The Pleasures of Hell

~~Day 82~~

~~Mia~~

No rider yet. No anyone yet. They walked through the tunnel come the next day, and when they found a fork, they went left. Azreal would go left, according to Noah, so they went left.

"I can sense remnants," Mia said. "A lot of them, below. Maybe not as much as the Black Valley, but they're there."

"Lot of tunnels in Angel's Spine," Romakus said. "Things only get stranger the deeper we go, and the center mountains."

"The center mountains are different?"

"Yeap. Things get fleshier."

She whined. Fleshier wasn't good. The fact the tunnel walls were bleeding was already weird, straight out of a horror flick. If it'd been a hallway instead of a tunnel, it'd have come out of a Stephen King novel, with flickering filament bulbs for light instead of tiny strands of amber along the ceiling.

But it wasn't all bad. It was mostly good, compared to the Black Valley. No more muck! No more gross remnant guts and stuff draped over shoulders and wings, and black, tainted blood rubbed onto the skin. She was clean. Everyone was clean. Sure, a drop of blood fell on them every so often, but the red, dripping blood of Angel's Spine mostly stuck to the walls.

Angel wings were so pretty. She walked up behind Yosepha and ran a hand down the feathers. Yosepha glanced back at her, eyebrow raised, and Mia smiled back and touched her wings some more.

"So soft," Mia said.

"You've touched feathers before."

"Yeah, but this is different."

"Why?"

Mia shrugged. "Because we're all getting along these days, which means cuddling is on the table."

"This isn't cuddling." She fluttered her wings and reset them on her back. Hardly an effort to escape Mia, so Mia continued to stroke the feathers.

"It's cuddling while walking."

Yosepha rolled her eyes but kept walking. "Go cuddle Noah's wings."

"I would! But he's scary."

It was Noah's turn to glance back, eyebrow raised. "I am not scary."

"Yes you are." She squinted at him from behind Yosepha's wings.

"It... was not my intention to be frightening." He lowered his eyes for a whole quarter of a second before looking ahead again.

Oh, did she offend him? She could understand him being offended, if he'd been a gabriem. But a mikalim probably wanted to be scary, at least somewhat.

"I like frightening," Julisa said. She caught up to the angel in the lead and walked beside him, grinning down at him with some obvious hunger in her eyes. "You don't talk about yourself much, Noah. Tell me about your past."

"No."

"Why not?"

"There is little to tell."

She poked his side with her tail. "I don't believe that. You fought Vinicius before. You were in the battle to kill Belor. You are old and powerful, angel. Third rank. Surely you have interesting tales to tell."

Noah spared the fujara tetrad a slow glance, but nothing more.

Mia jogged up and joined them, Cerberus on her heels. "I'm an orphan. I grew up in a few different homes, with guardians my twin brother and I never really connected with. I've made friends, but never close friends; always had my brother for that. We both made good grades and used scholarships to get to university. I was going to become a psychologist." She shrugged. "And then we randomly died. I've never done anything worth noting, in any way, ever. And that's my entire life, all nineteen years of it."

The giant woman and the tall man looked down at her with a mix of pity and surprise, but she smiled back up at them.

"Hey, I had a good life. I was enjoying it. You might think it was boring, but I had a plan, and things were coming together." She poked Julisa's giant thigh. "And you, you old bitch, what's your life been like?"

Julisa grinned and raised her four hands. "I was wrestling for power in the Grave Valley for many years. The factions there are larger than Death's Grip, more organized, with groups sometimes reaching several thousand members. And I had a group of my own. We fought with other factions, claimed territory, killed and ate each other, and I amassed growing numbers."

That was not the answer Mia had expected.

"What happened?"

"Azailia interfered, along with that bitch Laoko. This was... how long ago, Romakus?"

"Half a millennium," he said.

"Five hundred years ago, then, Azailia interfered with my growing faction and cut us down. I left. Romakus found me, explained the purpose of the Damall, and I joined. Spire rulers who overstep themselves must be dealt with."

Mia raised a brow and looked back at Romakus. "That... doesn't sound exactly like what the Damall try to accomplish."

But Romakus shrugged. "Close enough. We don't want another Belor, and the Damall will take anyone willing to fight the spires specifically."

"Uh, but Julisa is the sort of bitch who'd fight the spires, so she could take one for herself, and then take all the others."

Julisa chuckled. "What demon wouldn't want to take over all of Hell? Even your dog would want to."

