~~Day 91~

~~Mia~~

Romakus stabbed his sword into the flesh floor of the colossal cavern, and the group turned around. They'd heard them coming, but running wasn't an option, not when they had no idea where they were going.

From the black came the snarls and rumbling roars of cannams. Half a dozen of them, all on leashes, while pulling a giant demon behind them. And behind the giant demon, came an army of demons.

"Vicente," Romakus said. "You chased us all the way here?"

Vicente, the korgejin from the Black Valley. Covered in tribal scar tattoos, the titan licked his fangs and drew his sword, other hand holding the huge chain leashes of his pets. Half of his face was completely covered in decorative scars, like someone had turned his face into a warped piece of art.

Around him came a half dozen brutes and tigers, each donning several pieces of meera metal, like their boss. And around them came a couple hundred vrats and gargoyles. More. There even came another sarkarin like Kas, a muscular creature that walked on all fours with the posture of a gorilla, but looked more like a long-armed T-Rex. And like Kas, he had no eyes, just a flat, solid head of black, and two horns jutting forward.

"Alessio wanted to come herself," Vicente said. "But she's not stupid enough to step into another province without a proper army. That can come later."

Romakus snorted and gestured out at the approaching demons. "This isn't an army?"

"You know it isn't. But then, when's the last time you had a proper army under your control? Not since the Spires War, I imagine."

Mia, standing on her feet in the blood, and safely behind Azreal and his shield, poked her head around the gold barrier. Romakus was around during the Spires War? With an army? Even Yosepha looked a little surprised.

"That was a long time ago," Romakus said. "You managed to tame some cannams?"

"So did you," Vicente said, and he pointed his sword at Mia. "That must be a rare creature indeed."

Mia slammed her staff down and pointed right back at the bastard. "You are not touching Cerberus!" She couldn't use the music, but Vicente didn't know that.

Cerberus snarled at the approaching demons, all three heads scanning, but he didn't leave Mia's side. And with Noah and Azreal beside them, she had excellent protection. Just, not enough to stop the many, many demons stepping out from the darkness into the light of the angels' weapons. Soon, Mia and the gang were half surrounded.

Julisa pointed a sword at the Black Valley bailiff. "You were told to leave us be. The woman in aera armor herself explained that we must continue our journey."

Kas crouched next to her, tail dead still in the blood. He kept his weight off his bad arm. Faking the injury was worse than it was, maybe?

"Alessio thinks the unmarked would still be better off in her hands," Vicente said.

Yosepha stepped up and flared her wings. "She'd be wrong."

"Don't make me kill you all. Alessio sent me to bring the unmarked back, not to slaughter Romakus and what's left of his precious Damall." The tetrad came closer, and his six hellhounds snarled louder, clawing at the blood floor, trying to get off the leash and attack. "That's really all that's left of what was once a proud demon, right, Romakus? How the mighty have fallen. Once a bailiff of False Gate, now nothing more than an irka, scurrying around and causing trouble for all the spires."

No one looked Romakus's way except Mia, way in the back where no one would notice. Their leader, sort of, used to be a bailiff? And not just any bailiff, but one of False Gate, arguably the strongest and most deadly of the provinces, according to the group. That strength was partly what led Belor, a child of the Old Ones, to fight the other spires, and earn Heaven's interference.

If Romakus had been bailiff then, he probably had the blood of angels on his hands.

She didn't ask what an irka was. Some kind of hell rat, she was sure.

"That was a long time ago," Romakus said. "Many lifetimes ago."

Vicente snorted. "You're no soul, Romakus. You're just like me, timeless. And just like me, you refuse to die when you probably should." Vicente came closer, hooves splashing blood, and he flared his gigantic wings. Tetrad skulls rattled around his waist. "Traitor."

"I'm no traitor." Romakus stepped forward, too, leaving his sword behind, their only guide in the endless dark.

"Oh yes you are. How many millennia did you spend, gathering your forces, bringing them to heel, serving that maniac Belor. How many demons died when you left them?"

Romakus flared his own wings, and the many skulls dangling from them trembled with the tetrad's growing anger. Romakus wasn't the sort to get angry. Poke fun, sure. Make bad jokes, sure. The sort of demon who'd spent the past hundred years watching scrying pools more than actually pursue any sort of goal. But Vicente had his fellow tetrad almost shaking.

"Is this what you really came here for?" Romakus asked. "To goad me?"

"I came for the unmarked, and I have the numbers to take her this time."

"You won't even be able to find your way back once you have her."

Vicente gestured down at his dogs with the thumb-claws of his wings.

"They know the way back. Just like they knew to follow the path here, even through all this blood."

Julisa and Romakus quickly peeked back at Cerberus. Serious and boss head stared at the surrounding demons, but dopey head idly bit at the blood underneath him, no longer interested in the impending threat.

"Sure would be nice," Romakus said, "to have a cannam who could follow a scent."

Mia scrunched up her nose. "He's still a puppy."

Vicente laughed, and the demons near him laughed, too. "A large, three-headed puppy. Alessio can have you, unmarked, but I think I would like that unique cannam for myself."

"You aren't touching my dog."

"Where'd you find the beast? And how did you tame it? It took months of brutality to train these." He again gestured down at his six, snarling, borderline rabid animals. "You must share your secrets with me."

"Fuck you."

Vicente pulled his head back an inch, like she'd just offended him. It was a very Romakus mannerism. These two knew each other well.

Through all this, Vin stood in the center of the group, waiting, listening, scanning the darkness. Probably looking for the rider.

"Vicente," Julisa said. "You took the same path we did, to follow our scent. Then you went past the burned corpses."

"I did. The ragarin's doing?" Vicente looked at Vinicius, and growled heavy in his throat.

Vin didn't respond.

"The rider's," Romakus said.

The entire army of demons went quiet. Only the six angry cannams made noise.

"The rider is here?" Vicente asked.

Romakus nodded and lowered his wings. "If we fight, the noise will attract attention. We've already killed a mutated wurm down here, but you'll attract more. And if we're unlucky, you'll attract the rider."

Vicente snarled, matching the rabid sounds of his dogs, and he scanned the edge of the surrounding darkness. How the tetrad had even navigated this darkness was a mystery. Hellbeasts could see well in the dark, sure, but ever since Raphael had died for real, the gold tears had stopped.

