~~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."

"Oh. Okay." That was true. There were a lot of remnants down there, and one misstep meant they might get her and swarm her. Why demons were afraid of zombies, she couldn't really figure out, but humans had plenty of reasons to be afraid of the walking dead.

Cerberus was the last to follow. He snarled and whine, and patrolled the edge of the tunnel back and forth.

"Come on Cerb!" she yelled. "Come!"

After some more whining, big-dog head snorted, and the three-headed hellhound came after her. Dogs did not handle slopes well, but Cerberus half slid, half ran down the slope, staying on his feet. Unfortunately, he couldn't control his momentum and crashed straight into Romakus's back. Romakus fell forward, and the two slid along the flesh wall down and down into the deep pit full of hungry zombies.

"Fucking shit fuck!" Romakus jumped to his feet, drew his sword, and swung it around in a harsh three-sixty. The surrounding remnants exploded, the dull blade breaking through flesh and bone with all the precision of a wrecking ball. They screamed, died, and Romakus turned and faced the oncoming crowd.

Mia couldn't help but laugh. It was awful and gross and sad, but Romakus's eyes were wide like someone panicking at a theater watching a scary movie, and he cut down a dozen more remnants that sauntered his way.

"Fucking zombies!" he said. How long had this delinquent watched the scrying pool to pick up on all the human slang?

It wasn't the deepest pit or the harshest slope, but there were no rock ledges to climb. Any remnant that fell in wasn't getting out, and there were thousands upon thousands of them. And now that Romakus was yelling up a storm, every face turned their way, and the army marched toward them.

"They're not zombies!" Mia said. Snug to Vinicius's back, she peeked over his shoulder when the titan landed. "They're not going to infect you if they bite you. Calm down. Let's just cut through them. That's a tunnel exit, right?" She pointed to the distance.

It had to be a tunnel exit. This was Azreal's path, and ahead was an alcove on the opposite side of the cavern. There was nowhere else to go.

Cerberus snarled at the remnants ahead, dashed forward, stopped, and looked up at Mia.

She nodded down at him. "Get 'em!"

Cerberus didn't do big floppy dog smiles, but he did give her a more cat-ish grin, and threw himself at the remnants.

Mia covered her eyes. It was good for him, learning how to hunt and fight things that wouldn't hurt him back. Much. There were enough remnants down here, he'd get exhausted before putting a dent into their numbers, let alone kill them all.

Julisa grinned up at Mia, drew her four swords, and cut down several nearby remnants. "Comfortable letting your dog exercise?"

"Shut up. You're afraid of zombies. Pussy-ass bitch."

The tetrad growled, but didn't deny it, either. She marched forward with Romakus and cut a swathe through the remnants. Afraid, sure, but demons didn't react to fear with panic. They just fought more.

"If Azreal came through here," Noah said, "and fought his way through, then many of these remnants are new." He summoned his armor, lit the dark cavern in gold light, and unleashed his sword and shield. Yosepha did the same, and her full wings shone beautifully in the gold light. As the light faded, the two dove forward and brought swords to bear. The blades were so damn smooth, they were almost perfect mirrors, shining bits of the cavern's own amber light about. And they were sharp and cut through remnant flesh like butter. Their shields of white, silver, and gold were less than a meter wide, medium shields they didn't hide behind, but swung out in front of them. Mia didn't watch, but could hear through the screams the sound of metal crushing noses and breaking bones.

The remnants came at them, and the demons did not like that. Instead of throwing themselves into the fray with mindless bloodlust, they practically huddled together and cut down the remnants that got close. It was hilarious. Seeing humans with numbers on their forehead, emaciated and half torn before they even reached the demons, was not hilarious, but the way the demons shivered and hissed with obvious fear turned the horrific situation on its head. She laughed more. It felt nice. Fucked up, but nice.

Some rocks stuck up from the ground, like thorns that poked through the flesh, and her sixth sense told her the giant rocks were part of Hell, not the archangel's flesh. Some remnants grew on the rocks, not many, but some. Like all remnants, they were trapped, with the lower part of their body lodged in the stone, like a weed. But some remnants climbed out from the rock, and their flesh grew with them, as if Hell itself was birthing the remnants like she birthed eggs.

A woman climbed out of the rock. A woman Mia recognized.

"Wait!" she yelled. The demons and angels came to a stop. "Wait! Wait wait!"

"What?" Yosepha asked, half spinning, confused. "You're unharmed. What's going on?"

Mia pointed a wavering hand at a remnant coming their way. "Don't hurt her!"

They followed her finger to the woman. Naked, skin torn, ribs showing through her emaciated body, and some bone showing through her bleeding flesh, a woman walked their way, sauntering and swaying like all the other zombies. She had short-ish blonde hair, and blue eyes.

Vinicius snorted. He recognized her, too.

"Impossible," he said.

Romakus matched his snort and cut down a half dozen nearby remnants. "What?" At least he was kind enough to avoid cutting the girl down.

Mia stared, body shaking. She squeezed Vinicius's back spikes, breath quickening and tongue trapped in her throat.

"Cerberus!" she yelled. "Come."

Her hellhound looked back at her with all three heads and did as ordered. She wanted to reward him, praise him for being such a good dog, but she couldn't tear her eyes away from the blonde walking her way.

"Hannah?" she asked.

Hannah snarled and came closer. Noah stepped aside and cut down the remnants past her. Yosepha did the same. Kas and Julisa cut and tore apart remnants that came at them from behind. They let Hannah through. And Hannah drifted straight toward Vinicius and Mia.

She said nothing. She stared up at Mia, dead eyes locked on her, tears of water and blood on her cheeks.

"Vinicius," Mia said. "G... Grab her."

Vin reached out, pulled his arm back, reached out again, and scooped up the remnant. He held her out at arm's length, like she might sneeze on him or something, but all she could do was scream and wail like a banshee, trapped in his grip.

That was Hannah. That had to be Hannah. Why was Hannah here? Why--the number on her head. 663. The first time she'd died, when the rider had tried to kill Mia, she'd been a betrayer. Adron's betrayer, with 666 on the forehead. And when the rider killed her, it'd changed to 665.

She'd died twice since then.

"Oh god, Hannah. You..."

"This is not possible." Vinicius shook his head and marched forward. The group pushed with him. "Hell is vast. Remnants are endless in number. This cannot be coincidence."