"Cerberus--"

Julisa gestured back at Kasimiro. "Your sarkarin would, if given the chance, take over all of Hell and bring it to his knees. All demons dream of controlling all, dominating all. Even him."

Cerberus tilted his heads, but stopped paying attention when the conversation fell back to Kas. Kas tilted his head, and rumbled.

"And of course," Julisa said, "Romakus would. And Vinicius would. Though if Vinicius ruled Hell, I do not think Hell would last long."

Everyone looked back at the titan, and the titan just walked along in the back of the group, dragon face made of stone.

Mia risked a quick poke of Noah's wing. He didn't react.

"What about you?" she asked. "I wanna know more about you, Noah. I mean, I want to know more about all of you, but I know a bit about everyone already, except you."

The poke didn't work, but the question got a glance out of him, and Mia gave him her best smile. She had big, green, awesome eyes, and she used them with deadly efficiency. Angels had one giant weakness, a weakness a demon could never exploit: they loved humans, wanted to be with and around humans, and if she could break Azreal with a flash of her green eyes, she could break Noah.

He looked away, but sighed. Shoulders slumped, wings drooped, the man gave in, defeated in mere moments by Mia's unstoppable tactics.

"I was born in Ravid, as were Azreal and Yosepha. I am third rank. Azreal and I both served in the battalions that fought against Belor, two thousand years ago."

Mia snuck up beside him and grinned up at him some more. "Yeah but I know all that stuff. Give me something not so war heavy. Tell me about... I don't know, a girl -- or boy -- you might have liked?"

Yosepha hit her in the back with a wing, but Mia grinned back at the angel. Sometimes you had to be direct if you wanted juicy gossip. And if she was going to travel with these people across two more provinces, she deserved to know some juicy gossip.

"I am no gabriem," he said.

"So? Azreal had a story about a girl he knew."

"He told you about Odette?"

Mia beamed. "He did."

Noah looked at the rest of the group and slowed his steps. Everyone else slowed, too, but Noah gestured them ahead.

"She wishes to speak. I will speak to her in private."

Romakus and Julisa shrugged and continued on. Yosepha gave Mia an eye squint, apparently not happy about Mia's prying, but she went on. Kas walked past, and Mia ran her hand along his giant shoulder, side, and tail as the dinosaur went by, leaning forward enough he walked on his palms. And as he walked by, Kas nudged his tail into her, and she almost fell over, giggling.

Vinicius rumbled, spared a glare for both her and Noah, and continued on.

Cerberus stayed with Mia, and she patted his back and scratched his heads. Only when the others had rounded the tunnel curve ahead did Noah speak.

"Why does my life interest you so much?" he asked.

"Why? Why wouldn't it?"

"You know why I am here. The same as Azreal. The same as my comrades, killed by the invaders."

She winced. Noah and Azreal had come to Hell with friends, but invaders had jumped them, thinking they might have been Mia because of her music leaving a note on them, like a music vibration. If other people were dying from the same reason, she was going to feel absolutely horrible. Maybe the invaders had learned after their mistake?

"Yeah, I get that, but I want to really get to know everyone I'm working with. Julisa is simple enough. Romakus obviously has some complicated history, and getting that out of a tricky bastard like him will be tough. Kas is Kas. He played defense during Zel's last war, and I... I really think he hates demons. Genuinely, absolutely hates them." Which had to lead to all sorts of self loathing that put him squarely into the perfect category for therapy. "And Vin..."

"Vinicius is a monster, concerned only with fueling his desires."

"You say that, and I think he believes it, too, but it's not true."

Noah moved his wing aside so he could look down at her, eyes wider than usual.

"Not true?"

"Yeah." She leaned forward and looked down the tunnel. The shadows ahead told her the others were still a ways off, out of earshot, but she spoke quietly anyway. "I don't know if he's changed from who you knew, way back when, but maybe a century or two of being a prisoner changed him?"

"Angels and demons are not humans, Mia. We do not suffer the passage of time. It simply is. He could be buried in a tomb for a million years, and if he has food to eat, he will emerge the same."

"I get that... sorta. But I'm telling you, Vin isn't as bad as you think he is."

He gestured to her necklace. "Then why the leash?"

She looked at the small amber jewel hanging from a black chain necklace. The only thing keeping Vin under control.

"I took it because when I freed Vin from Zel, I couldn't trust him."

"And now?"

