls ran by, bleeding from a thousand cuts, with random numbers on their foreheads. Weaving between bushes and trees of black blades, the humans stopped and stared at David’s group. And screamed. Before David could get a word out, they turned and bolted, disappearing into the jungle of black death.

“Were they running from something?” David asked.

“Hellbeasts,” Sazillia said. “The demons stick to the main roads and work to keep them clean of the growths. The hellbeasts—” She hissed and swatted at a large bug under her feet’s claws. “These creatures are everywhere. They will gnaw those damned souls to death, if they don’t kill themselves on the blades.” By blades, she meant the millions of sharp edges each plant had, every step in the whole damn province a risk that made the Death’s Grip tunnels and its bloodgrip vines look gentle.

“Which province is the worst?” David asked. “In all of Hell, which province is the most horrible, screwed-up place to be?”

“False Gate,” Moriah said without hesitation. “To see a mockery of the surface world in every step? To think every wall, every door, a possible escape, only to find cruel jokes and a crueler death within? I can think of little worse. Hope used as torture.”

Sazillia scoffed and gestured to the black forest beside her as she walked past. A couple of souls were in there, leaning over branches and sharp grass, skin sliced open to the bone. They’d bled to death before reaching the small path. Navameere Fields didn’t seem so bad when it’d been described to him. Seeing it in person, David had to wonder if it was the worst place of all.

“The provinces are cruel,” Laoko said. “But I wonder about the Forgotten Place most of all.”

Jeskura raised a claw. “Yeah, I wonder what it’s like there. There must be some awful shit there, right? Center of Hell. We even know if portals open there?”

“The mouth of Hell,” Tsila said, “has been seen occasionally in the black clouds over the Forgotten Place. I know of no pattern for what souls get dropped where, but I can only surmise the most cruel of souls are put there.”

David raised a finger, mirroring Jes. “Dante’s Inferno talks about the circles of Hell. Not exactly the same, but the story has nine circles of Hell, each with subcategories and stuff. The ninth circle, the middle and deepest circle, is the worst. It’s a frozen wasteland, where traitors are kept furthest from… everything. They’re stuck, frozen, unable to do anything except suffer. In the middle, there’s Satan, trapped halfway in ice with other traitors, and he’s torturing three specific traitors for all eternity. Brutus, and uh…. Longinus, I think. Two dudes who were part of the betrayal against Julias Caesar. And, Judas, for betraying Christ.” David stared down at Pegasus’s back, eyebrows furrowed until they ached. Difficult to delve into his university brain to dig that up. A thousand lifetimes ago.

“A glimpse of our reality?” Acelina asked from the back of the group, the four Las with her. “You said the surface world is affected by the afterlife, and perhaps vice versa.”

“Maybe,” David said. “The real name for the Forgotten Place is Frozen Heart. So, I mean… maybe damned souls with really high numbers are actually sent there, and die very, very slow deaths to freezing? Or something?”

It was a nasty image. Freezing to death on the surface world was a shitty way to go, but certainly not the worst. In Hell? It’d probably take years and be horrifically painful. He could picture it, people trapped in horrible positions, bones broken, bodies half encased in ice while hellbeasts or maybe Lucifer himself gnawed on their flesh.

Was that worse than dying from a thousand paper cuts, like here in Navameere Fields? A death here looked horrific, but it’d be over relatively quickly, compared to only God knew how long dying while frozen in the afterlife. If a soul held still and wasn’t wounded, they could supposedly lasts months, even years, without food.

The small path between the black forest and grass opened up, the landscape broken by empty sections in the shadow of enormous rocks.

And a small group of demons sat in the path, a shark-dinosaur guy, a brute, and a tiger. They were up on their feet in an instant, and charged the group, violence auras igniting like a match to gasoline. Laoko and Sazillia drew their weapons.

David opened his mouth, and closed it.

The two tetrads cut the large demons down, and David looked away. Something touched his bare leg, and he almost jumped off Pegasus. Daoka looked at him from his side, eyeless, her hand on his knee, and tilted her head as she chirped something. No translation needed.

“Better this way,” he said, and gestured to the two tetrads and the three dead demons. Quick work. Sazillia was good. “They’d probably just attack us when our guard was down.”

Daoka frowned at him, but it faded away as she stroked his leg a few more times and joined Moriah near the front.

“David,” Jes said from his other side. “You and Dao have a talk about something?”

“Yeah. She didn’t tell you?”

“Nope.” Jes shrugged, unfazed.

“It’s… It’s nothing.”

“Not nothing, David. Whatever she told you, it’s important to her.”

Don’t become mean. Don’t become not nice. Don’t become like Greg. That’s what Dao had asked him, before Caera died.

He sighed, and the group walked on past.

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

“The fuck,” Jeskura asked, “is this?”

It was obvious what it was. A statue. A really big fucking statue forged out of black stone mixed with something bronze, growing out of the ground.

An angel, on his knees. Angel men were around seven feet tall, but the statue embellished, making the angel twice as big. No armor. Whoever the dude was, there wasn’t any way to tell if they were a gabriem, rapholem, or mikalim.

A child of the Old Ones was in the angel’s arms, dying on the ground, the statue capturing her final moments like a scene from a play, one of her hands touching the angel’s face. And considering the statue had made the angel twice as tall as reality, the child of the Old Ones was fucking massive.

David did a double-take at the statue, looking between them and Sazillia and Laoko. Whoever the long-dead woman was, she had the same flat-ish, beautiful, mask-like face as them, but four eyes, two over the other regular two. Bald, but with six giant horns. Her hands and feet didn’t just have claws, but heavy-duty claws, the kind you found on a lizard or dinosaur. No tail, though, which was a first. Demons with clawed feet always had tails, to go with their usually slightly-forward posture.

The strangest part was the six extra arms coming out of her back. Not two extra arms coming out of her sides, like Sazillia and Laoko, fujara and bolstara tetrads. This child of the Old Ones had six arms sticking out along her spine, and each ended with a solid, single, long, sharp claw, not hands.

He’d seen some children of the Old One statues like her, when they’d found clusters of the statues, but this statue spared no expense on the details. Unlike those statues, this child wasn’t naked, wearing slabs of armor on various body parts.