If he lost the cannams, he'd have a very hard time getting back.

"Azreal," Mia whispered. "If Vicente loses the hellhounds, he'll be lost down here with no light."

Azreal nodded. And unless she was seeing things, she even caught a hint of a smile on him through a tiny slit in his helmet. Look at her, being all tactical.

Azreal looked to Noah. Noah flared his wings and--

"Stop!"

Everyone froze. A voice from behind Mia and the gang. She turned and held up her staff in front of her to block the incoming blade or demon claws coming for her neck. But nothing came.

Slowly, out of the shadow, an amber light appeared. And another, and another. Torches?

A tetrad stepped out and joined them, pinning Mia's group between Vicente, and whoever this stranger was. A gorujin tetrad like Romakus, clawed feet and a tail, wings, and ten feet tall with four horns. He had hair though, long hair that flowed freely behind him and dangled down to his hips where a collection of bones awaited. No skulls, but claws, claws bigger than even Vin's. Hellbeast claws.

A host of smaller demons mirroring Vicente's followed behind him, and at least two dozen of them carried burning sticks. The torches ended in twigs and branches, but the fire only danced on them, never bringing them to ash. Burning bushes? They'd made torches out of burning bushes. How?

"Well," the stranger said, "this is a surprise. The rider comes through our land of flesh and blood, killing all in his way. But not for the first time, and not for the last. We give him his space, but any demon who gets too close succumbs to the rider's presence. All becomes violence." Whoever this tetrad was, he spoke with eloquence, almost like he was reading poetry. But like all male tetrads, his voice had some gruff and grit to it, too.

"Anianus," Romakus said.

"Romakus, old friend, is that you?" The Romakus-look-alike stepped around Mia's group, sparing a long glance for her, the angels, Vinicius, and finally Vicente. "Vicente. Far from home. You know better than to wander Angel's Spine. Dobasi will not appreciate this trespass."

Vicente snarled, and his dogs snarled louder. "We didn't come here for Angel's Spine, Anianus. We came here for the unmarked girl."

"Oh ho." The tetrad wandered back to Mia's side of the group and squatted down nearby. Azreal stayed close, but Anianus made no move to draw the enormous axe on his back. "That explains the strange armor, I suppose. What is your name, unmarked soul?"

Mia blinked at the demon. "Mia."

"Does Mia have a last name?"

She blinked. It was the first time a demon had ever asked her that. This guy was the complete opposite of Vin and his no-names policy.

"It's uh, a secret."

Anianus laughed, stepped back, and gestured back at his small army. He was charming, in a strange, disturbing, theatrical kinda way. Handsome, too, in a demony, scary kinda way.

"Dobasi has been looking to speak to an unmarked. I hope you'll give us the pleasure of coming to the spire for a meeting."

Mia gulped and shook her head. "We have to get through Angel's Spine quickly."

"Yes, Dobasi said as much. We know you and the other unmarked souls are moving around Hell. Two of you are in Angel's Spine as we speak. Where is the other?"

Mia stared. How the fuck did this guy know all this? She looked back at the group, but no one had a thing to say, eyes flicking back and forth between everyone in case someone jumped someone else. It was like a Wild West scene. She waited for someone else to do the talking, but no one did. Up to her, then.

"That's a secret, too," she said.

Anianus smiled, showing off some of those big teeth. "Smart. Well, as you can see, you are surrounded, but we mean you no harm. We here in the dark are far less... shortsighted, than Alessio and her dogs." The big tetrad nodded toward Vicente and his hellhounds. "Come with us. We have such sights to show you."

She froze and glanced at Romakus, but the other gorujin tetrad didn't react. Either he didn't know the movie quote, or knew Anianus meant nothing by it.

"No," Vicente said. "They will come with us."

Julisa, four swords in hand, stepped to the side and kept both armies on her flanks. Romakus did the same, plucking his sword from the flesh floor. Yosepha and Kas faced Anianus and his hundreds of demons, armed with torches and meera metal. Noah and Vin faced Vicente, his hellhounds, and his larger army of demons, creeping around in the dark with no torches at all.

Azreal stayed with Mia, shield up, spear at the ready. In the dark and flickering firelight, she had to admit, Azreal had claim on the most imposing look, considering how absurdly massive and bulky his armor was, and how the front of his helmet left only the tiniest bit of his face visible. All anyone could really see of his skin were his two eyes, amethyst purple, catching the torchlight and the light of his spear's blade.

Plus, his great shield was literally taller than Mia. She took advantage and kept it between her and Vicente, but that left her facing Anianus. And unlike Vicente, Anianus and his demons were all smiling. Creepy. Cerb snarled at the newcomer and stayed by Mia's leg, apparently noticing how creepy they were, too.

"Vicente," Mia said, and she poked her head out from around Azreal's shield. "Didn't Alessio tell you what the armored woman told us?"

"She did, but you are naïve to think such a person would not simply lie to you."

"Why would she lie?"

Vicente shrugged. "Why does anyone lie? So they can gain more power. I'm sure the woman has plans for you that you do not know, plans you would not agree to."

Mia shook her head. "Maybe, but that doesn't matter! The aliens are here. I have to try something."

"You aren't stopping anything, unmarked. You are going to Alessio, where you will be her pet. Her toy, like we hear you were to Zelandariel. You will spend your nights and days doing as she says. You will use your powers to make her, and me, stronger. You will be hers. You will be--"

Vinicius pounced.

Something that big and bulky should not have been able to move that fast, but Vinicius's talons ripped up the fleshy ground, splattered blood everywhere, and the hulking titan threw himself at Vicente. He crashed straight onto the tetrad's shoulders, pinned him to the floor underneath a foot of blood, and ripped into him. The hellhounds had better reaction time than their master, and leapt onto Vinicius's body, biting and clawing. Their teeth sank into his arms, legs, and tail, but Vinicius ignored them. Roaring down at his prey, he ripped and tore, and the tetrad went still.

Chaos followed. The demons with Vicente dove for Vinicius, not a thought or concern for how much bigger he was than them. And Vinicius met their charge with a roar that almost sounded happy. They joined the hellhounds and stabbed him, but even as they sank swords inches deep into his muscle, Vinicius stood up and unleashed hellfire.

