The Pleasures of Hell

~~Day 132~~

~~Mia~~

No one had to say it, explain it, or even gesture to him. There was another child of the Old Ones chained up in a spire's basement; Zel hadn't chained Vin up in the literal basement, but close enough. And unlike Vin, who'd been getting a lot of one-on-one time with the spire ruler, the child locked up this time was the spire ruler.

What the fuck was going on? Belor -- she was pretty sure it was Belor -- looked like absolute shit, exhausted, and his small amber horn pulsed like a flickering flame. It wasn't supposed to pulse at all, unless the spire ruler was using it to do something, like make a spire door open, push out a spire aura, or activate a spire tool, like the one the spire mothers had been using. But the child of the Old Ones bound to the wall screamed as one of the muscular betrayers stabbed him with the spire tool, burned his skin, and made the horn pulse.

The burn mark faded away. A spire ruler getting burned by their own tool? How did that work? Why'd it heal? What the fuck was going on?

"What is this!?" a betrayer asked. The man, wearing a combination of leather and meera metal, brandished a sword and glared at Mia and the group. "What madness led you into the heart of Molech's punishment? How did you get past the chastened?"

Molech? The Old One?

Romakus glanced back at Mia. She shrugged, just as confused.

"We walked in through the front door?" Romakus said. "What the fuck is..." Wordless, the tetrad gestured around at the giant room of charred black bones, the bone pillars, the podium too big for anyone but a child of the Old Ones, and the child himself, chained to the wall and being tortured by a dozen betrayers, while a hundred more stood around, wielding their own weapons. Meera metal, cut down to size to fit their human bodies.

Wait. The meera metal was fitted to their body shapes, too. Most demons were bigger than humans, but this meera metal was made for them. Not full suits of armor, way too heavy, but they had more than a few pieces. Betrayers were a lot stronger than regular humans to wear a small amount of that armor without falling over. And these betrayers were well-fed.

These betrayers hadn't broken into the spire. They'd been here for a while, and they'd had armor and weapons custom-forged for them. And considering the amount of betrayers behind them, outside the unholy castle of bone, they were comfortable. This was their home. They'd set up shop in the basement and were doing some weird combination of worshiping and torturing.

It wasn't just simple torture, either. There was a chain attached to Belor's neck, and it reached up and attached to the ceiling of bone. The entire chain glowed amber, and it pulsed in time with Belor's special horn. A symbol hung from the chain, across Belor's chest. The seal! The seal she'd seen burned onto the arm or head or chest of almost every demon she'd seen in False Gate.

Music. Mia could hear it now, pulsing out from the child of the Old Ones, the small amber horn on his forehead, and the glowing chain around his neck. It was strange, different, loud, but in the way a vacuum cleaner was loud, a background noise she hadn't noticed despite the volume. But it was there now, so obvious in her mind. Stop it? Squash it? She didn't know if she could. And what would happen if she did?

The betrayers, stabbing and burning Belor, stopped, all turning and facing Vinicius and the crew. It was enough for Belor to finally stop screaming, and set his demony dragon eyes on Mia.

No, not her. He looked at Vin, and Romakus.

"Romakus," Belor said, voice a gravely bass, kinda like Vin's, except if he'd been smoking cigars his whole life, on top of being an alligator. "You always were too smart to die." And, uh, a slight New York accent? "And Vinicius. Come for another fight? Sorry, Vinny. I'm a bit... preoccupied."

Mia blinked. Vinny? What in the ever-living fuck? He had the voice, but this was not the ruthless, ultra-violent monster she'd expected to find. She stared up at Vin's back, and then back at Azreal and Noah. All three were glaring at the chained-up spire ruler, ignoring the hundred-plus betrayers who were all itching to chop down the people who'd just walked into their lion's den.

"Shit, Belor," Romakus said. "You've been alive this whole time? Fucking christ, I didn't--"

"You will not interrupt Molech's decree!" the betrayer said. "Belor must suffer! Molech's word is will! Molech's will is law! Molech's will is--"

Vinicius charged forward and tore the betrayer apart.

"Vin!" Mia screamed.

Too late.

Chaos exploded, and no one held back. Julisa followed Vin without hesitation, practically courageous, swords out and cutting like a blender. Yosepha and Romakus followed them, and the angel exploded out of her leather garb. Gold drowned the room, and betrayers covered their eyes for just long enough for Yosepha to bring her sword to their necks, and sever heads from shoulders.