“She’s like… half spider,” David said. “Sorta. A woman with spider elements? Glad again not to be an arachnophobe.”

“I’ve seen similar statues,” Sazillia said, circling it and the wide, circular base of blackstone it was perched on. “They always show this, an angel, weeping over a dying child of the Old Ones.”

“As have we,” Moriah said. “Only here, in Navameere Fields. The statues are mentioned in our books, but we have long lost the ability to read the ancient language.”

David facepalmed. “And you didn’t think that maybe I’d love to read it?”

Everyone shrugged. Figured.

David guided Pegasus toward the statue. Or, tried. How did you steer a horse without reins or spurs? He didn’t want to use spurs, and making reins would take some finagling. Now he regretted not asking Tatiana for something to help with Pegasus.

But Acelina walked up to the statue, clicked at Pegasus, and the winged horse joined her.

“Thank you,” David said to her, and hopped down.

The circular platform, a thin layer of solid blackstone, was merged into the ground. If David wanted, he could play a tune and bend and manipulate the wonderful work of art. Easier to ask a painting student to ruin the Mona Lisa. It took absurd finesse to capture the weakening face of the demon, and the stern but despairing look of the angel. Maybe in another hundred years, David could play music that specific, that fine, and craft something that lifelike.

Sure enough, on the platform in front of the two figures, some amber runes glowed, begging to be read like the plaque below a work of art in a museum.

“So much history,” David said, “and Hell herself grows monuments to them. Can you fucking imagine what Earth would look like if our planet was literally sentient and did shit like this?”

Caera said nothing.

David clenched his eyes shut, let the moment pass, and read the runes.

“Oh shit,” he said.

“David?” Moriah asked.

He took a breath. “Navameere, and his love, Desiderata. Their last moments before Lucifer’s war.”

The demons gathered around and stared at the huge statue. The angels stepped up onto the platform and touched their ancient kin with wing and palm, mouths dropped.

“This is Navameere?” Tsila asked.

“Was,” Moriah said. “They died during the First War, didn’t they? Or, he.” She gestured to the statue with a wing.

The gabriem nodded. “Yes, supposedly. There is no mention of him or his death in any book, and I know of no angel who has ever known him. This is forgotten history.”

David nodded. “Navameere Fields. You said these statues are around?”

“Many,” Moriah said, and she looked at Sazillia.

“Not like I’ve explored the whole province,” the tetrad said. “But I’ve made several strikes into it, and I’ve run into a few copies of this statue. Always the same thing, more or less. A male angel holding a dying child of the Old Ones, a woman.” Like a kid at an amusement park, Sazillia climbed the statue of the demon much bigger than her, sat on her, and gestured down at the extra arms sticking out from under her back. “Always the same child of the Old Ones, too. Same six extra, very pointy arms.”

David squatted down over the runes. “And no one has ever met a child of the Old Ones?”

“They died out,” Laoko said, “thousands of years ago. What few were left died in the Spires War. I have seen some, but not this breed. And I knew none of them. As for Vinicius, the ravager, everyone avoided him and the wrath he brought with the rider at his side. Children of the Old Ones are engines of destruction that not even angels can defeat.”

Moriah snorted but didn’t retort either. She agreed. And that was a scary thought.

Hopefully Mia and Vinicius were working well together.

David took a step back and looked around. The spire in the distance was out of sight, hidden by the rolling hills and giant forests of black blades. His sixth sense couldn’t feel demons, but it could feel the terrain, and there was something underneath the statue. A vein? A swirling vein of blackstone as thick as a small river, spiraling down into the ground, far below into the colossal caverns that peppered the depths everywhere in Hell.

Abaddon was down there, somewhere. David had been lucky, having marched over the Red Pits without having to deal with the Old One Apollyon, despite Azazel’s warning. And with Astaroth and Belial being trapped in the Scar with Azazel, David now had four Old Ones in his shadow. Tthe fifth, Abaddon, was beneath him, maybe aware of him, maybe not.

“Child of Abaddon?” David asked, gesturing to the statue.

Moriah shook her head. “Belor was a child of Abaddon.”

“Belor have a connection to this province, then?”

“Perhaps. The parent of a child of the Old Ones tells us from which spire they were born. Belor was born in the Navameere Fields. Laoko?”

The tetrad shrugged. “Again, I never spoke with a child of the Old Ones. Or at least, I cannot remember doing so. But I do not think they felt any connection to their supposed fathers. And I imagine, vice versa.”

David poked the statue woman’s clawed feet. “We know what breed this is, then?”

“A child of Apollyon,” Laoko said. “I believe. A… zetasia, was the name of their breed, I believe.” Laoko joined him and squatted by the colossal statue. “Azazel said, Apollyon has forever been at war with Abaddon.”

“Yeah,” David said. “But, like, you said, nothing really bound the children to their parents So, more like, a child of the Old Ones was a child’s father, the spire was the mother, and the child immediately just says ‘fuck off’ to Mom and Dad once they’re out?”

Tsila stepped up and gave her wings a flap. “Perhaps. But I imagine at the beginning, it was more that the Old Ones — and their spire counterparts — were factories, pumping out the first demons by the droves, to be fodder in the First War. After birth, they went where they needed to.”

David shivered. Born, just to be thrown into a meat grinder? And according to the weird runes they’d found in the past, the children all felt entitled to power, to the point they slaughtered each other for it.

“Lucifer created the spires and the Old Ones,” David said, slowly walking around the statue. “He, it, they, did all that after he was damned to Hell, right? Trapped down here. I have to wonder how much of what he did was him trying to… to copy what God did.”

Sazillia sat on the statue’s base, getting comfortable. “Lucifer was copying God?”

David nodded. “It almost seems like Lucifer was trying to copy what God had done. Sorta, you know? Nine spires. Nine Heavenly Islands. You said there were twenty-seven council angels, Moriah? Three for each island? Lucifer created an Old One for each spire, and attached them. I know spires aren’t fully made of Hell, because I’d be able to bend them to my music if they were. They’re like… half… Hell? I don’t know. It’s like Lucifer created stuff, tried to be a creator like God, and didn’t exactly succeed.”