Demons went up like living kindling.

"Vinicius!" Mia yelled. "Someone help him!"

Azreal stayed with Mia and turned and faced Anianus. Cerberus watched the battle, snarling and roaring, but stayed with Mia. Everyone else dove for Vinicius, weapons out and wings flapping.

Noah stayed low and chopped two of the hellhounds off Vin's colossal tail. Yosepha took to the air, hovered behind Vin, and cut down the other four, earning a whine from each that sounded far too close to a dog's whine. And as the hounds died and fell from Vin's bleeding body, the child of Belial continued to breathe hellfire, whipping his head left and right like a dragon. Dozens of demons died in seconds, but hundreds dashed back into the darkness. Not to flee, but to reposition.

They came back, dashed through the shadows, with only the sound of splashing giving away their positions. The darkness was as thick as the Black Valley's smog. Romakus let out an evil cackle as he cut down a vrat that got too close. Instead of jumping back to a safe position, Romakus ran into the darkness after another demon, with the light of flickering hellfire on corpses disappearing beneath the blood pool lighting his path. Julisa did the same, four swords more than enough to stab a gargoyle through the neck and a brute through the face at the same time.

But the sarkarin, the Kas lookalike, dove for Julisa and knocked her swords aside. She went down on her back, sending blood splashing everywhere, but before he could rip out her throat, Kas tackled him. Kas wore no armor. The stranger did. But Kas had the element of surprise and got his claws into his kin's exposed side under the half breastplate. Vicente's demon turned and tackled Kas, and the two met head on. They rammed their heads together, and Mia winced at the echoing sound of bone smashing bone.

"Leave none alive," Anianus said, still wearing his smile.

Mia spun. "You--"

"Not you or your friends, unmarked. They know who to kill." Nodding, the tetrad pointed his axe toward Vicente's army. And like a mob of angry rioters given the order to charge, hundreds of demons armed with burning bushes shaped into torches ran forward into the dark.

The demons from the Black Valley were covered in tribal tattoos, all done through scarring, with hard edges or with obvious bone shapes drawn on like skulls. They all wore skulls, too, strapped to them by leather going through a skull's eye and out through the bottom or some such. And some had bones tied to their limbs like some sort of cheap armor.

Demons from Angel's Spine looked different. They weren't covered in scar tattoos, but normal scars, instead. Big, nasty scars, the kind that'd kill a demon. Every one of them had a dozen huge cuts somewhere on their body, a wing or tail or chest or face. Some were missing an arm. Some were missing a horn. And when they engaged Vicente's demons, they shrieked like some sort of monster coming out of the dark.

Vinicius joined them. The hellfire didn't last long, disappearing into the blood pool, but with the torches and Yosepha's light above, they could see just fine. They charged Vicente's forces, surrounded them, and cut them down. Mia covered her eyes when three demons surrounded one, and literally ripped them to pieces. But it didn't matter to Vicente's demons. Defeated and surrounded, with a literal angel above launching gold arcs of energy down at them, and the last child of the Old Ones in their face running them down, they still faced the battle and charged. And they roared with bloodlust as they did.

"Demons," Azreal said over the noise, loud enough for her to hear. "Care for death more than life. Always remember that, Mia."

She gulped and glanced up at the man. Azreal spared her only a single glance before turning back to face the battle, eyes disappearing into his helmet by the angle. Intense eyes, as always, but something more, like he was trying to tell her a secret that everyone already knew.

Kas got his weight under his counterpart, and tossed him up and over like a rhino beetle. The enemy landed with a hard thunk onto the flesh floor, and Kas pounced in a second. In the opening, Kas got his teeth around the other sarkarin's neck, and he yanked his head away, bringing a huge chunk of flesh with it.

Mia covered her ears. Better than hearing the other sarkarin try to roar or breathe through a throat that didn't exist anymore.

The battle was over quickly. A few of Anianus's demons died, but Vin's surprise attack had punched a hole straight into Vicente's forces they hadn't expected. They probably hadn't expected to run into Anianus at all. Which begged the question, how did Anianus know Mia was here at all?

The demons wasted no time collecting their bounties. Yosepha flew back, and Noah walked back to Mia's side, but everyone else got themselves food and skulls. Kas ripped out his opponent's heart and ate it, but didn't bother with the skull. Romakus got a quick meal from some random demon, as did Julisa, and each hooked a new fresh demon head to their armor's waist; cleaning it could wait until later.

"I didn't think you cared," Julisa said to Kas, smiling down at him as she bit into her heart. "I think you deserve a treat for helping me. The moment we find a place to rest, take me."

Kas snorted up at her and swallowed his heart with all the delicateness of an alligator.

"Vin!" Mia yelled. She ran up to him and stared at his back. A sword stuck out of his side. A dagger -- by demon standards -- stuck out of his shoulder. Several gashes ran down his legs. A dozen bite marks, each deep enough to draw blood, coated his calves and wrists; even his dark red skin couldn't stop cannam teeth. "Vin you... you dumbass! You could have gotten killed!"

Rumbling in that quiet, annoyed way he did when he was in insane pain, or slightly annoyed with her, he yanked the sword and dagger from his flesh and tossed the blades into the blood pool. He gave her a quick peek over his shoulder, snorted, reached down, and ripped out Vicente's heart. Unlike Romakus or Julisa, he didn't take his kill's skull. Maybe the man had killed so many in his life, skulls meant nothing to him anymore. He feasted on his kill, faced the group, and waited.

"Is that a spire's leash I see?" Anianus asked, eyes flicking between Mia and Vin. He hadn't joined the fight, happy to watch his demons fight for him.

Vin didn't so much as sneer. He didn't need to. The hard gaze was enough to make the bailiff's smile fade.

"Well," Anianus said. "I do hope you keep him under control, unmarked. It would be a shame to kill such an old creature."

Mia glared. "Like you could kill him."

Eyebrow raised, Anianus didn't press the issue. He gestured back the way he had come.

"Will you accompany us?"

Sighing, Mia looked at the rest of the group, hoping someone had a better idea. No one did. They were hopelessly lost, and every attempt they made to get back topside backfired horribly. James might be dead, and they couldn't get to him. Adron and the others, too.

"I have your word?" Mia asked. "That we don't have to stay? We can leave and be on our way?"

