The Pleasures of Hell

~~Day 130~~

~~David~~

So far, so good. Khazeer hadn't betrayed them, but it'd only been a day. No angels showed up. No aliens attacked. The demons gave him his space, with Sazillia showing up every so often to make sure no one had stepped out of line.

The Red Pits was a dangerous province, but the demons seemed to obey their ruler. Which only made the province more dangerous.

"Here?" David asked. He stood in Khazeer's throne room, on one of the bone chairs. Literally. It was the only way he could look down at the map on the big bone table.

Map was a strong word--really just a piece of leather with some scratch marks showing the various landmarks in the Red Pits and Navameere Fields. It was enough. Khazeer took a small rock and moved it toward the scratch mark that ran down the center. The border.

"On the right flank marches the enemy Tafalius, in the Thorned Ravine. On the left flank, Losiria, who's pushed into my Red Shores. She and her forces have literally swum through flesh and blood to reach me. We will push through the middle, between them. A surprise assault."

By 'flank', Khazeer meant stretches of land a hundred kilometers wide. Battles in Hell, true province-to-province, were not skirmishes poking at small spots, with guerrilla tactics or attempts to cut off supply lines. No drone strikes or missile attacks. If what Khazeer was showing him was right, with twenty rocks facing off against twenty other rocks on the map, demons slammed into each other and fought it out in a big-ass line.

What use were tactics? There were no supply lines to cut off. No tools for traps. All demons slept at the same time, so night tactics were out. They didn't even have bows and arrows for ranged combat, let alone guns. The best they could do was try to out-position each other with the terrain and start a meat-grinder battle on their terms.

"Is there really no way to make bows and arrows?" David asked.

Khazeer shrugged. "You are welcome to find wood that will bend the way you want, and string that will survive the tension. You are welcome to craft arrows for us. You are welcome to teach demons how to aim and fire."

Damn it, he hadn't even thought of that. Logistics of creating bows and arrows aside, could demons even use them? Did their claws allow it? Did their brains even understand the concept of aiming, were even capable of it? Human tactics weren't going to work here.

"Could you at least learn to use shields and spears!?" David yelled, slamming his hands on the table.

Khazeer snorted and flared his wings, glaring down at David; even with David standing on the chair, the tetrad spire ruler was still taller than him.

"Demons are not made of soft flesh, boy. We are made of powerful, dense muscle, and skin thick and strong. A spear wouldn't--"

"You can't swing a spear around like a sword. You have to hold formation behind shields and poke with it! Yes, you're right. In a straight-up fight where people are throwing themselves at each other, once you get in close, the spear isn't as useful. But the idea is to prevent that from happening in the first place!" David pulled on his shaggy hair. He'd be bald by now if this wasn't the afterlife. "You wear armor. Why not shields?"

"A demon would not know how to use a shield," Khazeer said. "Nor would I. You could show it to me, explain it, give it to me and walk me through how to use it, but to instill the reflex? We are demons, boy. Not humans." Snarling, the huge demon flared his wings again, making the skulls dangling from its fingers rattle. "Ask an angel! They are as bound to their way of thinking as we are."

Moriah and Tsila, literally hovering over the table with flapping wings, both nodded.

"The demon has a point," Moriah said. "We have said it before. You cannot instill a new instinct, a new way of acting, into angels, or demons. I cannot learn to aim as the gabriem can. Or at least, it would not be feasible to learn. Maybe with thousands of years of effort? But most angels are happy to commit to what they are born knowing."

Khazeer nodded. "As are demons."

Daoka stepped up, but stopped herself from chirping whatever it was she wanted to chirp. Sighing, she stepped away, eyeless gaze aimed down. Weird.

"Okay," David said. "I guess we're stuck with limitations. It's not like I can just pass around AK-47s and start a civil war, anyway. So demons are just going to slash and cut, and there's nothing I can do to change that?"

"Create spears at the forge," Khazeer said with some bite in his voice, "and perhaps we could learn to use them in a way that feels true. But a shield? Never."

"Forge?"

"Yes. Forge. Only the great forge can create aera armaments, but the forge here in the Red Pits, and the one in the Navameere Fields, can create meera."

David stared at the man and looked back at the rest of his crew. Only Laoko didn't look surprised.

"Show me."