“And demons?” Jeskura asked, hopping up onto Navameere’s back and standing on his head. “We’re just Lucifer’s failed angels? That’s the comparison, right? Heavenly Islands and Spires. Council angels and Old Ones. Angels and demons…”

Daoka clicked once, head aimed down, and every demon and angel went silent. It wasn’t like they hadn’t all thought about it before, and now David put it all into a succinct definition that really made all the girls — save Tsila and Moriah — probably feel like shit. Failed creations. Even Laoko and Sazillia didn’t look too happy.

“Jes,” David said. “That’s bullshit.”

“Hey, I’m not going to sit here and feel sorry for myself,” Jes lied, straddling Navameere’s head. “But it’s true, isn’t it? Before Lucifer was damned, the only thing in Hell was Hell herself, and hellbeasts.” With a flare of her demon wings, she gestured to Pegasus.

Right on cue, Pegasus trotted up to David’s side and pushed his head into him, expecting head-pats. David obliged.

“And me,” David said, “whatever that is.”

“A child of Lucifer,” Laoko said. “Is it not obvious?”

David rolled his eyes. It was an easy conclusion to come to, and it’d explain a lot of things, but not everything.

“Come,” Acelina said. “We linger.”

“I know,” David said. “But this might be more important than we realize, you know? Navameere Fields. We should figure out what’s going on. Or what had been going on.”

“And pause the journey?” The spire mother came to Pegasus’s side and stroked the horse’s wings. “You wish to defeat the alien. We must reach False Gate and the Forgotten Place to do that. Is that not what we believe?”

Sazillia waved her tail. “You told me the only reason you believe that is because the woman who saved your life David, the rider’s counterpart, told you so, right?”

“Basically,” David said.

“And you believe her?”

“Considering Heaven and the rider and the aliens are trying to stop me? Yeah, I kinda do.”

Eyes rolling, Sazillia joined Acelina, ready to leave. “Naïve, unmarked. Everyone uses everyone.”

“I’m hoping I’m being ‘used’ to save the universe. That’s a selfishness I can get behind.”

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

As they approached the River Styx, the River Styx came to them. Black sand as far as the eye could see, with a softer texture than the sandy ground of the Navameere Fields. Colossal white bones stuck up from the sand, some in the shape of rib cages, the kind that’d fit a blue whale. Giant, empty crab claws. Big black spikes jutting out from spinal cords. Hundreds of sharp shards that must have come off broken shells.

And something out of the Red Sea came for them. It’d looked like a big log at first, just one of the huge black trees that dotted the Navameere Fields. It was covered in corpses, some skeletons, some not, and each had a spike rammed through their stomach, spikes that stuck out from the giant log. The log had been decorated in the dead.

Whatever it was, the log shrieked, ear-splitting thunder, and David clutched his ears as he stepped back.

An alligator with a beak. That was the easiest way his brain could wrap his mind around it. A giant alligator with a beak, long and nasty and with a harsh point. It sprinted out of the shore straight toward them, colossal claws ripping up the sand and ground below. The nearby rib cage must have belonged to the same species.

And a hundred little creatures stormed up the beach with it, each shrieking, high-pitched, like nails on chalkboard. Some jumped off the giant alligator’s back; they were the ones hooking corpses to its many body spikes. Some dashed out from the water. Some climbed up from the sand, nasty creatures like some sort of aquatic porcupine. No fear, no hesitation, the swarm of creatures rushed David and the crew.

A group of damned souls would have been fodder for these monsters. But David summoned his armor and staff, the angels did the same, and the battle began. Acelina stayed in the back with Pegasus and the Las, but the strange creatures came up from behind them too. Not many, and Acelina cut each in half with a swing of her axe. Even the Las cut through the hellbeasts without much trouble. But the creatures didn’t so much as pause, and swarmed.

The rest of the girls cleaved through dozens of the creatures, scattering their limbs and blood over the beach, and Moriah launched a golden arc of energy from her sword at the greater beast coming for them. It crashed against the giant creature and sent it back a meter, but it roared with rage and resumed the charge, bleeding from a small wound on its head.

Moriah fell upon it. Without having to worry about angels hunting them down, assuming Keziah was right and hadn’t lied to them, Moriah and Tsila were both free to unleash. Moriah landed on its flat skull and sank her blade into it, but the blade didn’t go deep enough to kill. It screamed, swinging its head from side to side, a different sound from the other creatures, deep and rumbling. The red water vibrated around its still submerged tail.

Tsila launched an arrow down its gullet, and the creature’s roar morphed into a gargled mess and a howl of agony.

David played a song and summoned a spike up underneath the hellbeast’s gut. The blackstone shot straight up into its skin, and broke. David tried again, another spike up into the monster’s jaw from beneath. Same thing. The blackstone spike crumbled away and didn’t pierce.

“Not enough blackstone in this area!” David yelled. “Too soft! And the creature’s hide is too thick!”

Sazillia, spinning like a dancer, swung low, cleaving through three of the little creatures. “All that power and you can’t even use it, unmarked?”

David ground his teeth, reached deep, found heavier strings, and played louder. He could summon a bolt of lightning, but that might attract angel attention. There weren’t any lava veins below, unless he plucked from the guts of Hell, but that’d take a loud song.

Laoko rushed forward, cleaved through a couple of creatures with her four swords, and took a swing at the giant alligator’s beak. Her sword bounced off, but aera swords weren’t blunt like meera, and the bronze blade took a chunk of the beak with it. All it did was piss the creature off.

But the tetrad was smart. She’d fought this thing before. It snapped down at her, beak bigger than her entire body, and she’d already stepped to the side and brought the sword down on its foot. Again, the sword couldn’t get through, the alligator’s skin absurdly strong. All the while, Moriah was on its head, trying to sink her blade deeper into the skull and failing.

“Hellfire?” David yelled.

Sazillia shook her head. “Won’t kill a cryllis.”

“Then how the fuck do we kill it?”

“We don’t! Demons avoid the shore, like I said! Like we all said!” Laughing all the while, Sazillia charged the alligator, the ‘cryllis’, and brought her swords down on its other hand, each blade pointed down, reverse grip.