"Maybe... Maybe she... found me." Mia forced herself to meet Hannah's gaze. "Hannah? Hannah, are you--"

"Kill.... Me..." Demon fingers still wrapped around her waist, Hannah clawed down at them, and her fingernails tore off, exposing the flesh underneath. "Kill... Me..."

"Hannah! Stop!"

Again, Hannah clawed at Vin, crying heavy sobs, even as she glared at Mia like she wanted to kill her. Eat her. Get revenge on her.

"Kill... Kill..."

"Hannah, please stop! Stop hurting yourself! We'll figure something out! Just stop! Let me... Let me--"

Vinicius threw the girl down hard, and she exploded against the flesh floor, soft skin and brittle bone collapsing with the impact. She died instantly.

She looked like roadkill.

Mia screamed, looked away, and pounded on Vin's shoulder. "Vin you fucking bastard!"

Cerberus got in front of Vin and roared up at him, all three heads baring their teeth.

"She asked for it," he said, voice solid.

"I know!" She gestured at the remnants, and between their screams and groans, some words came out. Kill. Die. Death. Release me. She'd heard their desperate please a million times. "But that was Hannah! That was... that was Hannah."

Noah and Yosepha glanced back, but didn't look long. Thousands of remnants stood in their path, and they chopped through them with ease, keeping the group going.

Mia didn't want to keep going. She climbed down Vin's back and got on her knees beside Hannah's corpse, for the second time in her life. But Vinicius scooped her up like he had Hannah a minute ago and walked after the angels.

"Let me go!"

"No."

"Let me go! That was Hannah, I have to... I have to do something!"

Cerberus snarled and roared up at the titan, and walked alongside him under Mia.

"It's okay Cerb, it's okay." She waved her hands down at him, but everything got blurry as tears filled her eyes. "It's... It's okay."

Vinicius snorted down at Cerb loud enough it cut through the endless screams of the remnants, and the hellhound jumped back, only to jump back in and snarl up at the titan some more.

"The girl was dead," Vin said.

"I know! But..."

"What would you do? Let her continue in her misery? Or kill her and bring her one death closer to freedom?"

She clenched her eyes shut. "I wanted to talk to her."

"She is a remnant now. The only thing to be done is kill her for mercy."

"What would you know about mercy!?" She glared up at him. Just a blur.

He looked down at her, rumbled, and set her on his shoulder. She squeaked and grabbed his spikes, almost falling off.

"Nothing," he said. And he walked.

She stared at him and did her best to stab him to death with her eyes, but failed. Sighing, she set her cheek on his shoulder, closed her eyes, and ignored the screaming remnants as best she could. That word, 'nothing', he'd said it with such obvious self awareness, it struck her still.

Cerberus followed alongside her, and a few of his whines cut through the shrieks of the damned.

Mia pointed out to the crowd. "Get 'em." It was hard to summon any enthusiasm, but Cerberus obeyed, ran ahead, and joined the others in killing. And Mia did her best to not look behind at Hannah's corpse.

Hannah had found her. How? She'd come straight for her, had stared at her, looked her dead in the eye even when Vin grabbed her. Maybe she could hear the music, like Asmodeus could, and Cerberus. Maybe... Maybe she'd been looking for Mia each time she was reborn? Was that something remnants could do? Or, was it something Hell did?

Mia rubbed her face on Vin's shoulder and bit down the sobs. The sound of combat and remnants hid her noises.

She watched the ground pass by underneath Vin's claws. Flesh. She glanced up. Flesh. Amber didn't grow along the archangel flesh, only the rock that stuck up from the ground. Except, that wasn't true. There was more light, and now that they were getting into the darker parts of the giant cavern, she could see it.

Gold. It dripped from the ceiling, landed on the cavern floor, and disappeared. Each drip shined gold as it fell through the air, and scattered its glow over the floor of exposed muscle where it was absorbed almost instantly. Gold rain. It fell in specific places, like thin waterfall streams, and a glance up showed why. The rain was falling from grooves, specific places in the flesh above that showed hints of bone. And the bone had a familiar shape.

Eye sockets?

She stared up at the ceiling and waited, breath frozen. Nothing happened. She gulped and stared harder at the strange grooves, each colossal and oval-like, creating what she had to imagine were eye sockets, but it was too dark at the ceiling to see--

An eye opened.

Mia screamed.

"What!?" Romakus spun, looked at her, and followed her gaze up. He froze, too.

There was an eye looking down at them. In the flesh of the ceiling, not all of it was exposed muscle flesh. The darkness hid details, but there was white skin up there, too, with blood trickling from it down the walls. But there were eyes. Some were gigantic. Some were small, relatively speaking. All closed, except one, a giant eye at least fifty meters wide, and it was staring at her.

All the eyes were crying. Closed but crying, and the crevices she'd seen were closed eyelids. The gold drops ran along the massive, circular edge of each eyelid, and dripped the odd gold water down onto them.

The open eye looked straight down at Mia. Like Yosepha's eyes, and Noah and Azreal's, the eye looked perfectly human except for how powerful the color of the iris was. Gold. Shining, perfect, wonderful gold, the same color the angels wrapped themselves in when they used their runes.

"It's alive!?" Mia yelled.

"I've seen things," Romakus said, gesturing around, "strange things in Angel's Spine. I've never seen the corpse react."

"Can we even call it a corpse? Yosepha, what do you... Yosepha?"

Yosepha stood there, jaw dropped, eyes locked on the eye above. Noah did the same.

Julisa hissed at the two of them and cut down the dozen remnants clamoring toward them. "Pay attention!"

The angels didn't respond. They stood there, hypnotized.

They flapped their wings. Romakus and Kas cut down the remnants without issue; no one was in any danger. But the spearheads of the group flew up and up, and hovered high above, only a meter below the giant eye. It had no eyelashes, and the eyelids didn't look right, the white flesh sliding apart more fluidly than a human's eyelid would. The eye was inhuman, and at the same time, too human.

"It is a corpse," Julisa said. "Leave it. Push forward and let us be free of these creatures."

The group did so, and sure enough, as they moved along the floor, the giant eye's gaze followed. It wasn't looking at the two angels, despite how they hovered directly under its pupil. Its gaze followed Mia, and not once did the archangel blink.

The tears flowed, gold rain, silent under the screams of the remnants.

Chills pulsed relentlessly through Mia's body. Every moment she expected something to happen, for invaders to erupt up from the ground, for the walls to split and pour lava onto them, for something, anything. But the eye stared, followed her movement, and did nothing. They got to the other side of the cavern and climbed another sloped wall of flesh to a tunnel exit.

A hand reached down and helped Kas up the slope.

