The Pleasures of Hell

~~Day 78~~

~~Mia~~

She was tired. She was young, had done all-nighters before, and had survived them without caffeine. This wasn't the same. No matter how many times she shook her face, slapped herself, pinched herself, the drain of exhaustion pulled at her, made her nauseous, made her eyelids heavy, and blurred the edges of her vision.

It wasn't just her. The angels, the demons, even poor Cerby walked with heavy bodies, and her poor pup teetered left and right.

"Uneventful," Romakus said. "And here I was, sure we'd get ambushed."

"Morning twilight," Yosepha said. Little wings no longer so little, she stretched them out, flapped them, scooped up a fresh handful of black guts, and smeared them on her white feathers. It made Mia want to cry, each time. "Another four or five days, and I will be fully healed."

"Good," Romakus said. "I only wanted you for your wings."

The angel smiled and hit Romakus's closer wing with her own. Splat. Black guts hit each other. It would have been so damn cute if not for the grossness.

Mia rode Kas's back, and each hour that went by was a struggle. For a while she'd tried walking, but even though the muck in the maze trenches wasn't deep, each step had been tough. Getting innards and bile between the toes stopped being the concern, and collapsing from the exhaustion of pulling her feet out of a few inches of mud with each step, became it instead. She got back on Kas's back and accepted her uselessness.

"We are lucky," Julisa said. "Where are the hellbeasts?"

Mia raised a hand, lasted two seconds, and grabbed Kas's back spikes again.

"We even know what kind of hellbeasts hunt inside the Maze?" Mia asked, looking up. They'd zigzagged through a lot of different paths over the past ten hours, always taking turns that took them closer to Angel's Spine, but the Maze was a royal bitch. It guided them away from their goal as often as toward. To make things worse, no matter how many paths they went down, the smog still burned overhead.

It really was like those videos she'd seen of people fleeing forest fires. Smoke that hung low, heavy, and instead of being solid black, it glowed with the flame below.

"Crawlers hunt here," Julisa said. "Vinicius?"

The titan grumbled. "Sercano."

Everyone turned and looked at him, staring. Mia triple blinked. She did not want to run into one of those giant dragons in here.

"What?" Romakus asked. "I've never heard of sercano in the Maze." A pinch of surprise ran across his face, but it vanished quick. Putting on a brave face, but Mia saw it. For just a second, he'd looked nervous.

Vin shrugged. "It happens."

"A long time ago," Kas said.

"You know?" Mia asked.

But her bodyguard shook his head. "If they hunted here recently, Vicente would have been more careful."

"A foolish hope," Noah said.

Romakus raised a wing. "Much as I hate to agree with the asshole angel, he's got a point, Kas. Vicente is a reckless shit."

Mia winced. If Vicente were the careful sort, he wouldn't have jumped down on them. If Vicente were the careful sort, he probably wouldn't be in the Black Valley at all, considering how much it hated anyone with hooves.

Kas shrugged and walked on. If the man had an ego to bruise, Mia couldn't see it.

"Anything else?" Mia asked. Of course, demons would wait until it was an immediate danger before bothering to explain anything.

"No goorts," Romakus said. "Maybe a pack of irka. Giant rats." He looked back and winked at her. "It's probably the worst way to go, getting gnawed to death by a pack of rats." Eep.

Yosepha hit him, with a fist instead of her wing, and nodded at Mia. Mia smiled back.

"The largest concern," Romakus said, "if we don't run into a sercano, is probably wurms."

Of course. Wurms. With a U. Wuuurms.

"Vin killed one of those," she said. "Not long after we first met."

"Alessio and her bailiffs are a larger concern," Kas said. "They are looking for us. They know the Maze. We do not."

Right. It was easy to think everyone else in the Maze, surrounded by giant bone walls, screaming remnants by the tens--hundreds of thousands, were also lost. But if Alessio and her bailiffs had spent the time to map it out, they'd know faster ways to get around. Worse, they could climb the walls, if they were willing to deal with the remnants, but Mia's crew couldn't risk it. The walls pierced the smog, and that meant the angels above would see them.

"Think they stayed up all night, too?" she asked.

Julisa shrugged. "Possibly. It depends. Do they think eating you is worth the pain?" She gestured back at the rising fire clouds. "They did not fear Vinicius's power before. They do now." Smiling, she set her hungry gaze on Vinicius and licked her fangs.