Anianus made a playful bow full of exaggeration, like he was doing a Broadway play, flared wings included.

"Of course. My word. My sin."

Mia almost laughed at that.

"Okay. I guess we go. You did just help us."

"Wonderful!" He gestured to a couple of demons. He took a burning bush from one and handed the other to Romakus. "And wonderful to see you again too, Romakus. Still alive and causing chaos after all these years?"

Everyone gave Romakus a glance, but he waved them off with a wing.

"A young tetrad like you," Romakus said, "rising up to bailiff? Why, I remember when you were just an egg."

"That was almost a millennium ago, Romakus. And you weren't there." Rolling his eyes, Anianus pointed ahead, and started walking. "Come along. We will make sure you're treated right. Dobasi has spoken with the archangels, and they have told him what they could. And I need to get back quickly and warn him that your child of the Old Ones may have just triggered a war with the Black Valley. What a wonderful day!" Unlike Romakus, Anianus's enthusiasm didn't sound sarcastic.

Like someone knocked the reason out of Mia's head with a bat, she ran up to Anianus and walked beside him.

"Dobasi can speak with the archangels?" She almost said 'too.'

"The spire can."

She gulped and looked back at the others. The three angels still wore their armor, making it hard to see their eyes, but they looked shocked.

"Is that how you found us?" she asked.

"Partly, and only a general idea of where you could be. Dobasi sent both Cato and myself to find either you or the other unmarked. I had the idea to search the Dead Sea, because"--he gestured around--"as you can see, you can't see." Somehow, the big demon made a bad joke funny. Probably because of the smooth way he talked. "Souls get lost down here all the time, and so do demons. None survive."

Romakus matched his laugh. Like Joker talking to Shakespeare.

"We'd survive," Romakus said. "Though--"

He stopped himself short, and looked back into the darkness, past Anianus's following demons. A second later, everyone stopped and looked back. Not because Romakus was, but because something back there made a noise.

Clink. Clink.

"Go," Mia said.

Anianus looked down at her. "What?"

"Run. Run!"

"You heard the girl," Romakus said. "Go!"

They ran.

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

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~~Day 86~~

~~David~~

It was almost evening twilight, and keeping his eyes open was getting harder and harder. If he'd been on the surface, he'd have blamed adrenaline wearing off. Down here in Hell, whatever the reason, letting go of the spire aura's strings let him relax, and relaxing on no sleep was ripping his consciousness out from under him. He had to sleep, and soon.

But he couldn't even hear himself think with the remnants everywhere, screaming and dying around them. The demons stared up at the living wall, and what few betrayers had survived the trip down avoided it, risking the lava over getting close to their future. They stayed behind other demons, and the demons killed the remnants sticking up from the ground as they walked. The ground became a bloodbath.

Demons at the front of the group dragged the claws along the wall, killing remnants. Septima's brutes were big and heavy enough that the remnants were no threat, and they casually killed remnants by the dozens as they walked. Better than leaving them alive, potentially getting someone hurt. But it also meant that where the wall met the ground, there was a growing pile of gore. Naoko and her two betrayer friends looked horrified.

The growing terror only got worse when some remnants freed themselves from the wall.

"Look!" Lasca yelled, and the little demon pointed up.

A remnant high above pulled themselves free of the wall and fell. They crashed on the ground in front of the armies and splattered, bone breaking and naked flesh tearing open. Another followed, crashing headfirst into the ground near Caera and David. And another.

Some climbed out of the stone, the rock crumbling around them and giving them the freedom to fall as they stood up. More climbed from the walls, falling to their deaths, while others close to the ground stumbled to their knees, got up, and walked toward David and the demons. Every demon froze, and those with eyes stared at the oncoming remnants.

Right. Demons were terrified of zombies. It was almost enough to make David laugh between the chorus of the screaming, shrieking damned souls.

"Go on!" Septima yelled at her honor guard. "We keep moving."

The brutes marched forward, brought out their axes completely unnecessarily, and cleaved the remnants in front of them. Septima prowled behind them and avoided any remnant unlucky enough to not die from getting cleaved in half. David recognized a scaredy-cat when he saw one, but said nothing. His girls were no better off, and even Laoko hissed and snarled at the remnants as she cut them down with her four large swords. The remnants were barely as tall as her hip.

David looked up at the wall of the damned, wincing. This detour changed their plans, for now. He had to get back to the surface, get his army together again, and stick to the original plan. Or at least get someone else up there, now, while Septima was distracted.

"Domnius," he said, and looked back for the little man.

The one-eyed gremlin hopped around from behind Acelina and up to Caera's side.

"Mister David Unmarked sir?"

"Think you can climb the wall?"

Domnius stared at him and looked up at the living wall. "Not--"

"Not here. Go back and climb up where we first came down."

"Domnius thinks so. Dangerous, but can do it." He held out his hands. "Strong hands. Strong claws. Little body."

David laughed, but it wavered on the way out. "That's why I liked rock climbing as a light guy." Nodding, he gestured back. "The plan hasn't changed. I'm going to get out of here and go to the spire, but I need my army. Think you can go back, climb up, gather the army, and try and follow us? Walk the path of the Scar and head to the spire?"

Domnius blinked at him. "You want... Domnius... to talk to army? Thousand demons. Ten thousand demons. A billion demons!"

"It's not a billion. But yes, I want Domnius to gather my army. Take your closest friends with you. Explain to my army what's happened."

"But angels--"

"Avoid the angels. They're after me, not you. Talk to the volas, get them to understand what's happening. I'll be coming back up eventually, and I want to see my army when I do." He leaned down from Caera's back and whispered into the little man's ear. "This is important, Domnius. I need someone I trust, and someone who can command respect. That's you."

"Me?"

"The imps and grems listen to you."

"But we just imps and grems."

David nodded. "And every demon in the Scar will listen if you speak with a few thousand imps and grems behind you."

Domnius met David's gaze for a long while before sucking in a breath, nodding, saluting, and scampering back the other way. A couple of imps and grems followed him, and he disappeared out of sight behind the two demon armies.

"Smart," Caera said from under him.

"I hope so. Or I just sent that little guy to his death."