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

The forge wasn't in the spire. Back outside, David winced at the distant field of remnant faces and fingers, and followed Khazeer toward a large, black mound of rock a ten-minute walk away. Innocent enough at a distance, but the closer they grew, the more it looked unique. A large rock. A giant rock. A boulder the size of a house, with at least a thousand black skulls embossed on the surface, mouths open. Somehow, even without skin or muscle, the skulls looked as if they were screaming.

An archway lay within, tall enough for even a tetrad to walk in without issue, and skull-shaped braziers lined a hallway of blackstone. A stairway awaited them, winding down into the ground.

"Uh, we're going underground?" David asked.

Khazeer paused in the archway. "The forge is underground. Is that a problem?"

"No. Just... wondering why there's a forge underground."

Caera stepped up to the archway and peeked down the winding tunnel. "I wonder if the Old Ones made them?" Almost bouncing, the tiger waved her thick, giant tail, and tapped her two hands on the ground. From calm and collected one minute, to excited the next.

If the forge was anything like the one he'd already seen, there'd also be a temple, some place where a large demon could preach from behind a pulpit. And a book that would have runes from the ancient language written inside it. There'd be hallways and rooms inside the temple, probably meant to house other demons, as if someone was gearing their own little army.

He was right.

Down and down they went, Khazeer with Sazillia and a few of his elite guard, while David and his girls followed. Beautiful, smooth hallways covered in more skull braziers and carved stairs that looked like real stairs, instead of just worn stone steps. Down and down and into a giant cave with amber veins glowing along the walls, and a colossal wall of carved rock. The front wall of a temple, carved into the cave.

"You've seen this before?" Khazeer asked.

"There's a temple like this hidden inside Death's Grip," David said. "Wouldn't surprise me if there's one in every province. Maybe more. Just, not next to the spire like this."

Say one thing for Khazeer, he seemed perfectly happy to show David what he wanted to see. Maybe happy wasn't the right word, just direct. David loved direct. The spire ruler stepped through the enormous, open doorway of the stone wall into the open nave of what was essentially an underground church. As if fantasy dwarves had carved a church for themselves, complete with a balcony that circled the nave from above.

In the back center awaited a pulpit, and below it, an anvil, with an amber vein cutting along the floor into the anvil's core.

"No one has used the forge since the Spires War," Khazeer said. "Damavior, a child of the Old Ones, ruled this province then, but died in a battle with the rider. Her appetite for power got the best of her, and she lost her life. And she took her secrets to the grave."

A child of the Old Ones dying to the rider? And probably not just her, but whatever demons she'd taken with her to fight him. Not unexpected, not anymore.

"Where'd you get all your gear then?" David asked, gesturing to the tetrad.

"The gear was here, in the Red Pits. We scavenge it from the dead, and much of our battle with Navameere revolves around taking armor and weapons from each other's dead. Aera metal came from False Gate, drifting here over many thousands of years." The huge tetrad thudded his red, bronze, and gold breastplate, and stomped a hoof on the stone. "Aera metal is power."

"Yes," Moriah said, sneering. "It is."

Argument inbound, David interrupted and gestured to the pulpit. "There's a book up there, right?"

Khazeer snorted, nodding and fetching the book for him. Like the others, it was large, meant for much bigger hands, all leather with an embossed black skull on the cover. Damn heavy too, with thick, firm paper--where the fuck did they get paper? And when he perused, he found the same runes he had found in the other.

Except for one difference.

"Apollyon," David said.

Khazeer shuffled his wings. "What?"

David pointed at a run on the first page. "Apollyon. It's signed. I don't know how an Old One signed a book, considering how fucking big they are, but this is Apollyon's book. Wouldn't surprise me at all if he, she, it, whatever, wrote it."

Dead silence. Revealing he could read the ancient language was a risk, but Khazeer had been straight with him so far, and if Sazillia was anything to go by, he was a frank, honest man.

"You can read the old language?" Khazeer asked.

"I can."

"What else can you do, unmarked?"

David shook his head. "Not what you're thinking. I've never used a forge. Don't know if I can. And staying here to play blacksmith for you so you can win your war against your neighbor, while the universe is about to die, is not an option."

Snarling again, Khazeer took the book from his hands and set it back on the huge pulpit.