Mia peeked back. In the past, Vin would have shrugged off Julisa's blatant attempts to get on the ragarin's good side. Now, Vinicius returned the tetrad's look with a quiet rumble and the barest hint of a smile.

Mia squeezed Kas's spikes and brushed away dumb thoughts.

Minutes went by, then hours. Weight pulled Mia forward, and Kas succumbed as well, now walking on all fours. She leaned more forward, got a couple spikes in the gut, and sat back up. This was like trying to stay awake in school during integral calculus when running on two hours of sleep.

Cerberus walked ahead, glancing back every so often with one or two heads, one always pointed at Mia. She smiled at him. Did he know how to read human expressions, or demon expressions at that? If he was born knowing some Hellian words, maybe?

"Cerb, come," she said. Her precious boy came, walked beside Kas, and her heart jumped. So smart already! And either he recognized the nickname, or he just went with the tone of her voice. Probably the latter, but that didn't change that her boy was the smartest hellbeast in all of Hell.

A very tired boy. He tripped, all three chins went down, and he whined and pushed his freshly drenched snouts up from the muck.

"I'm sorry, Cerberus," she said, pouting down at him with an exaggerated expression. "I know. I'm tired, too." The fire and smog behind them had grown wider, but not any closer. By sheer luck, they'd put some distance between them and the fire. "Soon. We'll sleep soon."

Cerberus pouted. The poor puppy couldn't understand anything that complex. No dog could. But he marched along, tail dragging on the ground. It was thicker and longer than most dog tails; it had to be to hold all those spikes. And usually he kept it off the ground and wagged slowly behind him, because he was happy, or because it helped him with balance. But now his tail made a tiny trail in the muck that vanished seconds later in its constant, gentle flow, and his three heads hung in front of him.

"I could fly up," Noah asked. "Should I risk a peek at what awaits for us above?"

"Nah," Romakus said. "After what happened with Vicente and those angels, we know what's up. They're circling the fire, looking for us, but they also know we'll be hard to find in this Maze, buried by smog and muck." He scooped up a fresh batch of remnant guts, dumped it on his back, and idly twirled intestines with his fingers, like a kid playing with string. "They've probably set up most of their forces at the border. There are lots of tunnels in Angel's Spine, some within eyeshot of the Maze. At best, we walk through some valleys, reach a tunnel, and find Livian and the others. At worse, Mia calls another firestorm, kills a thousand angels, probably a couple thousand demons, and then we go into the tunnels and have a party."

Noah and Mia glared up at the asshole, and Yosepha whacked him with her wing.

Romakus shrugged, raised his wings, distracted Yosepha with them, and promptly whipped her ass with his tail. She didn't squeak, but she did hop in place.

Mia groaned. "Does anyone have any idea how we'll find James?" And Adron and Azreal and Livian, and Faust and his boys, and Yulia and her unnamed brute friend, and Silvina the tiger lady she'd only ever spoken to once. If any of them died, she'd feel absolutely awful. Every day she put mental effort into not having a panic attack thinking about them.

"I have been thinking about that, actually," Romakus said. "Mia, you say you can hear the music? Hear whatever strange noise or vibration or whatever, that can move Hell?"

"Move Hell and make spire auras, yes." Though, calling them spire auras didn't really make sense, if spires were just making the same auras Mia was. Hell auras? "You... don't want me to send Cerberus looking for them, do you? Because he can hear the music?"

"That thought had occurred to me, but he'll just get himself killed. I was thinking something more drastic. If you do something big enough, James will hear it, even from miles away, right?"

"I... I don't know about miles. Maybe? How drastic?"

"A firesto--"

"I'm not making another firestorm! Besides, he could just see it, then!"

Romakus chuckled, slowed down, and walked beside her and Kas.

"I know. But is there some way you could do something with the music that someone could hear from far away?"

"I don't know. Maybe? What's Angel's Spine like?"

A dark, almost creepy grin ran across the asshole's face.

"Angel's Spine is aptly named. You saw it in your vision, didn't you? Colossal mountains, as far as the eye can see in all directions, rolling waves of strange white flesh. Wherever you go, you find flesh. The tunnels we will hide in are where flesh meets rock. Feathers the size of buildings are scattered everywhere. Bones as big as what we saw in the main Trench, bones bigger than this"--he gestured at the bone wall beside them--"decorate and punctuation the land. And blood. Oh, the blood!" He flared his wings. "A glorious sight! It's been decades since I last saw it. I'm excited."