The creature snapped at her, but she climbed its arm, using her swords like picks, and got onto its shoulder. It spun, titanic body tearing the ground, and David and the girls threw themselves to their stomachs and knees as the tail swung overhead. Which meant more of the little creatures were free to swarm them, too short to get hit by the monumental beast.

“Back to the forest!” David yelled.

“It’ll chase us!” Sazillia yelled.

“I got a plan!”

Back to the forest. The alligator spun around several times, so massive that each twist and turn and bellow vibrated the sand and red water, almost boiling it. Moriah stayed behind as Laoko and Sazillia gave up the attack, dashing clear and running past David and the others. Tsila, Jes, and Dao followed, and Acelina, Pegasus, and the Las were already at the treeline.

Moriah came last, abandoning the creature’s head and flying high out of reach of its snapping beak. And when the alligator — cryllis — gave up on her, it turned toward the forest and rushed David, small trails of blood leaking down over its flat head, onto the sand, and over the corpses of dozens of its little creature partners. It didn’t care.

“The forest cannot hurt it,” Sazillia said. “It will smash through the blades of Navameere Fields.”

“Tsila gave me an idea,” David said. He stood his ground at the forest edge and gestured the girls back. “Get down.”

“David?” Jes asked. “Are you sure?”

“Yes. Get down.”

Jes shrugged, and she and Daoka threw themselves onto their stomachs. The Las did the same, and Acelina guided Pegasus down, too. Sazillia didn’t look convinced, glaring at him, but Laoko grabbed her and brought her down to the ground with her. Tsila flew above, scanning. The area was clear.

The cryllis came closer and closer, mouth open, slivers of pink and soft flesh exposed within, blood too from when Tsila had loosed an arrow into its mouth.

David played a tune and summoned the trees.

Sharp, harsh trees grew over everyone’s heads and around David, and snapped forward as if they had a life of their own. No flowing vines. No bending, curving roots. It was all harsh, jagged edges, and barbarous points. A dozen giant branches grew straight out from the forest and directly into the open mouth of the titanic creature.

The cryllis didn’t even try to stop. It didn’t know what was happening. Its enormous weight drove it straight into the massive branches aimed forward, like spears with ends braced against the ground, ready to stab the oncoming cavalry charge.

David forced himself to keep his eyes open as the hellbeast’s momentum slowed, and its insides ripped apart as Navameere Fields and its blades shredded the monster’s throat and guts. Its voice stopped, and blood gushed out from the pink insides. It twisted side to side, only making things worse.

It fell, vomited a torrent of blood, and died, skewered through the mouth on a dozen thick, long branches.

“That,” Sazillia said, getting back up and standing by the gargantuan beak, “was impressive! It is rare to kill a cryllis! It often takes hundreds of demons.”

“Indeed,” Laoko said, stabbing one of the smaller creatures that ran up to them. No thought for self-preservation, the hellbeasts only had one goal: kill and eat.

“I gotta say,” Jes said, climbing onto its beak, “Sazillia’s got a point. This was impressive, David.”

“Thanks, I guess.” Hard to find joy in killing a creature, even a creature specifically designed to hunt and kill souls. “I might have been able to kill it more normally, but I’d have had to play big songs. At this point, I feel like any loud song will bring the alien right to us.”

“Yes,” Moriah said, hovering over the creature with Tsila. “Which means, we have a problem.”

“Problem?”

Daoka chirped a few times and gestured at the monster.

“Daoka is correct,” Laoko said. “The River Styx is filled with creatures such as this, some larger and more powerful. They stay near the shore, feasting upon souls who seek to escape the terrors of the provinces.” She gestured out to both sides with her four arms, left and right along the black sand shoreline. “This beach is the same across all of Hell, and it is always the same, filled with the most deadly hellbeasts Hell offers.”

David sighed, rubbed his face, and peeked around the giant corpse. “Which means… walking the shoreline isn’t an option.”

“An option,” Sazillia said, “but not a good one, assuming you want to avoid risking your neck — and ours — every day.”

“Fuck. And the corpses?” David asked. The enormous monster was literally covered in corpses, its body a monument to a few hundred murders.

“Some hellbeasts work together,” Laoko said, “here on the shoreline. Small creatures worship the larger creatures and adorn them.”

“Worship? Sounds like intelligence.”

Laoko shrugged. “Pegasus is intelligent, is he not?”

David turned and faced Pegasus. Pegasus matched his look, trotted up to him, and pressed his shoulder against David’s chest. Message received, David hugged his horse, hooking his arms around the growing creature’s shoulders and neck.

“Alright,” David said. “Then I guess… we head back into Navameere Fields. I—what the fuck is that?” He pointed out to the Red Sea.

The joys of Hell being flat meant, if you had a clear line of sight, there was no horizon. And if you squinted hard enough, you could see a lot of shit. In the center of the Red Sea — or surrounded by the River Styx, however you wanted to think about it — was the Forgotten Place, an island covered by dark clouds and thunderstorms that reached down to the ground, hiding the island from view. Left of it — from David’s viewpoint — was the shoreline of False Gate, connecting to the Navameere Fields. Just one more province to go and they’d reach the Unholy Lands, and have to figure out how to cross the sea.

There was something in the sea. Something red, the same color as the water. This far, it looked like a line, something long and tall atop the red of the River Styx.

Moriah flew high, peered into the distance, and returned. “I… do not know. I could investigate? It will take me at least a day, flying as fast as possible, to reach it.”

“Don’t,” David said. “Keziah said the angels aren’t around here, but they’re around the Forgotten Place and False Gate. Not worth the risk.”

“Then we walk,” Laoko said, and gestured back to the black forest.

David groaned, climbed onto Pegasus’s back again, and followed. Demons hated long-distance cardio, but their skin could handle the black blades of the Navameere Fields. One wrong step, and he’d fall into a bush and come out a bundle of bleeding ribbons.

Mia was probably in False Gate already; she only had to get through the Black Valley and Angel’s Spine to reach it, a far shorter trip than his. Maybe she’d already found a way across the River Styx?

He was going to hug her to death if he ever saw her again.

When, David. Not if. When.

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

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

~~Day 146~~

~~Mia~~

The ground ripped open. Mia grabbed the strings and silenced them, but it wasn’t enough. The song came from underneath and tore the ground apart, scattering ruins and black sand dunes into splitting craters.