"Azreal," Kas said.

Azreal nodded, face forever steel, and he reached out for Julisa.

She didn't take his hand. Scoffing, she pulled herself up and faced the rest of the crew.

"Can your dog climb?" she asked, complete with a dark chuckle.

Cerberus climbed. Going up a slope was easier than going down for a dog. He got his claws into the fleshy ground and bounded up the slope without issue. Vinicius and Romakus had a little more trouble, but they managed, and Mia spared a warm smile for Azreal before looking back to Yosepha and Noah, still flying.

"Azreal!" she yelled. She climbed down Vin's back, ran up to Azreal, and hugged him. He froze. She knew he would. Of course the stoic bastard would be surprised she wanted to hug him. Galon would have hugged her back instantly. Well, that was fine. Just meant she had to work at him a bit. "Did James--"

"Yes," he said. "When we passed this way, the eye opened and watched James. I investigated. It ignored me."

"Can... Can you tell Noah and Yosepha?"

He nodded and took to the air. Dressed in potram, his white silks flowed with the air, but when he flew through one of the gentle waterfalls of almost invisible gold tears, the tears flowed off his body instead of getting him wet. He met with the two angels, but they were both slow to react to him, posture still pointed at the giant eye.

The eye closed. Even flying, Noah and Yosepha's shoulders slumped, and they came back to Mia and the crew.

"I don't think it's alive," Yosepha said. "Hello Azreal."

"Yosepha." He nodded to her, barely, posture its typical rigid and stern. "Noah." Slightly less rigid. "James awaits a mile ahead."

"One point six kilometers," Mia said, and she beamed up at Azreal. Smile? Did she get a smile? He flicked his eyes in her direction, and didn't frown. Close enough. "We should probably stop here then. If I keep going, gonna risk those quakes." She peeked past the angel, down the stone tunnel and the blood oozing down its walls. "No Faust? No Adron?"

"No. They stayed with James. The path ahead is not necessarily safe. And James is becoming close friends with them."

Mia frowned. "But they're my friends!" Everyone looked at her, but she rolled her eyes, laughed, and did her best to wipe away the tears and memories of ten minutes ago. "Adron. Don't tell Adron."

"Tell him what?" Azreal asked.

"A remnant. A... remnant we knew appeared."

The angel tilted his head and looked to the others. The demons shrugged. The angels nodded.

"I won't mention it."

"Thank you." She sighed relief and looked back up at the now closed eye. "How can it, or they, be dead if they looked at me?"

"Archangels defy reason," Yosepha said. "In the Great Library, books speak of their power, their ability to manipulate the Great Tower, and their ability to control their own forms. They defied the very concept of life and death." She looked back at the flesh cavern, and the thousands of remnants wandering around inside. "They existed beyond the Great Tower. Or rather, were not bound to it."

Mia stared. "But... the Great Tower is the whole idea of life and death, right? That's what you told me, that it births life on the surface, life gets resonance, comes to the afterlife, dumps off resonance, then cycles back into the Great Tower, right?" She gestured around. "And even afterlife creatures, like demons and angels, are still a part of that cycle, just minus the surface part, right?"

"So the Great Library says. But the books are... not as informative and specific as you'd like, Mia. They speak in metaphor, poetry, and vague suggestion."

Mia groaned. She didn't have to be David to know how frustrating that'd be.

"Okay, so, the archangels are... kinda dead. And we're passing through their not-dead bodies."

Romakus gestured to the tunnel around them. "And parts of Hell. Their flesh has merged with the landscape." He ran a finger down the wall, got archangel blood on his claw, and licked it off.

Mia slapped his leg. "Ew! Don't! What the fuck, Romakus!?"

"Tastes like chicken."

"You don't know what chicken tastes like!"

"Everything tastes like chicken. I've watched the scrying pools enough to know that."

She laughed again. Was he trying to make her laugh, because of what happened?

No wonder Yosepha liked him.

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

Noah flew ahead to join James again, and they gave him five minutes before they resumed the march through the tunnels. They had a plan: always go left and try and stay on the inside of the Hell donut. As long as they did that, Mia's group would always be behind James's.

She missed Adron, but she was thankful he hadn't seen Hannah. Would that have broken him? She knew he'd cared more about his betrayer than he let on, and since her death, he'd sorta floated between being a stoic, miserable kinda guy, and his usual flirtatious, fun self. Internal conflict. What'd her books say? He needed time to figure that shit out. And maybe a therapist.

She missed Faust, too. Faustinus, Oudoceus, Locutus, and Gallius. They were fun. She missed fun. In current company, the most fun man was Romakus, and that was not Mia's kinda fun. Usually.

The crew updated Azreal on what happened back at the border. He wasn't too happy learning Vinicius was the reason half the maze burned down, and basically told Alessio she had to rush to beat them to the border. He was very surprised to learn the woman in aera armor showed up again.

"You didn't ask for her name?" Azreal asked.

Mia shrugged. "I assumed she wouldn't give it to me. She ever give it to you, Vinicius?"

The titan rumbled. "No."

She gestured up at Vin. "See?"

Azreal sighed, shaking his head. "Alessio will likely come. She and Dobasi do not like each other, but they are not at war. She will risk pursuing you, if she does not believe the woman in armor. But if the woman is correct that we're running out of time, we have no time to waste with Alessio. At least she gave you more details on what to do in False Gate."

"Barely." Matching his sigh, Mia took a step toward Kas, paused, and climbed Vin's back instead. Would Kas mind? Didn't seem like it. "We march on!" That's good. Be loud, and fun, and smile, and don't think about Hannah's blue eyes, filled with tears, and blood, and pain. "Romakus, give us a rundown on the political situation."

The tetrad laughed and stretched his wings. "Dobasi, a korgejin tetrad, has ruled Angel's Spine since the Spire's War. He took the spire from Jeravar, a child of the Old One Malphas."

Mia leaned over Vin's shoulder. "I know Valzanal was a tetrad, and she was around during the Spires War, ruling Death's Grip before Zel. Was she the exception?"

"Yes," Yosepha said. "Most of the children of the Old Ones died in the Spires War, mostly to each other. Valzanal was one of the few tetrads strong enough, and smart enough, to rule a province while the children fought for control. But even she did not survive that madness, and Zelandariel took over."

Romakus flapped his wings. "Mia, don't interrupt your teacher!"

Mia put up her hands, and nearly fell off Vin. "Sorry, sir." Definitely making jokes to make her feel better. She'd thank him later.