Mia whined and buried her eyes in her palms. "More gore and blood?"

"Not like this." Romakus scooped up some remnant guts and flicked them aside. "No remnants grow on Angel's Spine, at least not from the white flesh and feathers. Beneath the top level of rock, down in the tunnels where the -- supposedly -- archangel blood flows unending, remnants can be found. But above ground, Angel's Spine has no remnants to speak of. It's quiet."

"That... kinda sounds nice, actually. Not the fact an entire province is covered in the dead bodies of archangels. What the fuck is that? How does that even work? Is it even true?"

Yosepha sighed and shrugged. "We have no way to know for certain, but what Romakus says of the landscape is true. It matches your vision, does it not?"

"It does." And that was awful. Absolutely awful.

No wonder its real name was Heaven's Tears.

More rumbles pushed through the trench, the shallow muck, and the smog-filled air. Mia glanced back at the usual source of angry rumblings, but Vin looked around for the source, too. Not him.

Muck erupted, splattered in all directions, and the crew fell back. Kas reared, Mia held on, and Cerberus bolted backward out of the splash zone. Smart enough to get out of the way, smart enough to not run off too far, he stayed a ways back, growling and barking. But his noises disappeared under the thunder crash of something pushing up from the ground.

Mia knew it the moment she saw it. A wurm. Of course.

Three heads burrowed up from the ground, sent rock scattering along with the muck, and all three whipped their heads left and right. They had to be a couple meters thick each, and little centipede legs dotted the underside of their long, snake-like bodies. But their heads were alligator heads, with tiny eyes that borderline disappeared against the massive silhouette of the colossal creatures.

One slammed its belly down, and it charged, immense body wriggling left and right like a snake pushing on sand. Its legs helped, sharp barbs that pushed through the muck and gripped the rock underneath. And it aimed its alligator snout at the closest target: Noah.

The angel punched the creature in the face. It roared, pulled back, but the other wurms did the same as the other before. They crashed their bodies onto the trench muck and pushed forward, slithering fast. Their dark red bodies pushed muck aside, buried nearby remnants in shallow waves, and what Mia had thought were slow tunnel crawlers bolted for the crew like charging alligators.

"Back!" Noah said, looking at the crew behind him. "Get back!"

If Noah summoned his armor now, away from all the chaos of the spreading fire, while angels were probably circling in the smog above, the chance they'd be spotted was high. But if the creatures kept making so much noise, thrashing and shrieking, they'd summon attention, too.

And Mia wasn't sure if she could move a pebble right now, let alone summon a spike to skewer them.

Julisa chuckled, drew her four swords, and without so much as a word, she tossed two of them blade first in the mud. They landed hard and stuck up straight; she didn't give a flying shit if she dulled them.

She ran straight at the first wurm, dove into the air, and brought both her remaining swords down on its head. Either she was too weak or the wurm was too strong, and her swords bounced off, cutting only shallow gashes on the giant alligator head. The beast snapped forward, less like an alligator and more like a snake, a ridiculous speed propelled by its curling and curving body. It got teeth around Julisa's leg, and she screamed.

Romakus ran forward just behind her, and drove his huge sword up into the bottom of the creature's mouth. Sharp or not, he put enough strength into the thrust the sword swank up through the flesh, and blood gushed. The creature screamed, opened its mouth as it thrashed, and Julisa flew to the side. Remnants cushioned the impact, and she fell a dozen meters back to the ground onto more muck. And somehow she held on to her two swords.

The other two swords were scooped up. Noah and Yosepha grabbed them, dove past Julisa, and with a single flap of their wings, launched themselves high into the air, above the snapping mouths of the wurms, past them, and onto their backs. They didn't use only gravity, but flapped their wings and flew straight down, swords pointed ahead of them. Even Yosepha and her smaller wings were strong enough to send her high, and the two mikalim came down like a couple of warrior missiles. They moved in unison, like it was a formation they'd used a million times before.

Mia hopped off Kas, and the shark dinosaur marched forward. Romakus worked his sword up through the underside of the first creature's jaw, while the other two creatures both had angels on their backs struggling to push blunt swords through the nigh black skin on their spines.

Kas tackled the closest creature, the one with Noah on its back, and he sank his teeth and claws into the creature's softer underside. Ripping, tearing, blood everywhere. It was less a fight, and more a predator ripping into large prey. He bit into the creature like a dinosaur, tore off chunks with his mouth, and got his feet involved, grabbing and tearing with his foot claws.