“Mia!?” Julisa yelled.

“It’s Molech!”

The group gathered around, circling Mia, and she squeezed the invisible strings tight, blocking the song in her vicinity. But the thunderstorm of vibration permeated through the ground and out through the area until the red water behind them boiled.

The alien didn’t create the crater this time. An Old One did. A great split cut across the ground, from shore back into the province, and exposed the guts of Hell. Rock, lava, amber veins that shattered and spilled their burning, glowing, bleeding contents into the depths of blackstone and hellfire. A canyon opened before their eyes, and they stared, frozen, as a dragon rose from the dark. Slowly at first, meter after meter of colossal might climbing out from its prison.

“I have waited,” the multi-armed, serpentine dragon said, “for billions of years. I have fought against the bonds that hold me. I have fought against stone with claw and teeth that surround me! Did you think I would not find you? That I could not reach you here? That I did not hear every song you played?” The great dragon slammed his claws into the earth in front of him, a good couple hundred meters away from Mia and the group, but to a monster this large, with only half its body emerging from the canyon, that distance was nothing.

There were no bonds? Whatever Molech was talking about, Mia couldn’t see it.

“Long before I knew of you,” the Old One continued, “I fought to free myself. I fought to reach the Frozen Heart of Hell! I saw an opportunity in you, unmarked. With Mother Hell’s song, I would be free, and no longer confined to the depths of her bowels! But you are a skulking creature, unmarked. You broke into my spire and freed my prisoner. You found the runes of the great bridge and escaped! Enough!” Verbose as ever, the dragon brought out a second pair of arms and slammed them against the canyon walls and flared his many wings, blocking out the sky.

Mia sucked in a shaky breath, squeezed her staff, and gestured everyone back. They did, but Cerberus stayed at her side, back hunched, teeth bared. He wasn’t even a rat compared to the size of Molech. Not even a mouse. Not even an ant.

“Guys,” Mia said. “There’s no way the angels don’t see this, right?”

“Yes,” Azreal said. “They will come. No matter the circumstances, all angels know the Old Ones must be defeated.”

Noah shook his head. “But they do not have a standing order to kill an Old One. They do for Mia. I… do not know what will happen.”

“Belor,” Mia said. “Any advice on how to deal with this?”

Belor kept his hard glare aimed at the colossal dragon, muscles tight, as if he could fight the giant coming their way. Slowly, he shook his head.

“I didn’t know,” he said. “Molech had always made it seem like… he needed me, to reach the Forgotten Place. I didn’t know he’d been trying to reach it himself long before I was spire ruler. I… didn’t know.”

Two weeks. Two weeks, Belor had been with the group, arguing with Vin, flirting with Mia, lamenting his broken province, and healing. Not once had he ever sounded so defeated. Molech had outsmarted him.

Well, shit.

“Mia,” Noah said. “There is no chance the angel battalions will not guess what is happening here. They will come for you, if not Molech.”

“You’re right, you’re right. Okay. Noah, Yosepha, get geared up and get high. Harass Molech if you see an opportunity to distract him. Do. Not. Die. Azreal, stay close and guard me.”

“Plan?” Kas asked, crouched behind her.

“I try and bury him like I did Asmodeus.”

Romakus shook his head. “You said yourself the alien is finding you faster, Mia. If you play loud, and we’ll have the invaders to deal with, right?”

“And we’ll have angels here in minutes. They’ll deal with the alien. Right?”

Azreal and Noah traded glances, nodded, and summoned their gear, shredding their leather disguises. Yosepha did the same, and in perfect sync, the two mikalim took to the skies.

Romakus took a step, flared his wings, and for just a tiny second, Mia thought maybe the demon was going to fly after his girlfriend. For a tinier second, he even looked sad she was gone.

“On your guard!” Julisa yelled.

Something writhing and flowing poured over the ground, crawling up from the depths of Molech’s canyon. Bodies. And more than a few of them had black metal on their forms, or black swords in hand. Betrayers. Thousands of them.

All that time sneaking past these fuckers, and here they were, following Mia all along from underneath.

Mia raised her staff. “I’ll do all I can to stop Molech. Maybe I can bury him, but until those other angels show up, let’s stay on the defensive. If I get the opportunity, I’ll try the bridge song.”

Vin looked back and gave her something he rarely did: an affirming nod.

In a single minute, things shifted from Mia and the crew staring up at the strange, mutated, grotesque dragon, to a ground battle. And pissed Mia had stolen the runes out from under their noses, the betrayers screamed with rage and stared at her, some foaming at the mouth. Molech’s aura of violence poured over the new battlefield, over the shattered ruins and toppled structures, and drove the betrayers forward. There was nothing in their eyes but bloodlust.

Molech roared. “Bring her to me! Whoever brings me the unmarked alive will know glory!”

Romakus, Azreal, and Kas stepped forward, taking front positions again, side by side with Belor and Vin.

“Mia,” Julisa said, walking past her. “Do not protect your pet. Send Cerberus into the fray.”

“But—”

The tide of human flesh crashed against her bodyguards, and everything disappeared under the screams of war.

Belor and Vinicius, naked, rushed forward into the betrayers and toppled them. Betrayers were strong, almost as strong as cainites, but still just human. Belor and Vin were twelve-foot juggernauts, and they crashed into the betrayers with the mass of African bush elephants. Bodies went flying. Blood squirted into the air as the two children of the Old Ones crushed betrayers under foot and hoof. Vin grabbed betrayers and ripped them in half with his four hands. Belor flapped his wings hard, launched himself high into the air, and landed with a heavy crash, sending a dozen betrayers back, and demolishing the few unlucky enough to get trapped underneath.

Mia stared. Belor, suave and smooth one minute, kingly the next, roared with an almost maniacal laugh. Vin matched it. The two titans unleashed their own auras of violence, an inviting heat that washed over Mia and asked her to join them in the brutal dance. They were enjoying themselves.