"I understand," the demon said, glaring. "But that does not mean I cannot ask for your help if it will not affect your mission."

"Agreed. And if I see some way I can help out more than I am, I will."

David gestured to the amber runes written into the wall above the pulpit. No demon could make these. Only Hell, or maybe the Old Ones themselves, could manipulate the lava of Hell through veins of clear, glass-like material, to create amber veins, and amber runes.

"That," David said, "reads: By Apollyon's power, this war will be won." Because, of course, this was all Apollyon's doing. And by war, it probably meant the war with Abaddon in Navameere Fields. If it was about the First War, the battle against Heaven, it'd probably have been written by Lucifer, but this didn't read like their work. Satan's handwriting was firmly burned into David's memory, and this wasn't it.

And like he owned the place, David walked around, exploring the hallways of the old temple. Khazeer stayed in the nave with his guard, grumbling, but David's girls followed. It quickly turned into them following Caera though, as she ducked in and out of huge alcoves, single eye wide as she scanned the old walls.

"What's this say?" she asked, gesturing to old scratch marks. "Old language just carved into a wall? Had to be a child of the Old Ones from the early years."

"'I, Nalliazara, have claimed my first kill.'" David winced. "I'm guessing a child who killed another child, based on those statues we keep finding." He half expected to stumble onto more giant statues of the utterly massive demons, slaughtering each other.

Another set of scratch marks in the same room, and Caera stood up and patted them, as if she could pluck them from the wall for him to read.

"'I, Nalliazara, have tasted the power of an imbued weapon. Apollyon's will be praised.'" More scratch marks. "'I, Nalliazara, have cut down Nariah, and Ozillius. Their hearts tasted strong, stronger than any soul's.'"

Caera nodded. "Must be a child who was trying to help Apollyon? Maybe the children of the Old Ones had an idea how to free their predecessors from... whatever it is that binds them? And she said souls? I guess even way back then, souls were being sent to Hell. I wonder what they were like back then? We know Hell changes form to reflect the surface world, right? I bet back then, Hell and the demons didn't look anything like they do now." She gestured at the wall again. "And all of this warped and changed to fit the new form of Hell over millions of years. Maybe?"

David laughed. Caera tilted her head, squinting her eye at him, but he waved his hands. She was oblivious to how much she changed when history grabbed her attention.

"You're probably right," he said.

They moved on. Of course, all the rooms were empty, just giant alcoves carved into square rooms. But most of them had scratch marks telling tales of children of the Old Ones killing each other, eating each other, and making names for themselves, wielding imbued weapons.

"They were obsessed with killing each other," Caera said.

"Looks like." They stopped in front of another set of scratch marks. "'The spire will be mine,'" it said. No better reason to kill your fellow demons than a chance to be their ruler, he supposed. "I'm guessing these children were... literal children? Or, you know, young demons? Feels weird to write random shit on the walls. Unless you're a kid. Then it's more normal." He shuddered, but that was how demons did things. Except, that was contained to the hatching pit. This was different. Did they even have hatching pits back then? Spire mothers?

A paragraph stopped him, and he stared at the runes. "'The urge consumes me, and Apollyon has nothing to tell us. We kill, and we kill, and we kill. I killed my friends. I killed my lovers. I killed everyone around me, and now I am alone. The mightiest shall rule. That was Lucifer's message to us. That is Apollyon's message to us. We, the first children of the spire, will inherit Hell. It will be ours. It will be mine. But... I will be alone.'"

Convenient for ancient demons to write these pointless messages into the walls. Maybe they wanted to voice their own thoughts. Maybe it was the only way for them to understand themselves?

"The children of the Old Ones," Caera said, standing up and leaning on the wall again, "were... unstable?"

"Unstable is a word for it," David said, sliding a finger along the runes. "Sounds like they were consumed with an 'urge', to the point they killed everyone they knew."

"And they wrote about it?"

He shrugged. "I mean, if I were young and half insane, I'd write about it, too."

A sharp snap announced Caera's tail hitting him in the ass, and she chuckled.

"If you were young? You're a baby."

"I am an old man! The fact this body is only nineteen years old is just bad luck. I was born eighty."

From chuckle to laugh, Caera leaned over him, kissed him, licked his forehead, and the two of them headed back out to join Khazeer.

"Discover anything useful?" the spire ruler asked, glaring, but that seemed normal for him.