"I--" She hissed and jumped back, full-on cat reflexes kicking in as a remnant crashed against the ground in front of her. Hiss turned to snarl, and she cut the dying woman into ribbons. Shaking like a leaf, she stepped over the dead remnant. "I think he'll be fine. Any imp or grem with a few years under their belt is a survivor."

He looked to the Las, each walking behind the angels flanking Caera. Armed with their swords and axes too heavy for David to wield comfortably, they clicked and chirped, and with big, panicked eyes, cut down any nearby remnants not dead. When a walking remnant popped up near them, they all shrieked, surrounded it, and chopped the damned soul to literal pieces.

"David," Jes said. "Think you can grow some forbidden fruit? I know you're wiped, but there are so many remnants here. It might be easier, right?"

"I was thinking about it. When we stop, I'll give it a shot."

"You hungry?"

"Yeah. Using my inner fingers"--he really needed a better term for that--"to play music, or to mute music, is pretty draining."

"So, what do we do when we stop? Because..." She gestured up at the wall of remnants, at the carpet of remnants ahead of them, and Septima and her army.

"I'll think of something."

Laoko snorted back at him. "Think quickly."

"I get it, okay? We're in a tight spot." He almost suggested just asking Septima for a truce, but that'd be exposing weakness. To a demon, that was an invitation to take advantage. "I'll make sure everyone gets along."

"How?" The tetrad did not look convinced.

"I'll make it work."

She glared down at him, but let the issue go and returned to cutting down remnants like weeds. Scary, screaming weeds.

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

"Okay," David said, and held up a hand. His girls stopped. What was left of his army stopped. And with a little more hesitation than was necessary, Septima and hers stopped. "I'll build us a camp for tonight."

Septima turned and faced him, as did her brutes. "Build us a camp?" she asked. "And how do you plan to do that?"

"Same way I killed that gargoyle of yours."

"You look exhausted, unmarked. I could probably kill you now."

Tsila and Moriah, still wearing their armor with weapons summoned, drew them and waited, eyes locked on the tiger.

David glared at her too. In the past, he'd have instantly tried to placate. Not anymore. Not with a demon like this.

"Septima," he said. "Shut the fuck up."

She glared at him, but said nothing as he crawled off Caera's back.

He could do this. He needed to do this. If he failed this, Septima would see it as weakness and attack. Not an option. Fuck dying.

He summoned his armor and staff, and bathed the area in a red glow. Like asking a fireman to put on his gear after running ten miles, his insides burned and his metaphorical knees struggled with the weight. But he stayed standing, and the demons gawked at his full suit of black armor, the red rubies, the black, spiky crown, and the wizard's staff in hand.

He found the strings for nearby resonance. Jes was right. The area was flowing with it. Each remnant was a single drop, and it took hundreds of remnants to make a single forbidden fruit. And they were surrounded by hundreds of thousands of them.

Instead of guiding distant, weak, flowing streams of invisible resonance and essence, here in the center of some of Hell's worst torture, it was more like carefully poking an oil vein. He plucked a string, pointed the rivers of resonance toward a single point, and did his best to keep the musical string from losing control as Hell guided the flow. In seconds, a forbidden tree popped up like a daisy, and in seconds more, it grew a dozen fruit.

"By Lucifer," Septima said, prowling from side to side by the tree.

"Yeah," David said, half laughing between clenched teeth. "Maybe." He plucked a fruit and devoured it. The familiar, glorious feeling of nourishment and comforting warmth flooded his insides, spread into his limbs, and the ache in his bones and soul lessened. "Take one, Septima."

"What?"

"I'm feeding everyone here. I don't have five loaves of bread and two fish, but I can do this."

With a little more energy in his step, he walked back toward the watching armies, and grew another tree. Even as remnants fell around them, rained on them like soft rocks, or climbed out from the ground and attacked them, channeling the resonance into a new tree was easy. There was so much of it. The problem became making sure the musical note he played didn't explode in his face, like playing the guitar without realizing he'd left the amp on eleven. But he grew another tree, and another, Caera, Moriah, and Tsila staying close behind him. Each tree earned shocked stares and dropped jaws that turned to smiles when he gestured to the hanging fruit.

"Eat," he said. "And share! I mean that. Not everyone needs a full fruit, and it'd take me all damn night to grow a fruit for each of you. Share, or I'll just take your hearts for food, instead." He gave every demon a hard glare, and any that held his gaze for longer than a half second, he stared down until they relented. The hardass leader routine was wearing him down.

Satisfied, he walked past the armies back to the front of the group. Don't pass out.

"It's too much to hope," he said, "that the remnants will stop regrowing during the night?"

"They will not stop," Septima said, head tilted, eyes on him.

"Then we take shifts. I'll send my--the girls out here to check on things and make sure everyone's getting along."

She tilted her head the other way. "Send out?"

He turned, faced the wall of eviscerated remnants beside him, and drew out a ceiling of stone. It wasn't as thick or wide as he wanted, and instead of pure blackstone, it came with a bunch of regular ground mixed in, but something was better than nothing. A flick of his staff, and rock crumbled and wiped away the layers of blood and gore in the den to-be. He sculpted the ceiling into a bowl shape, an upside-down bowl with some small holes in the walls, and an entrance only just barely big enough for Laoko to enter, if she ducked.

A tidy little cave. Practically a hobbit hole.

He pointed his staff at the demon army behind him. They froze, but he gave the staff a little wave, and more stone grew out from the wall. A balcony ceiling, high and wide enough for the demons to stand and rest beneath it. Don't cause an avalanche, David. Growing the canopy along the wall so it reached back far enough for the entire army had his body trembling, but he did it, and slammed the base of his staff into the ground when he was done. Now they could sleep without remnants literally falling on their heads.

A couple of daring volas clapped, and David smiled.

"I'm going to sleep," he said. Before he disappeared into his protective cave, he gave Septima a last glare, and looked to the crowd staring at him. "Take shifts. Keep an eye on each other. If anyone hurts anyone else, I will kill them myself." He slammed the bottom of his staff against the stone ground again, hard enough it echoed over the endless chorus of remnants. "Do I make myself clear!?"

The demons nodded.

David walked into his dark little hovel, sat down, dismissed his armor, and waited. The girls followed him in, and one by one they sat down, the Las in the center, everyone else near the walls of the small cave.

Daoka sat beside him and chirped at him.