"Ahem. As I was saying. Dobasi rules Angel's Spine with several bailiffs. He does not like intruders. Does not like to socialize. He's pretty convinced Angel's Spine is the most important province, for some reason no one knows, me included."

"We haven't seen anyone yet."

"We will. They prefer to stay underground."

Mia looked around. "We're underground."

"Barely. Angel's Spine goes deep. Very deep. The blood flows, and souls dumped off find tunnels and get swept up in the blood rivers that sometimes pump along."

"Sometimes pump?"

"We're in a living corpse. Sometimes the blood just comes, and pulls everything it hits deeper into the tunnels."

She groaned and looked back again. This place made no sense. Why was a giant eye inside a flesh cave? Eyes pointed out, not in. And blood just randomly flowed along?

"So we stay higher up?" she asked.

"If we can. I don't want to deal with Dobasi. He doesn't like me."

"No one likes you!"

"Not true!" He scoffed, scooped up Yosepha, and held his girlfriend out to Vin and Mia like he'd picked up a puppy and was giving her to them. "She likes me."

Yosepha, back in her potram clothes, flapped her wings, got free of Romakus's grip, and punched the huge man in the shoulder. Without a word, she landed beside Azreal, and the two angels marched ahead.

"You sure she likes you?" Mia asked.

"I think so."

"Maybe she's just using you for sex."

Again, the ten-foot gorujin tetrad scoffed and held a hand to his breastplate.

"Yosepha, is that true?"

Yosepha groaned and flapped her wings. A silent dismissal.

Romakus smiled at her, but dropped the joke and fell back in beside Vinicius.

"Dobasi sends scouts to the surface all the time, and they'll report back to him, or herd humans down through tunnels they can't climb out of." He gestured back. The cavern was out of view now, but those flesh slopes would be hard to climb without claws.

"Wait, I thought spire rulers stayed in their spires? I know Alessio came out of hers, but two unmarked slipped through her fingers. She was so angry, she came for us herself. But Dobasi doesn't--"

"Dobasi stays in his spire."

"I thought you said he stays underground."

"He does."

Mia dragged her fingers down her face. "Explain, Romakus! You know I want an explanation! Stop making me prompt you."

He laughed and shrugged. "This corpse we're inside of, it's hundreds of miles long, and that's just the one corpse. There are three here, supposedly, piled on each other, or overlapping in some mess no one can figure out. They fell on this place at the end of the war."

"Right, and... oh. The spire here got buried, too."

"Yes. As we get further into the province, the flesh will get thicker and thicker, until it's as thick as a mountain; it's only skin deep this far in. And in the middle, the flesh is piled miles high, and the spire is within."

That was hard to imagine, but the spires were strong and sturdy enough to survive the most insane earthqu--hellquake she'd ever seen. If an archangel fell on it, it'd be like falling on a nail. If that was true, then what the fuck did an archangel's shape look like when it was... not dead?

"A spire inside archangel flesh?" Mia asked. "That, uh, have any side effects?"

"Oh lots. The hellbeasts down here get terribly warped and mutate into weird things. I'm sure there are hellbeast breeds you can only find down here, too. I know Cainites are down here, unusually strong, probably somehow surviving on the archangel flesh. And--"

Mia groaned and buried her face in Vin's shoulder. Romakus went on, describing strange oddities, things Hell grew that'd be nasty, strange hellbeasts that'd undoubtedly try and eat them with a dozen mouths, and a bunch of other weirdness.

"Why would archangel blood make things mutate?" she asked. "Because they could alter their bodies?"

"Perhaps," Yosepha said. "What the archangels could do with their power will never be fully understood. If creatures have been drinking their blood for millions upon millions of years, how is there any blood left?" She shrugged with her wings. "We can only guess."

"Whoever wrote your books sucks."

The angel laughed, but cut herself short. Shadows ahead brought everyone to a still, fluttering movement. Julisa drew her swords.

"Hold," a voice said. Noah? He flew down the tunnel and joined them, bits of blood dripping down his body. He didn't look injured.

"Noah?" Mia asked. "Get in a fight?"

"It is not my blood. New walls of flesh have grown and blocked my path to James."

"You're sure?" Azreal asked.

"I am sure."

Azreal flew off, Noah behind him, and the crew followed as fast as they could. Sure enough, past several forks in the tunnels, they came to an end. A giant wall of exposed red muscle.

"I tried to cut my way through," Noah said. "But the flesh is unending and regenerates quickly."

With a loud hiss, Julisa slashed the wall of meat. But her black swords were meera metal, probably thousands of years old, had never been properly sharpened, and less cut the wall than bashed it. Bits of red tore, splattered, and regenerated before their eyes.

"Holy shit," Mia said. She climbed off Vin's back and touched the wall. Blood coated her hands from Julisa's wound. Warm. She wiped it off on Julisa's thigh and got an annoyed hiss from the demon. "This grew in minutes?"

"It must have," Azreal said. "This is the tunnel I took. And James is to wait until you return, Noah."

Noah frowned and folded his arms across his chest. "Then... we are trapped."

"Trapped?" Mia asked.

"Yes. We if take another route, we may get too close to James without knowing, or lose the path entirely. And James is waiting."

"Fuck!" Mia kicked the wall straight on, bottom of her gladiator sandal into the flesh. Cerberus snarled at it, too, and clawed at it; it was too flat to bite.

Kas gently pulled her back and raked his claws down the flesh wall. Same result. He looked to Vinicius.

"Hellfire?"

Vin shook his head. "Tunnel. It will bounce back."

Of all the strange things for Hell to give a shit about, the physics of how fire moved in air wasn't exactly one she'd figured it would. But when Vin had breathed Hellfire and set the Maze on fire, it had followed rules, strange ones. The fire had spread with more voracity, more hunger than real fire would, and had ripped into and destroyed everything it touched. If Vin breathed hellfire in here, it might backfire.

"Mia," Romakus said. "Create a tunnel."

"What?"

"Create a tunnel." He shrugged and gestured to the flesh. "Get to it."

"You dumbass, I told you! I can only change things that are a part of Hell's body."

"So dig a tunnel--"

She put up a hand and reached out with her sixth sense. "I can't... feel well, down here. The archangel's body is messing with my sense. Like a blanket thrown over the instruments. It's all muffled." She reached out and tried again. "I can feel the ground, a bit."