Molech reached for the sky. Mia aimed her staff up, listened, found the strings Molech had grabbed, and silenced them. He’d tried to call lightning. Fuck that. The Old One roared out over the battlefield, reached for the sky again, and again Mia blocked the song. Silent to anyone watching, but to her, she was grabbing vibrating strings with her bare hands, and the vibration filtered through her body until she clenched her teeth. Headaches hit her next, and she squeezed her eyes closed as she leaned on her staff.

Romakus, Julisa, and Kas followed the two titans into the fray, slaughtering with ease. The two tetrads had their weapons, Romakus his colossal sword, and Julisa her four large swords, all blunt but more than heavy enough to cleave through betrayer bodies. But Kas was like Vin and Belor, just lower to the ground. He charged forward, temporarily using his long arms as extra legs, drove his big horns into a couple of betrayers, and tossed them aside with a twist of his torso.

The two tetrads and two children let out violence auras. Kas did not. He didn’t want to be doing this, no matter what Julisa or Belor said about him. Mia would make it up to him.

Azreal stayed in front of Mia, spear pointed straight forward without the slightest hint of tremble or drift. As if Azreal himself was now carved out of steel. Huge shield in front of him, the enormous wall of gold and silver sang with each impact of metal on metal as the betrayers reached him. And Azreal stabbed each one with cold ruthlessness. No flare. No violence aura, or aura at all. Even through the back of his head, Mia could tell his expression was serious, with slightly furrowed brows as he stabbed the betrayers, one at a time, with the speed of a sewing machine. Each blow was a surgical strike to the head, throat, or heart. Every betrayer died in seconds, until the bodies piled up at his feet.

Cerberus growled at the growing tide. The best fighters in all of Hell were with Mia, but there were too many betrayers, bodies blurring together as they swarmed.

Mia sucked in a breath. “Cerberus. Get ‘em.”

Leash broken, Cerberus threw himself at the nearest betrayer. He wasn’t small anymore. He was as big as a Siberian tiger. Bigger, even. Nearly as big as a grizzly bear and with a longer body, Cerberus was a heavy beast, and he crashed into three betrayers with a pounce. They went down, caught between a scream of rage and cry of surprise as the three-headed hellhound ripped their throats open and eviscerated them with his claws.

Cerb had gotten smarter. Prey dead, he turned, ran past Mia, and pounced on the betrayers rushing her from the other side. Back and forth, Cerberus played defense, killing any who thought they were smart for getting past Azreal and the others.

That left Mia to deal with Molech until the angels arrived. What then? The fuck were they going to do when the angels showed up?

Molech summoned another song, and Mia grabbed the strings, but the silent tune buzzed through her guts and made her soul ache. Too big. Too much. Molech’s song broke through her grip and—

A beam of golden light shot out from above and crashed into Molech’s face. The multi-mouthed dragon roared up at the sky and breathed waves of hellfire up toward Noah. But the angel didn’t stick around. He dove low, put several toppled buildings between him and the Old One, hiding, and Molech turned and faced him. Another gold beam crashed into him from another direction, an arc, and it shattered over one of the Old One’s eyes. The monster roared as he clenched the eye closed, but the attack hadn’t been enough to wound it.

But he was distracted. Mia played a silent song, pointed her staff high, and called upon Hell’s sky. A single bolt of red lightning. It slammed down against the dragon’s head, and Molech’s roar stopped as the red electricity coursed through his body. She’d hurt him.

She summoned another bolt, and another. Each time, Molech raised his head and aimed his many eyes at her, and each time, his head fell low as Mia’s lightning snaked its way from the fire sky, between his horns, and onto his skull.

Molech crushed her songs. She squeezed her staff and waved its ruby up at the sky, playing with all her might, but Molech had his invisible fingers around her strings now, silencing her.

“You,” the old monster said, pushing himself back up to his feet. “You play the music, but without Mother Hell’s help, you are weak, unmarked.”

Molech held out a hand, and like Mia did with her staff, the strange dragon played another song. While invisible hands held her song silent. Multitasking. She tried, plucked the inner strings until her real bones threatened to break from clenching muscles. Nothing. It was easy to keep a song going once it had started. It was hard to get it going when suppressed from the get-go.

The ground shifted beneath her. She stepped back, changed tactics, and crushed Molech’s new song. He played more, turning the black sand underneath her into liquid. The song would have turned the entire beach into quicksand if not for her, and Molech played the song in a dozen places, a dozen hands she could not see playing an orchestra.

He was louder than she was, better than she was, and could play multiple instruments at once. Entire orchestras. She was losing.

The monster’s songs stopped, and Mia sucked in a desperate breath as Molech turned. A thousand gold explosions erupted along the Old One’s back and wings, drawing more roars from the monster. The cavalry was here.

High above, thousands of white dots descended, shapes a blur against the flames of the fire sky, becoming gold and silver with wings of white. Like a flock of birds, they fell upon the battlefield, unleashing golden beams and flying gold arcs of energy from swords, and gold arrows that exploded against the Old One’s wings.

Trumpets filled the air, a glorious sound that had Mia smiling. They weren’t here for Molech though. They were here for her. The good guys were going to kill her. Molech was just in their way.

But that didn’t mean she couldn’t take a second to smile up at the beautiful display. Holy warriors, announced by triumphant hymns — the angels were singing, too — and beauty unparalleled.

A thousand spears fell upon Molech’s head, and Mia took a step back again, staring. Azreal never threw his spear. The sharp mirror blades sank a meter into Molech’s skin, decorating him with needles. None went deep enough to wound, but each must have been painful.

With an inhuman scream, Molech turned and faced the oncoming army. He stretched out his many wings and dragged his fingers across his face, dislodging the spears. Many poofed out of existence in a gold light, re-summoned to the hands of the descending rapholem. Compared to Molech and the tide of betrayers swarming over the ground, with more and more pouring up from the canyon to join them, Mia and her crew must have been nearly invisible. Tiny dots of red and black against flowing rapids of flesh.

“Mia,” Azreal said. “The angels will find you in moments. You will get no other time. Play the bridge song now.”

“On it.” She spun, did her best to ignore the horde of warriors trying to reach her, some getting far too close before Cerb got them, and she found the runes again.

Each rune was a song, and she had to play all three. If she had two other unmarked with her, this would be a thousand times easier. Maybe she should have risked reaching James to see if she could put the runes in his head, too?