"Yeah," Jes said, sitting beside her girlfriend. "What's the word? Hair trigger?"

David ground his teeth. "Something about the way that gargoyle held that imp like he was just... food... It really set me off."

Caera lay beside him and set her head on his lap. Without thinking, he stroked it, combing her short tendril dreadlocks, and he leaned back and set his head against the stone wall behind him. Right now, stone was comfy.

Acelina and Moriah came in.

"Laoko and Tsila will take first shift," Moriah said.

"Good," he said. "In a couple days, assuming Tarkissa doesn't hit us with a spire aura again, we'll climb back out of this ravine, closer to the spire. If Domnius is successful, we'll have the army back, and we can attack."

"We can't leave tomorrow?" Jes asked. "After you've rested?"

"Maybe. But why Tarkissa and Azailia want to sacrifice me is important, and the answer is probably down here. I didn't save us from the angels. Someone else did."

Caera rumbled and pressed her head against his stomach. "No one else can play the music, David. We can't hear it."

Moriah nodded. "Yes. No angel, demon, or human plays this music. The old texts speak of it, speak of the power the archangels wielded with it, and perhaps Lucifer's firstborn, the Old Ones. But they're all dead, save for Lucifer themself. Forgotten, in their Forgotten Place, perhaps also dead."

David gestured up. "Someone created that rock canopy. Someone built that path down for us. And I don't think it was another unmarked. We have to figure out what's going on."

"Agreed," Caera said. "I've never explored this ravine. Almost no one has. I want to see more."

Acelina snorted. "We do not have time to explore ruins of ancient days." Sitting on her side, she set the egg in front of her. "The creature inside grows quickly."

"Going to hatch soon?" David asked. "Something we need to worry about?"

"No. I am no hellbeast, and I have reared no hellbeast egg, but I do not think it will hatch soon. It is, however, growing faster than I imagined it would."

David stared at the egg. Insanity kept getting dumped on his head, and through it all, he had this egg to worry about. A part of him wanted to leave the egg behind, stop worrying about it, but a much bigger part of him was curious, and would never forgive himself if he did something abandon it. And if Mia ever found out, she'd karate chop him in the throat.

He closed his eyes again, hand still on Caera's head, and leaned back against the wall. Someone or something was down here, something that'd saved their asses. He had to find out.

He fell asleep to the sound of a million screaming remnants. With so many voices together, it became white noise, and sleep came far too easily.

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

"David."

David's eyes shot open, and he sat up. Moriah was gone. So was Jeskura. Laoko was back with Tsila, and they had a few betrayers with them. But it was the succubus behind Laoko that spoke up.

"Zazee?" he asked.

Zazee was the succubus he met with Tacharius, back in the Grave Valley. Tacharius had done all the talking, but Zazee had always stuck close, with Tacharius's betrayer Natalie at her side, and her own two betrayers Naoko and Fuad.

She smiled. "I wanted to ask if our betrayers can sleep in here."

He squinted at her. Everyone with eyes did.

"I'm not sure--"

"It will be fine," Tsila said, taking Moriah's spot. "The demons outside are taking shifts. But these three are among the few betrayers that survived the trip down here. Most others ran into the tunnels. Several came down the slope and died. These three, however, are survivors."

Zazee nodded and patted Fuad on the shoulder. "I taught them well. But down here, surrounded by Septima's forces, they are being... stared at, like a meal. Can they stay with you?"

Caera lifted her head and glared at the succubus and her human companions. But instead of arguing, or scaring Naoko off, she put her head back on David's lap and closed her eye.

"Yeah," David said. "Sure. Just... yeah."

The betrayers sighed with relief and sat down. There wasn't much room, so they sat near the entrance. Zazee said a few more things and made a few more gestures, but David barely heard, eyes on the three humans now in his presence.

It was strange. He'd been surrounded by only demons, and now angels, for so long, he'd almost forgotten what other humans even looked like. The 666 etched into their foreheads almost didn't matter.

He met Naoko's gaze. She smiled at him, wearing nothing more than a flimsy piece of old gray silk, one of the vola garbs not deemed good enough for trade. Attractive as hell, though, a petite Japanese girl, black hair to her shoulders, and was only a little taller than the Las. And if he wasn't seeing things, she damn well knew she was hot, and smiled at David a little longer than she had to.

He had to be careful with her. With no idea if he should trust her, it was probably a good idea to keep her at a distance. Or Caera would simply eat Naoko and make it a moot issue.

"You okay?" Naoko asked.

The demons looked at her, surprised she had the courage to talk, surrounded by the people she'd been dumped on. And she didn't ask them. She asked David.

"Yeah. I'm okay."

She nodded, closed her eyes, and sat back, shoulder to shoulder with Natalie the redhead.

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

~~Day 87~~

He woke up. That was nice. No visions of another unmarked dying. That was great. And he actually felt better. That was awesome.

He got up and stretched. Ass hurt, but that was fine. His inner fingers were there, awake and alive, feeling, and he touched the invisible strings. He was good to go.

Caera was gone, likely doing a shift outside with Jes and Daoka, and the Las, too. That left him with the betrayers, Laoko, Acelina, and the angels. Tsila was already awake, and looking at the betrayers.

Not the betrayers, but their feet.

David winced at the sight of them. When he'd first come to Hell, his feet had had a tough time hardening up at first, a lot of pain. And never tough enough for running and sliding down a slope of rocks. All three betrayers' feet looked beat up. Healing, but still problematic.

Ask Tsila to heal them? She had brought them in. But from the way Tsila grimaced, he decided against it. She was an angel. They were damned souls. There was a tension between them he didn't want to pull tighter.

As the three betrayers woke up, David reached inside himself, and played a gentle little tune, a tiny thing to guide a single mote of resonance and essence toward him. He summoned a little forbidden tree, with just barely enough energy to spawn a few small fruit. His girls had eaten, and he thought Zazee had shared her food with her betrayers already. Either way, he plucked the three fruit, and gave them to the rising betrayers.

"Unmarked?" Fuad asked.

"Eat it quick," he said, and stepped out into Hell.

It wasn't as bad as he thought it'd be, honestly. Sure, the million remnants were still there, screaming, carpeting the path and wall, and some broke free of their confines and came zombie-walking their way. The demons chopped them down and killed any nearby remnants they could.