"So dig a--"

"I can't dig a tunnel for the same reason I couldn't before! Making a tunnel through bone walls was absurdly difficult. Building one underneath a mountain? Just moving a bit of stone down here means adjusting for a bazillion tonnes of other stone. I can, at best, slowly create a wall. That'd be about it." She hoped David knew this, or he'd bring a mountain down on his head.

Julisa turned and looked at the group. "So... what do we do?"

Mia paced in place and counted off on her fingers. "Adron is with James. So is Faust and the boys. So is Yulia and her unnamed brute buddy. So is that tregeera, uh... Silvina, right?" Romakus nodded. "And so is Livian. Adron is a big and talented vratorin. Faust and the boys are pretty strong for incubi, right?" Julisa nodded. "Tregeera is a big tiger lady. Livian is a bolstara tetrad, so strong like Julisa, except she has hooves. And Yulia might only be a diloja bat girl but her brute devorjin buddy looks like he's seen a bunch of battles." Sighing, she rubbed her face and combed her hair. "They'll be fine, right?"

"Do you trust them?" Romakus asked.

"Trust?"

"To not eat James."

"Yes! I trust them to not eat James! .... I think. Azreal?"

"Livian and Silvina have grown attached to James. And he gets along with the incubi. He is safe from them. But..."

"But Dobasi," Romakus said. "If any of his demons find them, it won't be just a few random demons like in Death's Grip or the Black Valley. They roam in droves here, by the dozens, if not hundreds. And they're all loyal... mostly."

Mia gulped. The fact they could move through the Black Valley, run into small pockets of demons, and quickly exterminate them was a big part of how they moved through the province. In Death's Grip, demons were small tribes that constantly fought each other, same thing in the Black Valley, more or less. Demons getting along and working together was kind of scary.

"They cooperate?"

Romakus nodded and stabbed the flesh wall. His giant sword got stuck, and he spent the next minute pulling it free.

"It's partly because of False Gate," he said. "The demons there are chaotic. They fight each other with insane... insanity. Some issue with Belor's leftover sealed spire aura that never got resolved." He stumbled back, sword free, but didn't fall. "They throw themselves at Angel's Spine every so often, and the only way Dobasi can survive is cooperation."

"Belor's battle was two thousand years ago, right? How is the spire seal he used still in play? It's just a spire aura burned into someone, but spire auras aren't supposed to be permanent."

He shrugged and swung his sword, sending a streak of blood against the tunnel wall.

"Spires can create specific auras, or at least more specific than just mindless violence. 'Win this battle', 'go here and fight', 'fight this person'. And using the tools of the spire, a spire ruler can seal that aura in so it stays in the person's mind until it resolves. Belor armed his bailiffs with the tools, and they sealed the aura into tens of thousands of demons."

"And the order?"

Romakus grinned. "Not sure. To take over all of Hell, I guess?"

"That... doesn't sound possible."

"Possible or not, whatever order he gave required a lot of him, his power and energy, and it worked. At first. When Belor had obvious enemies, what his army had to do was obvious, and they did so. But when the angels interfered and killed Belor, they left. And the sealed spire order was so absurd, so grand, so impossible to pursue, the affected demons didn't know what to do without Belor guiding them." He laughed. "Belor was the cockiest spire rule to ever come along. People think he triggered the Spires War in the first place. I can't even imagine how strong he had to be to create that spire aura, but he did. And now the whole province is a chaotic mess."

"But it was two thousand years ago! The affected demons aren't all dead?"

"Apparently not. Some people think they're branding new demons. Some people think the spire is birthing new demons who are pre-branded. No one knows. No one goes into False Gate anymore."

Sighing, Mia leaned against Kas. Without a word, Kas sat in his usual gorilla pose, her wall for her to lean on.

"So James and I have to get past Dobasi's roaming army bands, and get through a province of literally insane demons?"

"Yeap. And there's no way Livian can handle all that."

"Maybe James can. How good is he with the music, Azreal?"

Azreal shook his head. "Not as good as you."

She sighed harder and kicked the flesh wall for effect. A wet thud resonated through the muscle.

"I have an idea," she said. "But it'll make noise."

"Noise?" Yosepha asked.

"James is waiting for either Azreal or Noah. We need to send a signal for him to keep going without them. And with the music, I can make Hell respond. James is in this general direction, right?" She waved at the wall, and Azreal nodded. "Then I'll try some Morse code."

"Morse code?" Kas asked.

"Rhythms." She clapped her hands together in the classic SOS rhythm. "Used to spell letters. I don't know Morse code, and James won't either, but the idea works. I'll shake the ground a bit, in a rhythm he'll hopefully get the meaning of."

The demons and angels looked at each other, and Romakus shook his wings.

"That is a dumb idea."

"Got a better one?"

"Nope."

"Then shut up!"

Yosepha smiled and hit her boyfriend with her wing. Romakus put up his hands in surrender and stepped away.

"Is this safe?" Noah asked. "If you use the music, you may summon the invader."

"I'll be careful. I shouldn't have to play the music too loud to shake the ground a bit. It'll just... attract nearby attention."

Vinicius rumbled. "Good."

She rolled her eyes, but did spare Vin a quick smile. Sometimes it was nice, having the big, strong, violence-prone man on your side.

She reached out with her sixth sense and found the ground ahead of her. Where archangel flesh ended and Hell began was hard to tell, all muffled and mixed, but she didn't need to do something exact. She was going to shake the ground. And if she was careful, she wouldn't bring the mountain down on their heads.

What rhythm to use? What song or pattern? What would tell James that he needed to move on without them?

Dumm. Dadadumm dumm.

She played the rhythm once, and played it loud. Maybe she shouldn't have hit the strings that hard, but the mountain refused to shake at first, and she had to play louder. Cerberus sat beside her and tilted his head, maybe listening to her pluck the strings more than the actual vibration in the ground.

Too loud. The presence in the ocean met her, gently pulled at her mind, and she pulled back hard. Don't go swimming. Stay out of the ocean of music, no matter how good it felt.

The mini quakes flowed out quick, shook blood free of the walls and splattered it on the ground, like someone playing their bass way too loud. She waited for something to crack and for a billion kilograms of rock to crush them, but the mountain stood strong.

They waited in silence.

"Think he's good enough to finish the rhythm?" Mia asked Azreal.

"How would he know how to finish that rhythm?"

"Everyone knows dumm dadadumm dumm."

Everyone looked at each other, each with an eyebrow raised--except Kas. But sure enough, a minute later, something shook the mountain back at her. Dumm dumm.