Too late now. She closed her eyes and played the songs. Heavy, powerful songs, like plucking thick bass strings with fingertips, and banging a gong with a hammer.

The water vibrated.

“Still not me!” she yelled, jumping back.

An alligator came out of the water, a giant alligator with a beak. A horde of little creatures followed it, like spiky, aquatic dogs, and they rushed at Mia like small soldiers leading the way for their titanic war machine. Different hellbeast species working together? They sprinted up from the River Styx and charged straight for her.

Not for her. For the buffet behind her.

Mia summoned a blackstone wall from the ground, thick and wide, and blocked her and her crew from the water creatures’ sight. She couldn’t do anything for the others, her friends in the mix of the battle, but her, Cerb, and Azreal now had a wall dense rock between them and the hellbeasts rushing up from the beach.

“Cerb!” she yelled. Cerb abandoned his latest kill and rushed to her, blood soaking his torso and bits of flesh hanging from his teeth. He almost looked happy. “Azreal! Get in here!”

Without looking back, Azreal flapped his wings once, launching himself backward. He landed in front of Mia in a skid, shield dragging a ditch through the sand. As the strange hellbeasts ran around the wall and smashed into the betrayers, the angel finally relaxed his posture for a fraction of a second and looked to his flanks.

“A rock and a hard place,” he said.

Mia almost laughed. “Yeah. I—”

The alligator climbed over the wall of blackstone, its leathery belly dragging along the thick wall, threatening to crack it with its weight as it charged into the buffet before it.

“Ka—” She bit down the need to scream her friends’ names. This was an opportunity to play the song with something else creating a distraction.

If her friends died, she could hate herself later.

Back to the blackstone wall, she closed her eyes and found the song again. Go faster. She plucked the strings of the first rune and let them resonate as loud as she could muster. Go faster. Strange hellbeasts roared with glee as they crashed into the swarms of betrayers, grabbing their attention. Go faster! Molech roared as it came closer, unable to completely lift itself out of the canyon, but the Old One used muscle and song to split the canyon further, letting it come closer and closer again. And all the while, the Old One’s aura drowned the area, telling everyone to fight with no option for anything else. Fight. Kill. Devour.

Mia peeked long enough to see a hundred betrayers jump at the giant alligator, hacking and slashing and not even piercing its hide. It was as big as a sercano hellbeast, and for a moment, Mia thought she saw the rider on its back. No, no Cain, wherever he was. And as long as the hellbeast didn’t kill her friends, it was a big, beautiful diversion.

She clenched her eyes shut again, and played the tune, loud and heavy. The ground rumbled, and though she couldn’t see it, her sixth sense told her what was happening.

The River Styx was responding.

Cerberus growled and tore something open. She didn’t look. Something fell beside her. She didn’t look. She played the first rune loud enough that it echoed in the ocean of strings, and she moved on to the next rune. If she could get all three runes going at once, she could keep them going.

And if she could do this, then maybe, just maybe, she’d be able to play the portal rune and get her back to the surface someday.

Molech’s own songs exploded in the background. She recognized the sounds. Lightning. Lava. Fire tornadoes and windstorms. All aimed up at the sky and the angels that’d come for her. Everything was chaos.

Go faster.

She played the second rune. The River Styx boiled, sending crashing waves against the beach and high into the air. Her insides ached. Her inner fingers bled, if a soul could bleed. She crashed her mind against the runes and played louder.

She fell to her knees. Cerb was at her side, nudging against her, but she kept her eyes closed and her staff clenched in both hands. The third rune. Louder!

“Enough!” Molech yelled. His voice crashed over the battle, silenced the screams and roars of the betrayers and Mia’s crew, and for a moment, the angel bombardment stopped. “I have waited an eternity for freedom! An eternity for what is rightfully mine! You will not stop me!”

Mia dared another peek, and reality slapped her in the face. There were too many angels, and they had no interest in catching her alive. Their white wings blocked out the sky, and the air blurred with gold shimmers as ten thousand holy warriors pointed their weapons down at the ground, the battle, and everyone in it.

Kas, Vin, Belor, Julisa, Romakus, their heads poked up over the waves of betrayers. The hellbeast from the Red Sea had charged right over them, thank god, and into the oncoming army. But it was clueless. It didn’t see the bombardment coming.

Where were Noah and Yosepha?

Holy death fell upon the battlefield, and Mia screamed. She reached for another song, something to block the golden arrows and beams falling on them, but the three bridge runes were resonating and she had to keep them going.

She yelled, “Azreal!”

Azreal was at her side in an instant, on a knee, and shield overhead. A golden wall erupted from his shield’s edges, smashed through the stone wall Mia had summoned, and covered the air in golden protection. Ten meters. Twenty meters. A wide field of see-through gold, the same Azreal had used to save her in the battle with the aliens and Beelzebub.

Explosions fell upon the shield, and Mia’s scream disappeared under the sound. A high-pitched ringing filled the void, even as the explosions vibrated the earth and assaulted her inner ears through her bones. Cerberus got low and crouched at her side, but her hellhound’s expression had shattered; if he’d been a regular dog, his ears would have been down and eyebrows raised.

Was Azreal yelling? She couldn’t hear. The angel looked back at her, and the tiny t-slit opening of his helmet exposed nothing except the barest sliver of his purple eyes. He met her gaze for only a moment before looking back up at the trembling shield overhead.

The bombardment did not stop. Even if she played the song and created the path to the Forgotten Place, what then? They couldn’t move. Maybe she’d be free to play a new song? Maybe—

A song ripped through the air, and the bombardment stopped. Molech? Mia forced her eyes open. No, Molech had been tearing through the angels with tornadoes and lightning, but there were too many for him to stop them all. And that was what he was trying to do now, stop them from reaching Mia. If he’d wanted, he could have played a song right out from under her, drowned her in lava or crushed her in the sand, and she wouldn’t have been able to stop him, not while keeping the bridge runes going. Barely going.

It wasn’t Molech’s song.

The new song cracked through the sky, and a wave of fire reached down from the flames above like a hand. Not a tornado, and not a bolt of red lightning, two songs Mia relied on. A different song, sweeping and deep, brought the flames of Hell’s sky down onto the angels in a flowing wave like an upside-down ocean unleashing its ancient fury upon careless sailors.