Adron, Kas, and Azreal stayed with Mia, surrounding her, Azreal drawing his own batlam rune and destroying his leather clothes. Noah did the same and went on the offensive, except instead of charging forward with the others, he turned around and unleashed Armageddon on the betrayers Mia had forgotten about. She spun, jaw dropping as a tide of flesh poured toward the castle's bone doors, thousands of betrayers roaring as they tried to rush the door.

Cerberus snarled and half barked, half roared at the nearby betrayers, but he stayed at Mia's side, twisting and turning and aiming his three heads in random directions. And for a moment, Mia thought about telling him to attack. They were at the bottom of the spire, deep in the ground, and after this battle, they'd probably have to cut their way through every demon in the whole fucking province.

But for now, they weren't in danger. Mia and the crew weren't trapped with the betrayers. The betrayers were trapped with them. Vin tore through them like butter, grabbing two at a time and ripping them in half, before doing the same to the next two foolish enough to take a swing at him. Romakus and Julisa even had smiles on their faces as they mowed through the betrayers, while Yosepha and Noah wore no expression at all, from what little Mia could see of their eyes through their helmets.

They'd have to get armored in leather again when this was all over. No way the crazy demons above would look at angels and think it was okay to have them in the spire. But there were no demons on the bottom floor of the spire, none except Belor, and the child of the Old Ones watched on with a strange, tired smile, as the betrayers who'd been torturing him were slaughtered.

Mia reached out with the music, and got nowhere. The spire wasn't Hell, and if Mia wanted to do something that'd affect the spire, she'd have to punch through it. Rip the ground in half. Summon a hellquake. Something big, and dangerous, and might resonate too loudly and draw the alien close. Instead, she summoned batlam, covered herself in black metal armor, and held her staff in front of her with both hands. She was useless here, for now.

And she didn't need to be useful. The betrayers threw themselves at Mia's crew and died for it. Severed limbs crashed into pillars, blood splatters soaked the ceiling, and black metal and red organs decorated the bony floor in a growing pile. Belor chuckled, and Mia glared at the titan as Vin and the others ripped through his torturers.

"Here!" Noah said.

Without even looking, Azreal flew back, turned around, and landed beside his old comrade. Together, the two angels smashed back the rushing tide of betrayers at the door, and Azreal summoned a gold wall. Through the semi-opaque barrier, a thousand betrayers screamed with merciless rage.

"Molech's judgement must be served!" they screamed, pounding their fists against the barrier.

Noah got to work, flying over Azreal's shield, cutting through enough bodies to create room, and pushed the two giant bone doors of the castle closed. Azreal dismissed the gold wall, and the two angels planted their shoulders against the door. Unless the betrayers could climb the walls and reach the windows, no one was getting into the bone castle except through those doors.

"Whatever you plan to do," Noah said to the crew, "do it quickly."

"Damn it, Vinicius!" Mia yelled and marched up to the ragarin. "You fucking... We could have... I mean... I don't know! Can you wait for at least one fucking second before committing us to a slaughter! Now we have to fight our way out! We don't know if we'll have to kill every demon!"

Belor chuckled. Way too much chuckling from a half-dead spire ruler with a chain around his throat.

"You are... unmarked," Belor said.

Mia sighed, stepped over several bodies, a few still twitching, and stood in front of the chained child of the Old Ones. Memories hit her. This was way too similar to the first time she'd met Vin.

"And you're Belor," she said, glaring up at the man. "The most dangerous child of the Old Ones from the Spires War? Tried to fight every spire, and Heaven, and reach the Forgotten Place?"

Belor tilted his head, eyeing her, but instead of Vin's deadly glare and dragon sneer, he smiled. Not that he could smile very much, with the same sort of short dragon snout Vin had, but it was there.

"That I am," he said. "That I did."

"And now you're tied up and being tortured by betrayers. Betrayers that belong to Molech, apparently? The Old One?"

A chorus of yelling turned her around. Azreal and Noah slid back slightly from the door before pushing themselves back against it. There were so many betrayers outside, it was like soldiers holding back a battering ram.

The old monster looked at Romakus. "This little girl is in charge? I knew you were a spineless coward, Romakus, but I never thought you'd heel to a soul."

Instead of taking drastic offensive and roaring with all the fury Mia expected, Romakus rolled his eyes and put his sword away as he stepped on and crushed the final betrayer.