"Two bits." She grinned and pointed in the opposite direction. "Okay, we got options. We go back and get topside, or we keep going forward with one of the forks, which'll probably take us deeper into the mountain, we'll run into Dobasi, and we'll have to fight our way through. And I'm not supposed to play the music loudly, so... you'll have to do most of the fighting for us."

"We'll be fine." Vinicius took the lead, and the crew began the march. "Pick a path."

"Let us follow James as best we can," Noah said. "If we head back, we may run into Alessio."

"Agreed." She pointed ahead, and Cerberus ran ahead. "Cerberus, heel!" And he came right back and heeled. For five seconds, before running ahead again, weaving around Vin's legs.

"Mia," Kas said, coming up beside her, "are you sure James understood your message?"

"No, but there's two rhythms everyone from the West knows. SOS, which is dadada dumm dumm dumm dadada. And Shave and a Haircut, Two Bits. Dumm dadadumm dumm, dumm dumm. SOS means help me. Two Bits is often used as a call and response, usually for some kind of 'all clear' communication. When he realizes Azreal and Noah aren't coming back, he'll hopefully realize I meant things are good, and he should go on without us." She beamed at her bodyguard. "Smart, right?"

"It is."

She blinked. "Thank you."

He nodded, rumbled, and walked on. She slowed and stared at his back as he continued on past her. That was a genuine, direct compliment from Kas. She looked back at Yosepha, and sure enough the angel had noticed it too, eyebrow raised and gaze on the sarkarin. Maybe Mia was rubbing off on him?

Or maybe he was saying what she wanted to hear, because he was getting into some kind of competition with Vin to 'get' her? That'd be so dumb. And hot. Dumb but hot.

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

"What the fuck," she said. "There is... no way."

The second fork came to new tunnels with flesh walls. They didn't block her path, though from what she could tell, they were blocking off some other paths, limiting her options. There was a tunnel to follow, though, so they followed it.

The issue was the tunnel stopped being made of rock, and started being made of flesh. Entirely. Top to bottom, the walls were muscle, and spongy. If you pressed on them, some blood came out, but mostly, it was easy walking. Dark, but easy, except it was all flesh. And the flesh changed.

They came across more bone, enormous walls of it they had to step under or crawl over. They came across tendons, tightly knit muscle where the blood stopped flowing. They came across literal rivers of blood, pouring out of geysers and flowing down through crevices or getting sucked up by the flesh.

But it was the eyes that struck her still. Another cavern awaited them, no remnants, no rocks, nothing but endless flesh. All along the walls and ceiling, were eyes. And every single one of them was open and looking at Mia as their gold tears served as their only source of light.

"It's not dead," Mia said. Enough with the 'they' crap. This archangel was looking suspiciously like the monster in The Thing. 'It' was a good word for it. "It's not dead it's not dead it's not dead."

Cerberus whined. His six eyes were outnumbered, by a lot.

Romakus laughed, but it didn't have the same bite it usually did.

"Maybe it's not."

The angels looked at each other, wearing some mix of awe, intrigue, and maybe a little fear.

"Maybe," Noah said. "But angels have visited Angel's Spine before. Many gabriem have tried to heal the ancient bodies, and have failed. Many have seen this flesh. Some have tried to explore the depths, but leave when they realize how dangerous Angel's Spine is. All report that the corpses of Michael, Raphael, and Gabriel, are both beyond recognition, and saving."

"Beyond recognition?" Mia asked. "No drawings or anything? I know on the surface we got some weird interpretations of what 'biblically accurate' angels might be. But even the craziest ones didn't look like this!" Again, she waved her hands at the flesh tunnel ahead. It was like she was walking through a vein... lined with eyeballs. "Too many eyes!"

Cerberus coward beside her, heads down, shoulders slumped, tail between his legs. She patted his heads, but didn't tear her gaze from the giant eyes. She stepped a few feet to the side. They followed. She stepped in the other direction. They followed. Human eyes with gold irises. Crying angel eyes.

"Okay," Mia said, hands up. "Okay. I don't want to walk through that. Look at that!" She pointed, vigorously. "Look!"

"Two options," Kas said. "We go back, risk a confrontation with Alessio, and go topside. Or we keep going."

"We go back." She folded her arms across her chest. "This is too freaky. No thank you. Demons are fine. An army of demons that want to eat me? That's fine."

Azreal sighed and shook his head. "Topside, we will be exposed to angels, and we do not know what is happening up there."

Mia groaned and paced in place. She didn't have trypophobia, but the enormous hallway ahead was basically how anyone gained trypophobia.

Vin rumbled, walked past everyone, and stepped into the colossal tunnel. His feet's claws sank into the meat, and every step left a footprint of blood, only to be absorbed by the muscle flesh. The giant eyes lined the walls and ceiling, but not the floor, and they didn't so much as flinch as the child of the Belial walked past them. He didn't flinch, either.

Mia sighed and climbed onto Kas's back. "I'm scared. Carry me."

Kas rumbled, too, but it didn't have the annoyed grunt of Vin's. He understood. Good. Mia needed someone to hold right now, damn it. She sucked in a breath, and stared up at the giant eyes, hundreds of them, staring at her as Kas walked forward.

Julisa snorted, drew her four swords, and followed. "I would say we have nothing to worry about, but I have not been to Angel's Spine in centuries. And when I was here, I did not risk its tunnels." She lowered her head, crouching a bit as she looked around. "But I have spoken to many demons who have been here, and have lived here. None have ever mentioned anything of the archangels' bodies moving."

Mia sighed and squeezed Kas's spikes. "I'm sick of being special. The fuck did I do to deserve all this special treatment?"

"If you weren't special," Romakus said, "you'd be demon food."

"Not true! I'd be in Heaven. I'd be lying back on a white couch, completely naked, while beautiful angel women feed me grapes and handsome angel men eat my pussy!" Azreal raised an eyebrow, and she squinted at him. "That's right! And I'd be loving every minute of it. I would spend years and years getting doted on, getting spoiled, playing games and learning hobbies, and enjoying orgies where I'm the focus of attention of gorgeous angels. Maybe even other souls, too! But nooooo, I'm stuck with this weird power. Powers!" Hand up, she counted on her fingers. "I can manipulate the strings of existence, whatever the fuck that means, so I can manipulate Hell, can create auras, and can sense the shape of Hell nearby. I can read ancient runes. I can awaken the book in the base of Spires." Everyone looked at her, but she didn't stop. "I have runes in my head! Runes that tell me about how the universe is aligned, how life and death exist, how the Great Tower works, but I can't understand them. I can use angel runes, the three angel runes in this mess of knowledge in my head, but at least those three -- two -- are awake and working."