Septima sat nearby with her three brutes around her, all under his canopy, and watched David's little cave. The two armies had all found places to sit, some standing and doing rounds, killing remnants. No one was fighting.

"Report," David said to Jes.

The gargoyle blinked at him, but little Laria stepped around her and saluted.

"No violence to report, commander! All is well on deck!"

David laughed. "She right, Jes?"

"Yeah. Far as I can see, no one killed each other last night."

Septima approached, half growling as she prowled, like a grumpy, angry tiger. Not a morning person.

"Of course," she said. "Until we are out of this ravine, we have a truce."

David perked up. Of all the people to say the T word first, he hadn't expected it to be Septima.

"Agreed," he said.

"So, take us out of here, unmarked."

He put his hands on his hips and looked at the wall of remnants. "I could try, but whoever played the music to bring us down here will probably stop me. And there are angels above. I'd rather not lose my head because I was too eager to stick my neck out."

Septima growled louder and approached, but Laoko got between them.

"So you'll keep us trapped down here?" Septima asked.

"No. Assuming you stick to the truce, we'll go back topside in a day or two, and you get to leave." He spared a quick glance at Laoko, and sure enough the tetrad glared down at him. Not happy. Yeah, well, fuck her. He was running on zero patience. "We need to figure out what summoned me, or us, down here. It has something to do with what Tarkissa and Azailia were planning to do with me."

The armored tiger slowly prowled from side to side. Her default state. "And what plan was that?"

"We don't know," Caera said. "Something to do with sacrificing David."

"Sacrifice?"

"Yeah," David said. "That's why he used that aura to try and capture me." Maybe not the smartest idea to tell her, but she was already planning to capture him, anyway. Couldn't get much worse.

"The imps and grems say," Laoko said, "that down here in the dark where few come, terrible secrets are kept safe by Tarkissa. But Tarkissa cannot use the old powers. David can, and something else can, something that drew us down here. We must find out more."

David nodded. If he could get on the same wavelength as Laoko, or get her on his, they'd make such a good pair. She had all the natural tendencies of a leader, wrapped in a sneaky-manipulator-evil-mastermind bowtie.

"Imps and grems lie," Septima said.

Lasca, Laara, Latia, and Laria all circled David and snarled and growled at the big tiger. Their noises were considerably higher pitched than Septima's.

"Say what you want," David said. "Something drew us down here. You know anyone else who can do that?"

"Another unmarked," Septima said, shrugging.

"Couldn't be. If I get close to another unmarked, we get quakes. The apocalyptic kind." And other problems, but she didn't need to know that.

Caera got in Septima's face. Two tigers staring at each other from only a meter away, and Septima had a lot more armor.

"I want to find out more," Caera said. "And wouldn't you like to know what your boss has been doing behind your back? I'm guessing you know nothing about what's down here."

"No one knows," Tacharius said. "We stay on the terrace steps above. The ravine is deadly."

It was easy to forget that demons didn't have free jurisdiction to go wherever they wanted in Hell. It had plenty of ways to kill them too, not just humans.

"You're trying to turn me traitor," Septima said.

David groaned, came up to Caera's side, and climbed onto her back. "God forbid I try and convert you away from some asshole who's making everyone in the Scar suffer."

"It is not a spire ruler's job to play saint, unmarked. It is their job to keep it safe from the other spire rulers."

"Sounds like a deterrence policy to me. Might as well load up some nukes and head for Cuba."

Septima tilted her head, waiting for the explanation. He didn't give her one.

"We go," Laoko said. "The night passed without incident. We can trust Septima and her forces well enough to travel."

David nodded. Much as Laoko was stepping on his toes, becoming the unasked cooperative leader to their merry not-so-little band, David didn't want to argue. And he agreed with her. Hell, he hadn't even wanted to be leader in the first place. Who the fuck was he to disagree with a demon thousands of years old who'd been through war and probably knew more about Hell than she let on?

The problem was exactly that, that she was a demon. If things were going to change, they needed something different. Did he want things to change? He looked back at Naoko, Fuad, and Natalie as they stepped out of his little cave, each walking with a little more energy in their step than a moment before.

Yeah. He wanted things to change.

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

~~Day 88~~

Another day of travel. Nothing happened. He was almost getting used to the never-ending screaming of remnants, white noise he could fall asleep to like he'd downloaded an app for it on his phone.

Not long after waking, the spire aura hit them again. David was ready for it. Before the aura erupted into a full-scale assault on everyone's mind and body, he got his inner fingers around the strings, and silenced them.

Septima and her brutes marched in front, but she looked back at him, tilting her head. "You can crush a spire aura so easily?"

He laughed, and bit it down so it didn't turn into a cough. "I wouldn't call it easy, but yes." Eyes closed for a moment, he listened to the aura struggling against him, fighting to escape, vibrating strings muted but resisting. It was going to be a long day, and night, and day again, if it were anything like last time.

"How far have you blocked it?" she asked.

"Last time I blocked it for a couple kilometers at least. Maybe three."

"Around one and a half miles," Jes said, smiling.

"I think I got more this time," he said.

Laoko nodded. "His power grows rapidly. Or did you not hear of how he took on a battalion of angels himself, Septima?"

"I heard. Exaggeration."

Tsila shook her head. "It was not exaggeration. David fought them off, and several of my companions died."

David almost let go of the strings and stared at the angel beside him. Before he could apologize, she patted his head and back with her soft, beautiful wing, and shook her head. No apology needed.

"The aliens," Jes said. "Whatever they are, they interfered. And so did that reaper Ezekiel, the asshole."

"Ezekiel," Moriah said, "may be rude, but he also fought off the aliens. We owe him much."

David spoke. "Any chance he'll show up again?"

"No. As I said, the great angels move like glaciers, and he expended much of his power fighting. I do not expect him to be doing much of anything for months, if not years."

Months of doing nothing. David had spent the past three months, minus those first two weeks, constantly doing something, every hour of every day. A proper vacation would be nice.

"You bring this insanity here?" Septima asked.

Daoka clicked up a storm, practically yelling and earning a snarl from the tiger.

"Daoka's right," Jes said. "We didn't bring shit. This was already happening. David is just trying to stop it. And your boss is trying to stop him."