Angels died. Hundreds of them. They hadn’t seen it coming and couldn’t hear the music. They turned in time to see a kilometer-deep, kilometer-long wave of fire flow through the air and roll over them, scooping across them like Ra himself striking out against infidels. The angels plummeted, wings burned to ash, many with melted armor, some with no armor at all as their batlam runes failed, and the angel within crumbled into embers.

That was a very loud song. Too loud. Mia looked for the source, followed the vibration, and looked clockwise down the beach. Far away, tiny dots scurried, and one speck of movement stood upon the ruins of a large building. Sturdy and defiant against the bombardments that’d come before it, a cathedral’s remains stood tall. At the top, a black dot, maybe a person… wielding a black staff?

James. Adron.

The angels flew low, avoiding another massive wave of flame, but the deeper they went, the closer they grew to Molech. The strange dragon’s body jutted out from the ground at least a couple hundred meters, and not even half its body was free. And with the angels getting too close, Molech laughed and unleashed hellfire. Its head held three mouths, stacked on top of each other, and all three poured the strange flame and its amber flecks into the angels doing their best to avoid James’s attack, and Molech’s lightning and tornadoes.

“Weak!” Molech yelled, laughing, his deep voice punching through the ringing in Mia’s ears. “I was there, warriors of God. I was there when you failed! And you are but hatchlings compared to the power you once wielded. Pathetic.” More of the Old One’s body emerged from the canyon, exposing more and more of its legs and long body. Less a dragon and more a serpent with a dozen wings the size of football fields.

But he couldn’t come completely out of the ground. Whatever held him, it stopped Molech from standing tall and meeting the angels with his full might. A hundred tornadoes and a thousand lightning strikes rushed over the ground around and behind Molech, attacking the new battalions of angels as they flew in to reinforce the others. Mia could never play songs like Molech’s, not without Hell’s help.

And James was using Mother Hell’s help to turn the sky into a raging ocean.

“Azreal,” Mia said. “If James keeps doing that, he’s going to summon the alien. You have to stop him before he—”

Azreal dropped his gold wall and lowered the greatshield to the black sand. It landed with a heavy thud, sinking deep into the beach. The angel was panting hard, and his wings slumped behind him.

“It is either the alien or the angel who will kill us, Mia. Choose.”

Fuck. Fuck fuck. She peeked past the rapholem to the betrayers, but most of them were dead, drowned in the waves of destruction from the angels. What few remained attacked the closest things they could: fallen, injured angels, or the giant hellbeast now bleeding from a dozen holes where concentrated blasts had ripped it open.

There! Kas and the others. They were under the hellbeast’s gut. Literally. Belor and Vin were half tearing the creature’s gut open, and half holding the vast belly up, while Kas, Romakus, and Julisa crouched in its shadow, killing the few hellbeasts and betrayers that got too close.

It was going to bleed out in minutes at this rate. One chaotic element down, and one about to replace it any minute.

But where were Yosepha and Noah? Out of the way somewhere. They had to be. Maybe helping James? Somewhere. Anywhere. Just not dead.

“Okay,” she said. “Stay here, Azreal. I need to try this again, but I think I got it.”

She turned, found enough brain space to topple her what remained of her blackstone wall, and revealed the beach before her. The Red Sea. The River Styx. It was boiling, not with heat, but vibration as the ground underneath it trembled.

Behind and above her, another song filled the air. James again, summoning the sky down to scoop at the angels coming for Mia, like an ocean of flames bringing down sailing ships. Bigger this time, reaching further. James was desperate.

Only Mia, James, and Molech could hear the music, and only they could feel Mother Hell swimming along with them in the sound. And only they could see the black eye looking up from below, staring up at them. No time.

Mia pointed her staff out to the Red Sea and played the three runes. No point in holding back now. She played as loudly as her inner fingers could manage, and Mother Hell swam up to meet her in the song.

The song stopped being difficult. It became easy. Someone big and warm and soft and inviting wrapped their arms around Mia from behind and entwined their fingers with hers. A mom, sitting behind their child, holding their hands, and showing them how to use a fork, or how to use crayons, how to attach those big, kid-safe Lego blocks, and a million other things.

Something Mia had never felt.

Mia sucked in a breath and played the song. First: the bridge. A solid mass formed under the water, something her sixth sense could not understand. Second: connect. The mass growing under the water reached up and split the surface. It was huge, covered in spikes of blackstone, and under the water out of sight, the strange structure reached from the beach all the way to the Forgotten Place.

The third rune: defy. Mother Hell plucked the rune for her, handling all of its great weight and intricacies for her. Mom, doing the hard parts for her.

The Red Sea parted.

The battle behind her disappeared. The angels stopped attacking. James and Molech ceased their songs. The hellbeast died, and all its little partners died moments later. What few betrayers remained were probably staring out at the sight, but Mia couldn’t tear her eyes away to look.

She was parting the Red Sea; she couldn’t think of it as the River Styx anymore. The literal red water split apart and rose into the air, two walls of rushing ocean that crashed against nothing, and revealed the black sand of the sea’s belly. An invisible wall? No, the water itself bowed to the might of the silent song, its tune grabbing the water and bending it away from the rising bridge. Higher and higher, the edges of the water fought against the song, demanding to be let back into where they’d been displaced from, titanic waves that reached a dozen meters into the air. A hundred. Two hundred. From both sides of the split, the ocean walls reached into the sky, pushed apart by nothing.

And the black thing within wasn’t a bridge. It was a tube?

From the depths of the ocean floor, now exposed to the warm air of Hell, a colossal structure rose. Long buried by time and ancient machinations, the weird structure looked straight out of Hell, the kind of Hell people on the surface figured Hell was like. A barbed, spiky mass of coiling pillars that arced in the air, creating a half-tunnel that reached a few hundred meters up from the ocean’s floor, each decorated with thousands of black skeletons.

Ribs. Snake ribs? The monumental structure looked like a snake’s skeleton that reached from the shoreline, and deep down between the blocked walls of ocean. Not a bridge, but a tunnel, that lay along the sea’s bottom.

“Okay,” Mia said. “Let’s go.”