"It's a long story, boss," Romakus said. "Just, trust the girl. Mia here is the only chance we have of stopping the alien from killing the whole fucking god damn universe. So just do what she says."

"Alien? Explain." Slowly, the old monster tilted his head to the other side. He didn't know.

"You first," Mia said. "You're being tortured? Why? What's going on? Why is everyone you marked with your seal insane? Talk! And quickly!"

Again, Belor tried to chuckle, but it came out a coughing mess, and his chains rattled.

"It was Molech's seal, something he'd crafted on his own. He taught it to me, a way to guarantee every demon would obey me with mindless devotion until death." Belor looked to his wings and the myriad of holes in their membranes. "I failed. Heaven intervened sooner than expected. I lost, and Molech does not like to lose."

Mia pulled her head back. "Molech doesn't like to lose? What?"

"I've been tied up here, and Molech has been torturing me with my own spire's tools, for... who knows how long, because he wants to."

Good god. Mia dragged her fingers down her face, forgot her fingers were currently wearing metal gauntlets, and groaned.

"Molech has been torturing you for two thousand years... because he's pissed!?"

Again, Belor chuckled, and again it pulled exhausted coughs out of him. This was worse than what Zel had done to Vin. A lot worse.

"Two thousand years..." Belor sighed. "Perhaps we can talk later? I--"

"Explain now. None of this 'later' bullshit. Now."

Belor rolled his eyes. Why'd she think Belor would be so much like Vin? He was a lot more like Romakus, eye-rolls included.

"You know of Molech, the Old One?" he asked.

She nodded. "I've dealt with two already."

That got a wide-eyed look from the old titan, and another chuckle.

"Color me surprised. Well, Molech is not happy with me. So he tortures me. He's not happy with the province, so he tortures it, through me. And he'll continue torturing us until he's satisfied. Another thousand years? A hundred thousand? He's billions of years old. I have no idea how long it'll take for a monster like that to be sated."

Mia paced in front of the chained child, chin in her fingers, and did her best not to trip on any bodies. "Why's everyone going crazy?"

"I didn't know my province was going crazy, only tortured. But if I had to guess, it's because of this." He nodded to his chest, where the amber chain dangled with a symbol, like a large, nasty necklace. "His servants bound me, attached this to me, and they... force me to use my link to the spire. They feed my... discomfort, into the chain. Maybe it's resonating with those carrying the seal. Maybe that's how Molech is enacting his torture." He tried to shrug with his wings, and predictably let out a heavy wince and a snarl. Pain was an old friend for this titan, and he laughed. "Vinicius, I know you want the honors. Going to kill me? It'd be pretty easy, right about now."

Vinicius snarled, nodded, and flexed his claws.

Mia threw up her hands and got between them. "Whoa! No, no! We need Belor."

"Need?" Vinicius stared down at her, eyes widening. "We do not--"

"Belor," she said. "Someone's taken the rune stones from the beach. You know about them?"

"Giant, red runes, carved into stones as large as me. Ancient language. No idea what they're for. Molech said we wouldn't need them, once he was free."

"They're for creating a path to the Forgotten Place."

Belor's eyes widened. "I did not know that. Molech has been keeping secrets from me."

"Know where someone would take them?" she asked.

From wide-eyed to squinting with the knowing of a man who suddenly had leverage. "I do."

She squinted up at the tyrant. "We don't have time to negotiate, Belor. We let you go, and you tell us where Molech would have taken the stones. Molech wants me, and I'm trying to get to the Forgotten Place. Hopefully, I'll find the key there to stopping the aliens from destroying the Great Tower." Amazing how quickly she could summarize when she had a thousand betrayers trying to reach her.

Slowly, Belor looked at Vinicius and Romakus, extra time spent on the fellow child, with a few snarls to go with. Exhausted and half dead, the spire ruler still squirmed with something Mia recognized from all her time with Vin: hunger. Not hunger for food, though there was probably plenty of that. No, Belor looked at Vin with the same look Vin was looking at him. He wanted to fight.

"Oh," Belor said, eyes flicking from Vin's neck to Mia's. "A spire leash. Vinny Vin Vin. How did someone as strong as you get leashed?"

Vinicius marched forward and swung a claw.

"Vin!" Mia yelled.

Vin stopped an inch from Belor's gut, and slowly stepped back, every inch of him trembling.

Which Belor took as a win, judging from the small but devious smile.

"Free me," he said, "and I will show you where the stones were taken."