"Not really," David said. "Just a bunch of old messages left by the first children of the Old Ones. They tore each other apart, fighting over the spires."

Khazeer tilted his head. For a second, David thought he might ask for more, but the tetrad grumbled, turned, and walked out of the temple, gesturing for David to join him. Like most demons, Khazeer didn't care about ancient history. A shame.

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

Pegasus clopped around their spire room, bored, flapping his wings as if he might someday fly. No luck so far.

"But Vinicius might be with Mia," Jeskura said. The gargoyle perched on the table in the raised section of the room.

David walked up and joined her. "Yeah, I know." He pulled himself up onto the bone table with her and let his legs droop, elbows to his knees and chin in his palms. After the woman-in-armor had kidnapped Mia -- and saved Death's Grip from the growing canyon by doing so -- she'd left Mia with Vinicius, the child of the Old Ones that'd apparently been trapped in the dungeons of the spire for who knew how long. "Mia's not dead yet, though, and it's been months. Either Vinicius is dead, or not with her anymore, or they're working together."

Jes shuddered. "Hopefully not that last one. I mean, even I know how mindlessly violent children of the Old Ones were. Remember those statues? I vote we avoid any children if we find them."

"Are any left alive?" Caera asked from the lower, larger floor of the room, sitting on the leather blankets. "Far as I know, people call Vinicius the last of the children of the Old Ones for a reason." Lasca was pinned under her tail, while Laria and Latia each wrestled with the tiger's giant hands. Unfortunately for them, Caera easily pinned both red goblins by their breastplates, no matter how hard they squirmed.

"We ran into Old Ones," Jes said, "and they were supposed to be dead, right? And it's not like we know much about this corner of Hell. Even Laoko's in the dark about the Navameere Fields."

Laoko nodded, sitting beside Caera and idly caressing Laara's wings. "We entered unknown territory. Morgana keeps to herself in Navameere, and no one knows how she keeps peace with the volatile False Gate. We must be prepared for anything."

"Angels?" David asked.

Moriah and Tsila both hovered in the room, each flap of the wings sending a gentle breeze around, but that wasn't the reason. They were just aching to use their wings after having them wrapped up for so long.

"There is little to tell of the Navameere Fields," Moriah said. "We angels remain ignorant to the nuances of each province, but we have heard nothing of any child of the Old Ones, save for Vinicius."

"Then again," Tsila said, "we didn't know about the Old Ones being alive, either."

Sighing, David scooped up his dice from the table and rolled them. Two and a four. No omens there.

He looked around at the group. Jes, Caera, Daoka. The Las. Moriah and Tsila. Laoko.

"Where's Acelina?" he asked.

"Visiting her fellow zotivas," Laoko said. She grinned up at David and licked her lips in a very, purposefully seductive manner. "Did you want to visit them, too?"

David shivered. Last time he'd visited spire mothers, Acelina and her 'sisters' had all gathered around to give him the best fellatio of his life, deepthroating included.

"I mean... a quick visit wouldn't hurt. Just a visit!"

Caera rolled her eye.

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

Before visiting the spire mothers, it was probably a good idea to confirm with Khazeer. Spire mothers were precious, the only demon breed that had an innate understanding of what eggs bore what demons, and which eggs were in healthy condition. A random visit might not be looked upon well.

David poked his head through the colossal, open, black skull that was the throne room door. He probably shouldn't have.

~~♥♥♥~~

Tatiana sat on Khazeer's lap, naked as before, the spire ruler sitting on his throne. The succubus faced away from the man, and every inch of her was covered in cum. White oozed out of her empty slit, but her belly bulged; Khazeer was in her ass. The tetrad didn't move, content to simply sit there, hands on the arms of his throne, and let the succubus dance on him, twisting, wriggling, and writhing hypnotically.

Twelve brutes, naked, surrounded the throne, and one stepped in and squatted in front of Tatiana and over Khazeer's legs. David couldn't see anymore, the brute blocking vision, but a gush of white poured out onto the floor between his legs as the brute thrust his hips forward. Tatiana had been pumped full of cum and was getting another dose. And through the cracks between their bodies, David spotted the succubus still dancing, still swaying her hips, with two cocks inside her.

She was earning her keep.

~~♥♥♥~~