Julisa chuckled. "And your pussy can stretch."

Mia glared. "And yes, my body doesn't seem to be as limited as other souls, from what you all have told me." To seal her point, she pointed up at the eyes with both hands. "This is new!"

"It's not all bad," Yosepha said, and she pointed a wing at Cerberus.

Mia sighed, but looked down at the bestest boy. On cue, Cerb's dopey head looked up at her and smiled, exposing many of his very sharp teeth.

"I love you, Cerberus."

Cerberus's dopey head made a growly, happy harrumph sound. He didn't bark, but that was close enough.

"Besides," Romakus said. "If you were in Heaven, you wouldn't have met us. And we're awesome."

She glared at him, but her eyes fell, and she looked down at the shark dinosaur between her legs. He didn't look back at her, but his silence spoke for him. Did she hurt his feelings? Did Kas have feelings to hurt? And Adron. How would he feel if he knew Mia didn't want to be down here? They were demons.

And demons weren't the mindless, bloodthirsty creatures Vin tried to pass them off as, or that Kas thought all demons were.

"Mia," Vinicius said.

Mia sat up straight. Vin, saying her name. He never did that.

The crew stopped and followed Vin's pointing hand. He was aiming at the ground, and Kas came up and stood beside him.

Amber runes, in the flesh. Amber lines were always found on rock, rarely on fleshy stuff, and never the archangel flesh so far. But there they were, runes, on the fleshy floor, and they caused burned the flesh, making it sizzle and pop.

And new runes were being drawn in front of her eyes.

"Uh, guys?" Mia asked.

"I see it," Kas said.

Everyone stood and watched, the hallway plenty wide enough for all of them. No one said a thing. No one breathed. The runes drew across the red flesh, burning and scarring it, but there was no smell. The new runes were drawn in a fluid motion, each shape and its sharp edges flowing like a master calligrapher writing poetry.

"Mia?" Noah asked.

She gulped. "Be warned, child of Hell. The nothing comes. The void will swallow the Great Tower, and bring the universe back to non-existence."

Well. Fuck.

"Back?" Romakus asked.

"I... I uh... I don't know. Um, in the bible it says God created... stuff. What was there before the stuff?" She threw up her hands. "I don't know! I don't--"

More runes. The old runes disappeared, swallowed up by the muscle flesh, and new ones appeared, drawn with the same, elegant style.

"My Father created existence." Mia's voice trembled. "And the void has come to return all to nothing."

Yosepha, Noah, and Azreal fell to a knee, and summoned their armor.

No, not their armor. Everyone took a step back as the three angels were wrapped in garb they had never seen. Gold and white as always, but all three wore long flowing cloaks of white with flowing lines of gold adorning their backs. Hoods, white hoods, connected to their cloaks, and hid their faces.

"Yosepha?" Mia asked. She climbed off Kas's back and stepped around to look at them from the front.

Gold masks. Not helmets. Masks. Each covered the entirety of their face, and each was a gold carving with an angular bottom that reached lower than their chins. Several black, vertical lines decorated the simple masks, and they struck Mia cold.

The rest of the armor was beautiful. There was metal, but not nearly as much as the batlam rune would have summoned. This looked more like clothes, sturdy clothes, but all connected in a flow of white, and held snug to the limbs with gold bracers, and a gold belt with metal adornments. A glowing sun on the sternum of the chest where metal gold connected along the white fabric. A gold tree on the buckle of the belt.

Life? You didn't get a more powerful representation of life than the sun and a tree.

Every inch of their body was covered. White gloves under the gold bracers, with gold fingertips. White boots connected to pants, each with gold lines that merged into a metal gold base for the boots. And with how the white cloak hung forward, half hiding their faces, they looked utterly beautiful, and imposing. They looked scary. They looked like how Mia expected an angel to look, if they were standing in droves in an afterlife courtroom, passing judgment on sinners and sending them to Hell.

Royam. This was the rune royam, the third angel rune.

"Yosepha?" Mia asked.

The angel gave her wings a small flutter. "The runes, Mia. Read them." She spoke calmly, and with the mask covering any facial expression, it sent a chill down Mia's spine.

More runes. Mia read them.

"You must stop the nothing, child of Hell."

Mia threw up her hands again. "How!?"

The runes faded away, and there was way too long a pause before more runes appeared.

"From the dark, they come. They hunt the music. You and the other children are notes in the endlessness, ripples in the ocean, guiding them toward the Great Tower."

"I get that!" To anyone watching, it sounded like she was having an argument with herself, and not a dead archangel. Oh god, she was talking to a dead archangel. "I... I... Are you dead?"

A single rune. "Yes."

The three angels' wings slumped, and they bowed their heads even lower.

Mia sucked in a breath. She could do this. She could do this! A perfectly normal, casual conversation, with a literal archangel, whose dead body she was standing inside of.

"Did you block my path to James?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

No answer.

"Did you speak to James?"

"No."

"Why?"

"He has not played the music as loudly as you. He has not swum with Hell as you."

Swam with Hell. It knew. It knew exactly what Mia was doing when she played the music loudly.

"The woman in aera armor. Do you know her name?" No answer. "She told me if I play the music loudly, the invader will find me. Is that true?"

"Yes. When you play, you create large ripples in the endless ocean. When you are close to other children of Hell, you resonate with each other, and create even larger ripples."

"So... So what do I do!? Why did you guide me down here!?"

Azreal, Noah, and Yosepha all set their gazes on her, and she froze. They had no gazes, not with those cold masks covering their faces. She might as well have been looking at three members of the secret police, wearing masks while they dolled out punishment. And they weren't happy she was yelling at a dead demigod.

Another rune.

"Come." The rune appeared, faded into the flesh floor, and a gold line drew in its place. The line cut across the flesh like someone striking their feather pen across parchment, end to end, a gentle arc pointing her down the hallway of giant eyeballs all staring at her.

"Well," Romakus said, "at least this corpse talks. More than I can say about a lot of people."

The three angels stood and faced Mia.

"Be respectful, Mia." Yosepha's voice. "You speak to an entity so old, only God themself is older."

"Himself, apparently. Father and all that." Mia frowned and stared down at the line. "I wonder why it called God Father. I'm guessing because that's how God was always framed for me in everything I've ever seen or read. A guy. And Hell being a girl is kinda like how mother nature is always a girl, I guess? And boats."

"Boats?" Kas asked.