"Now, I... don't know. Part of me thinks maybe I could get rid of it." But Vin wanted to eat her, and how much of that was sexual versus literal, she didn't know. "I need him. He's ridiculously strong."

"He's volatile. He desires violence for violence's sake. He wants to swim in blood, gorge on fresh hearts, and see the light die in people's eyes. If he were ever unleashed on the surface as material, he would single-handedly be the largest catastrophe to ever wash over mankind."

"I agree about his desires, but I think there's more to him than that. And--And I don't wanna talk about Vin. I wanted to talk about you."

"Vin is the X factor in this mission, Mia. I am not. You know who I am and what I am willing to do and sacrifice to make sure your mission is a success."

"Yeah but that's not good enough!" She poked his side. Gently, of course, but hard enough to get a quick flick of his eyes. "You've probably been around tens of thousands of humans in your long life, right? More, I bet. You gotta know how uncomfortable it is for us to work with people we don't know."

That got him. He gave her another quick glance, but his hard expression softened, and he nodded.

"Forgive me," he said. "Us angels are... not humans. We do not change easily. We follow our purpose with total conviction, and considering other paths is difficult."

She smiled and stepped in a little closer. "So I'm learning. But I can see why the humans in Heaven love angels, from what Galon told me."

"The unending orgies help."

She laughed. "Yeah, but besides that. With demons, I'm always on my guard. With angels, it's completely different. Even when you're being scary or imposing or intimidating, I never feel like you're suddenly going to do something bad, you know?"

"You seem to enjoy the presence of demons."

"Uh, yeah, kinda? I mean... I wouldn't say that." Did she enjoy them specifically because they were demons? There was definitely something about the dangerous nature of demons that was appealing. Adron and his flirty-but-dangerous attitude. Faust, the boys, and their total willingness to be fuck boys who'd grab her and pound her from all directions if they got the chance. Kas was obvious, all grumbly and angry and mean. And then there was Vin, who might legitimately want to eat Mia, even as he stretched her body so deep she thought she might explode.

She patted her cheeks. Horny later. Talk now.

"I like angels, too," she said. "It's just, my first run in with angels was you, shooting a beam of energy at me from the sky. And Vin saved me from that, from you." She poked him again. "And then I saved you! He could have killed you, but I stopped him."

Noah frowned. "I would have fought to the death and taken him with me."

She rolled her eyes. "Maybe, but that's enough about Vinicius. Come on, tell me about yourself. Do you have friends other than Azreal?"

"Shir."

Right, the angel Vinicius had de-winged.

"Anyone else?"

"There are others in the armies of Heaven I know."

"Any of them human?" It might take some time, but she'd get past this man's thorny exterior eventually. It was kind of surprising Azreal broke faster than him.

"There are no humans in the armies of Heaven."

"I know. I meant, any human friends? I--"

"You really want to force this friendship, don't you? Friendships take time to grow, young soul."

She beamed a little more. "You're right. You're absolutely right. But that doesn't mean I can't do a little gardening and help out. It worked with Azreal."

That got him. Apparently, his friendship with Azreal meant if she got one of them, she got the other. They must have been very close.

"I am no gabriem. It is the duty of the rapholem to guard the walls of Heaven, and to be our wall in combat. It is the duty of mikalim to be the head of the spear, the tip of the sword, and patrol Heaven for problems."

"Heaven can have problems? I thought the only way things could go bad is through the Vortex, and since demons can't fly, they can't use it to reach Heaven."

"Yes. But we patrol nonetheless, and we will do so for eternity."

Oh damn. Eternity? It was a good thing angels and demons didn't really feel the passage of time the way humans did, because an eternity of anything sounded like a fate worse than Hell itself. An eternity of patrolling for problems you knew would never arise sounded even worse.

"But if Azreal met a girl, I bet you did, too."

"I have had several lovers in my life, if you must know."

"Ooh! Let me guess. I bet... one of them was a young woman, super friendly and fun, even more than me, and she pestered you over and over until she got to know you."

He shot her a quick glance. "A... similar thing happened, yes." Hesitation. She was more on the money than he wanted to let on.

"I know it's dumb," she said, "but girls really got a thing for the closed-off manly types who've been through some tough shit. Maybe it's the wounded soldier fantasy. Maybe it's just 'cause a girl loves a challenge."

"Treating romance like a fantasy or game is not a good idea, Mia."

"I get that, but that doesn't mean it isn't alluring. Did she like you?"