"Do you even know?" Yosepha asked.

"That I do," Belor said, and nodded to Romakus. "Molech's closest servants would have taken them to the Great Forge, but deep into its bowels where only the Old One's betrayers are found. You won't be able to stroll in through the front door, like you did with the spire, apparently." Sighing, the titan looked up at the bone ceiling and shook his head. "What has become of Hell in my absence?" For a moment, he sounded almost poetic, like a grieving man in a theater play. "All gone to Hell, apparently." And then he sounded like Romakus again.

"It is not as if we have much choice," Julisa said. "What do you want to do? Torture Belor? He's been tortured for two thousand years. And we have no time!" She gestured past the group to Azreal and Noah, holding back the tide. "Free him."

Mia squinted at the tetrad. Sure enough, Julisa leaned in a little closer than necessary to Belor, and her tail wagged ever so slightly. This bitch, getting wet for anyone with power.

"That would be nice," Belor said, and he grinned down at Julisa as much as his short dragon snout allowed.

"I trust Belor to honor his word," Romakus said. "I mean, beyond that? Not so much. He's pretty crafty with words."

"Yosepha," Mia said. "Uh... what do you think?"

The angel glared up at Belor, and looked back at Mia, some mixture of apprehension, frustration, and sheer confusion on her face.

"I don't know if we should free--"

"We are not!" Noah yelled. "That monster--"

"Is our only option," Adron said. "What we're trying to do is bigger than False Gate and Belor, right? I know we didn't expect to find fucking biggest threat from the Spires War here, and I'm sure half the people here want to kill Belor for one reason or another. But we have bigger fish to fry!" He quickly looked Mia's way for confirmation, and she nodded. "What's he going to do once he's out, anyway? Unite False Gate again and fight all of Hell, and Heaven, and the alien, in the next five minutes? We free him, use him, and move on."

Cerberus growled up at the titan, earning a few head tilts from the exhausted demon.

Which Kas took as a cue to march up to Belor, and undo his bindings. Metal hooks that could not be unhooked from the bound person, but another pair of strong hands made short work of them. Up and over, hook after hook. Problem: the moment Belor's arms were free, they sagged hard, and the titan's weight fell forward and onto the chain around his neck. The special, glowing chain.

But Kas held Belor up to keep him from choking, and Romakus and Julisa got the chain off his neck. The moment it was off, it stopped glowing. And the loud hum in the background only Mia could hear faded away into nothing.

Vinicius watched without blinking, clawing the air, eyes locked on Belor and nothing else.

For a second, Mia thought maybe it was just Vin being a colossal jackass, and only he had this weird, overwhelming desire to destroy. But even as Kas, Julisa, and Romakus helped stand the goliath demon up to his hooves, Belor looked Vin's way and let out his own, deep, guttural growls.

"No time for that, boss," Romakus said. "We're heading to the Great Forge? You can barely walk."

"I can... walk."

They let him go, and Belor fell to his knees. They reached for him, but he shoved them away, and scooped up betrayer corpses from the floor. Cerberus watched him, even dopey-head locked-on and in full defense mode, while the child of the Old Ones devoured flesh, taking in hearts as well as chunks of bone and meat he didn't need. He was starving. And probably wanted a bit of revenge on the ones who'd been torturing him.

"You won't heal in time," Romakus said. "And I don't know how we're getting out of the spire."

"We're not," Belor said, glaring at his wings as he tried and failed to stretch them. "Third floor up. Tunnel."

"Tunnel?" Romakus threw some confused looks around. "There's no tunnel leading out of the spire, boss."

"Yes. There is."

"Even if there is," Kas said, "we will have to fight our way through Molech's betrayers. And I am sure more are coming."

"Maybe," Belor said, finally standing again with Romakus's and Julisa's unwanted help. "Maybe."

"Maybe?" Mia asked. "I don't--"

The roars outside turned into screams and banshee shrieks. And even with a giant wall and door of bones blocking their view, there was no mistaking the sound of demon violence.

Azreal and Noah backed away from the door. It didn't swing open. Demons had come down to the spire's basement, and were gorging themselves on death.

"What's going on?" Adron asked.

Belor grunted. "I am... no longer... pulsing the spire aura." True to word, his little amber horn wasn't glowing anymore. "The spire seal is ancient, long past how long it should have lasted on its own. All my demons are... free." He gestured back to the chain no longer tied to his neck.