But the one Yosepha was on recovered, aimed its eyes at Mia, and struck. She froze. Cerberus froze. The thing was too big, too wide, too gigantic, like some sort of dinosaur snake as thick as she was tall. Her reflexes had no answer. And when she struck the strings, her aching fingers and empty stomach created only a muted note. She couldn't defend herself.

Vin charged past her, tackled the creature's head, and got all four hands between its snapping jaws. He roared straight into the much larger creature's much larger head, and pulled. Pull became push as he got his body between its spreading jaws, until he jammed a foot down on the giant wurm's tongue, and pushed up with all four hands.

Mia should have looked away. She didn't. The muscles and skin tore, something cracked, and the jaw broke and ripped. The creature screamed and pulled back, and Vin held on. Giant as the wurm was, it couldn't lift the child of the Old Ones up with only its head, not easily, not from that angle. Vin tore, shredded meat, ripped off bone, teeth, and reached deeper. It took time for him to rip the throat apart from the inside out until the creature finally stopped moving, and Mia eventually covered her ears to block out the screams.

Romakus's kill wasn't going so well. The wurm lifted its head free of the stabbing blade, turned, dove over the body of its dying friend, and aimed at Noah.

"Noah!" Mia screamed.

Kas was busy, still tearing into his kill. Romakus had fallen back when the wurm freed itself. Julisa was still getting up, leg bleeding. Yosepha was busy. Cerberus stood beside Mia, barking and growling.

Vin pulled himself out of the dead wurm's mouth, stood on its back, and threw himself at the diving wurm. The impact was absurd, something straight out of American football, shoulder to head, and the wurm went down, bending back on itself.

Noah stood, soaked in blood from a geyser of crimson squirting from the wurm's back. He stood up, looked at Vin, at the wurm that'd nearly eaten him, and threw himself at the creature, too. Another hard flap of his wings sent him at the wurm, sword first, and Vin got his four arms around its neck.

Noah plunged the sword in through the eye up to the hilt. The creature spasmed and fell.

The third one fell, too, neck falling onto Kas's body. He pushed himself out from under it, and snarled down at the dead creature. Blood drenched him more than anyone.

"Large... wurm," he said between pants. Soaked from horn to tail, he stepped back and wiped the blood from his flat shark head, but it was no good. Too much crimson everywhere.

"And it hunts outside of twilight," Julisa said. "Three of them together at that! Wurms do not hunt together!"

Mia ran to Julisa and examined her leg. "You okay? That looks pretty bad."

"I will be fine." Julisa pushed herself up with her two free hands, other two still holding her swords, and hissed. For all her stubbornness, her leg didn't agree with her, and she sank against the wall of remnants. Mia looked away in time to avoid seeing remnants die to her claws.

"You won't be fine. That's bleeding badly."

"I will be fine!" She pushed herself up on a shaky legs, walked between the giant creatures, hooked her two swords with her higher hands, and held out her two lower hands. "My swords."

Noah and Yosepha joined her, gave her back her swords, and both nodded. A deep nod. Almost a bow. That was borderline respectful, and Mia almost said something. Nope, don't call it out. If people in the crew were finding ways to get along without knowing they were doing it, that was perfect.

And speaking of people getting along, Mia risked a peek at Noah, a smile, and looked past him to Vin. The titan stood on the back of the wurm he'd helped Noah kill, and he stood tall, claws dripping at his sides, and his dragon eyes aimed down at the monstrous corpse. Proud, maybe? He looked satisfied, at least.

Vin walked down the corpse, hopped off, joined the crew, and gave Noah a quiet snort. No, wait, that was a snort, and an up-nod. Men rarely played the subtext game, and she admired them for that. But there were plenty of subtexts to an up-nod, and they were usually good!

Noah met the titan's eyes, and for once, he didn't glare. Okay, they were getting along, kinda, sorta. If there was one way to get men to get along, it was putting them on the same side of a fight.

"Let's go," Romakus said. "The remnants are covering our noise, but you never know. They found us once. They'll find us again."

"Agreed," Yosepha said. "Let's go. When evening twilight comes, we can rest."

Romakus hooked his sword on his back. "Yeah, probably, unless they get on our ass. And with hellbeasts hunting in odd hours, who the fuck knows what we'll run into until then."