"She--"

"Noah! Mia!" Yosepha's voice.

Noah and Mia broke into a sprint, Cerberus on their heels, but they didn't have to get far.

The tunnel opened up, and everything changed.

Flesh. The cavern beyond was nothing but flesh, and it went on and on. It sloped down first, and Mia sucked in a breath as memories hit her, scaling down the tunnels that'd led them to Asmodeus. But this was different. Blood flowed down the walls, but the walls weren't stone anymore. It was all flesh.

"A birthing nest?" she asked.

Romakus shook his head, flared out his wings, and gestured out at the titanic cavern before them.

"Welcome!" he said, with a booming announcer's voice. "To Angel's Spine!"

Walking on a mountain covered in archangel flesh and feathers was one thing. Being inside its body was another. But that's what she was looking at, flesh flowing over flesh, tendons attached from high ceiling to floor, and unless she was going insane, a part of one wall was a slab of bone. Flat bone. No, curved, just so massive it looked flat, so much of it was hidden behind the flesh.

A giant cavern at least a hundred meters tall, and a wall was only showing a sliver of a portion of the surface of one bone. The fact archangels had flesh and bones was strange, too. David would go on about square-cube law and stuff, that something this big made of flesh wouldn't work. And sure, Asmodeus had been absurdly massive, but she stood at the edge of a cavern as big as Asmodeus now, and her mind couldn't even grasp the context of the scale.

And it was filled with remnants.

Ten thousand? A hundred thousand? The creatures wandered in the pit of the cavern, and they groaned, arms dangling. Zombie behavior.

"Wait," Mia said. "That's a lot of remnants, uh, not stuck to something. Is that because of... that?" She gestured at the flesh walls.

"No," Romakus said. "Remnants can't grow from the archangel flesh, but they can grow from Hell just fine." He gestured to some giant rocks sticking up through the fleshy ground. "Archangel flesh isn't all there is, but rock, stone, and Hell's own flesh, as well. It mingles together here, merges, and refuses to die. Remnants grow from what belongs to Hell, but they are usually still trapped to it." With a crack of his tail, he gestured down at the pit below, and shivered. "Remnants aren't supposed to walk free."

Mia gulped and came up to the edge where stone turned flesh and the slope began. The cavern was easily three times as wide as it was tall, and it was full.

"I guess we have to go through," she said, and pointed to the opposite end of the cavern.

Julisa hissed. "I'd rather we turned around and found another path."

"Why?"

The demoness squatted at the edge and glared down at the wandering remnants, glaring, fangs bared. But Mia spotted a couple tiny shivers working through her, same as Romakus.

"Zombies are disgusting," the giant, deadly demoness said.

Kas perched beside her, and he too growled down at the army of undead wandering inside the pit, bumping shoulders, shrieking and hissing in unending pain.

"They are."

Mia raised a brow and looked at Noah and Yosepha, but they both raised a brow, too, looking at the demons.

"Vinicius," Mia asked. "Do you--I suppose you don't know anything about zombies."

"Zombies." With a heavy rumble, Vinicius stood over them all and looked down at the thousands of remnants between them and the other side of the cavern. "I have heard stories in the scrying pool, of villagers burying their dead with knives over their throats, afraid they'd rise."

Mia blinked up at the twelve-foot-tall juggernaut of pure destruction. He looked perturbed.

"You all that afraid of zombies?"

"Hell yes," Romakus said. "They bite and stuff."

She stared up at him, looking for some sort of joke. Of course Romakus was joking, but he was also being serious. Remnants attached to a wall or other surface, no big deal. Remnants wandering around scared demons.

"Cerberus?" she asked.

Cerberus stood at her side and waited. If zombies bothered him, he didn't show it, on any of his heads.

"I will lead the way," Noah said. "Yosepha will aid. The rest of you will follow." He spared a quick glance for Vinicius, and started down the flesh slope. He had to get a dig in on his old nemesis.

"We should have taken the other path," Julisa said. She groaned, waited for Yosepha, and followed the angels.

Before Mia could climb onto Kas's back, Vinicius picked her up. She squeaked, and Cerberus growled, but the titan put her on his back and slowly walked down the edge. Walk practically became slide, his ass to the flesh wall, and he half turned into the slope and sank claws into it so his weight slowly dragged him down. He left a river of blood behind his claws.

"Vinicius?"

"Dangerous down low. Stay higher."