"Never mind. So, uh, what do we do?"

Azreal gestured ahead with a wing. "We follow."

Mia stepped in front of the three angels. "Last time I followed the summons of some random event, I faced off against a child of the Old Ones and nearly died. Azreal and Noah nearly died. We all nearly died."

Yosepha aimed her mask up, head tilted back. "We are in the presence of something truly amazing, Mia. We must investigate."

"And your mask! Your clothes!" Mia poked Noah in the side. Leather. The white stuff was leather, firm and smooth and utterly beautiful. A full set of leather armor, with gold and silver metal bits everywhere to give it that insane angel feel. Combined with the white cloak and hood, they looked amazing, and frightening. "This is royam?"

"Yes." Noah's voice.

"What's this for? If potram is for relaxing, and batlam is for battle, what's royam for? When would you ever use this?"

"It is not important." Azreal's voice. "Come."

"I'm not going anywhere until I get at least one answer."

Yosepha sighed, but her body language was solid, as if the mask and garments turned her into a statue. "For when we speak with the council. And for when we monitor the Gates of Hell."

"You monitor the Gates of Hell?"

"Yes. All angels must see what becomes of the souls sent to Hell. We must know. We must understand."

That made sense, in a strange way. A lot of angels probably never visited Hell, but it was important they understand it.

"So humans that are deemed bad, they get sent to Hell. They have go through a literal gate?"

"Yes," Noah said. "A gate of bone, metal, and flame. 'Abandon all hope ye who enter here.' The souls are branded by the gate's power, and they are swallowed by the portal. The unmarked bypassed the gate." He shook his head and let his wings droop. "We wear royam and watch from on high. It is not clothes meant to be worn except in the most important situations. It is not meant for the eyes of demons, but..." He looked down at the gold line.

"Wow," Mia said. "It makes you look scary, you know. Makes you look like judge, jury, and executioner all combined into one. Like you're... going to pull out a gold scythe."

"I am no reaper," Yosepha said. "And reapers do not use scythes. Shall we go?"

Mia frowned and folded her arms across her chest. They were eager to follow the line, and she couldn't blame them. Even Noah and Azreal were, despite what'd happened last time.

Vin snorted.

"Exactly," Romakus said, gesturing to Vin with his tail. "The big guy's right. We need answers."

Vin raised a brow, but said nothing.

Sighing, Mia climbed onto Kas's back again, and the crew got on the move. Did knowing the archangel was dead, by its own admission, affect how they felt? If it'd been alive, sure, Mia could understand them freaking out and getting excited, but it was dead. It said so. And on the surface, maybe someone saying they were dead would be a lie, but here in Hell, Mia believed it.

Did it affect how Mia felt? Well, she was fucking terrified, she was feeling that. She controlled her breathing and did her best to keep her heart rate under control, but they were on a path literally laid out for them by a dead archangel. She was fucking freaked.

It only got worse.

The next room was a cavern, too, but instead of remnants and rocks, it was all flesh. A literal waterfall, or bloodfall, flowed down the wall, landed against the flesh floor, and swept along in a river. A tendon reached from the ceiling fifty meters up and connected with the floor, and it was ten meters wide. Slivers of bone poked out from the walls, and like the other cavern, it was clear they were only seeing a sliver of the surface of the titanic bone.

A heart beat. On the side of the room, with giant veins attached to it, a human-like heart the size of a bus slowly beat. Ba dum. Ba dum. And a second heart not too far did the same. Ba dum. Ba dum. Deep, heavy sounds that pulsed through the flesh floor, like someone playing a super slow electronic song with a deadly subwoofer.

Mia reached out with her sixth sense. None of this was Hell. All of it was archangel flesh.

There were eyes everywhere. Some had grown -- had they grown? -- in clusters in places, each eye maybe a meter wide. Some huge ones grew from the ceiling. A few grew on a heart. All of them were open, and each looked at her.

"Okay," Mia said, and gestured ahead. "There's an exit, so that's good. Not sure why it asked us to come here."

The crew entered the giant flesh chamber that made the others look innocent and small. With every single bit of the cavern made of archangel flesh, no remnants grew, and no amber veins grew, either. But they could see. Gold tears fell from the eyes, beautiful and sad. They trickled down over the edges of the eyes, dripped from the ceiling from dozens, in some place hundreds of eyes. Gold rain that bathed the room in flowing light.

Along a giant bone wall, new runes appeared.

"You must pass through Heaven's Tears," she read. The real name for Angel's Spine.

The crew parked in front of the bone wall, and Mia did her best to not stare at the giant hearts pumping blood nearby.

"I'm trying, but you blocked me!" She pointed at the wall of bone. "James and I are trying to get through Heaven's Tears, so we can reach the Unholy Lands. From there we can get to the Frozen Heart, and do something about the void." Angel's Spine. False Gate. Forgotten Place.

A long delay, until finally, a rune cut across the bone wall so harsh and quick, Mia stepped back.

She choked on the word. "Lucifer."

Silence hung in the air. She waited for more, but none came. She stopped breathing and looked back at the others, but they stood there with eyes wide, locked on the wall, waiting.

"Maybe to talk to Lucifer," she said at last. "I don't know. There's a woman in aera armor guiding us. She says if we get to the Forgotten Place, erhm, Frozen Heart, we can do something."

Another delay. She looked back at the three angels with her, but all three had gotten to a knee again, bodies aimed at the wall.

Could the dead archangel even see her friends? Was it even aware of their existence? Or anyone else's existence?

"There is power in the Frozen Heart. Lucifer is bound for all eternity."

That was a strange sentence. It didn't sound right, didn't flow. Well, the angel did say it was dead. Maybe she should treat this more like she was interacting with something brought back to life by a spell, and only capable of speaking in riddles or something.

Mia approached the wall. "Who are you?"

A new rune cut across the bone wall, far slower than it wrote Lucifer's name, and the enormous rune shone in a glorious light.

"Raphael."

Mia gulped and looked to her angel friends. They each kept their head lowered, bodies still as stone.

"Raphael. Can you... see me?"

"I sense the music upon you. From you."

"Can you sense the people with me?"

"The one you call James is far ahead."

Mia winced and looked around again. The archangel literally couldn't see Noah, Yosepha, or Azreal. Their wings slumped.

"Raphael, why did you guide me this way?"

"You are more versed in the music. You can do what the other cannot."

"What's that?"

"You locked Asmodeus back within the body of Hell. While the other child of Hell James may learn, you have already learned, and you must learn again. I will teach you."