"Tarkissa is no fool," Septima said. "If he is doing something, he has reason."

Hopefully, they'd find out what that reason was before dealing with Tarkissa directly.

They walked, and the amount of remnants on the wall faded until only a few remained. The choir died away, and David could at last hear himself think again. But all he could think about was crushing the spire aura, inner fingers locked on the strings. The only thing keeping things from getting violent. If he let the strings go, he'd be in good enough shape to defend himself, but the last thing he wanted to do was kill the armies with him. And if he had to kill his girls to defend himself, he didn't even know if he could. He might just let them capture him, rather than hurt them.

The walls pulled away. Above, the ravine walls stayed as they mostly did, two or three hundred meters apart, but down in the depths, they opened up into a grand chasm. The embankment turned into a slope, and David and the two groups walked down into the awaiting guts of Hell.

If humans could ever walk around inside an active volcano, this is what it'd look like. Flowing rivers of lava, oozing down deeper into Hell, while it gushed up from geysers in other places. Heat blurred everything, and sweat dripped down David's body, creating a lovely cocktail of wet pain and moist misery as he kept his fingers on the aura strings. Stalactites hung above, and some grew remnants, a far cry from the millions behind them, but enough their screams joined the churning turmoil of a volcano's belly.

The river turned into a lake. Chunks of rock floated on top of the lava, resisting the heat. Lava wasn't just melted rock in Hell. It was special, a pure incarnation of destruction given form in a way most humans couldn't appreciate. There were connections between Hell and the Earth, obvious ones like how fire burned and was bad and deadly. But lava and magma were a special kind of deadly, the kind talked about in whispers, undercurrents that swirled beneath the continents that could rise up and kill everyone and everything. Maybe that's why Hell used it kind of like blood, why the beautiful, dangerous liquid flowed through her and lit her surface with amber veins.

Maybe they'd get an answer down here, if they didn't boil in their own skin. Demons didn't sweat, but angels did, and Moriah and Tsila wiped beads of it from their faces. Without asking, they took turns fanning each other and him with their wings.

"Thanks," he said.

Septima snarled back at him. "There is no way to climb out of this hole."

"If I have to, I'll make us a way out, even if the other person with music tries to stop me. But that's dangerous. I could summon the aliens, or maybe angels will notice and attack. Or maybe the whole damn canyon will collapse on our heads. But while we're down here, we're going to get some answers."

The tiger would have responded, but a burst of hellfire erupted from the lake, and died just as quickly.

"We keep moving," Laoko said. "We must find out more."

David looked back. Acelina still had his egg and made no effort to hide it from the heat waves coming off the lava beside them. Impervious to heat, maybe. Something demons and hellbeasts probably had in common.

The ground went down, and down. The lava followed them, and soon it rained from lavafalls, tunnels pouring the heavy, oozing fluid into thick pools of it that flowed along on some unknown path.

Rock paths cut through the lava, wide sections of ground that weaved together, a maze of roads through the lake of burning death. The armies walked them, following the one path they could: forward, through the ravine.

Distant white mounds awaited them on the paths, and as they grew closer, Septima and the brutes stopped.

"Movement," Septima said.

Laoko stepped around her and peered ahead. "Humans. Kneeling?" She continued. Septima growled after her, but growl turned to groan, and she followed.

The dozen visible white mounds were piles of skulls, human and demon. Thousands upon thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of skulls per pile. And around them sat naked humans, emaciated but alive, humming quiet chants that disappeared under the rumble of churning lava.

Caera came closer, eye wide as she took in the towering pile of skulls on their path. They had enough room to go around it, but no one could help but stare up at it.

"They've come," one human said. She got up and looked at David, nodded, and returned to tending her colossal mountain of skulls, righting any that fell from the pile.

It was such a classic torture, some cynical part of David almost laughed. Even as his insides ached and his energy drained away every minute, he stared at the humans, nothing but skin and bone, getting to their feet and putting skulls back up on the pile. Each had 666 etched on their forehead. Betrayers. Probably the only reason they were still alive.

"You knew we were coming?" Jes asked.

One of the damned gestured at David with a trembling hand. "He has been waiting for you."

Caera came closer, taking David along with her. "He?"

The soul nodded and gestured down the path ahead, and returned to piling her skulls. The fact a small army of demons stood behind David didn't register at all.

"Caera," Jes said, eyeing her. "You look excited."

"What? I'm not excited."

"This isn't a deep delve into old ruins to sate your curiosity!"

Caera snorted and nodded toward a path around the skulls. "Let's go."

Septima, Laoko, and the brutes went first. Everyone followed. Both David and Septima's armies were silent, eyes locked onto the skulls and the dying humans tending them. The stone path grew firmer, wider, and the rivers of lava grew thinner, becoming more like cracks in the street they walked. And as the paths grew wider, so did the new piles of skulls grow larger.

"They come," a betrayer said.

"They come."

"They come. He waits."

"Who?" Caera asked. "Give me a name. Who's waiting for us?"

They didn't answer. Most didn't so much as look at them, as if abandoning their duty meant tortures far worse. Mia had told David about something like this before, from Greek myth. Sisyphus? Doomed to roll a rock uphill, only to always have it roll back down and have to do it again. Maddening, but that's exactly what the souls were doing, a half dozen per pile, each pushing skulls in or setting them on others. How'd they get the piles so high?

The lava came to a stop, and a horizon awaited them, signalling a drop ahead. They approached, each step dragging David's stomach down deeper into his gut. There was something dark ahead, where the lava stopped.

The cavern, now lit only by thin amber veins and the distant trails of lava behind them, sat and waited. No remnants grew nearby. The closer they grew to the edge, the quieter it grew.

"This way," Septima said, and she gestured to the side of the ravine. A path lined the walls, like the one that'd followed the lava river, and it went on and hopefully around and past the enormous, now dark cavern and pit before them.

David shook his head. "Gimme a sec."

"What?"

"A second. Give me a second to... to see."

"See what?" Septima asked. "There is nothing here."

"No, there's something here."

Caera sucked in a breath underneath him and continued forward toward the edge. Her tail slithered behind her. A little excited, maybe, and a little scared. Better than he not excited and entirely scared.

The cavern ahead was darkness incarnate. Moriah and Tsila ignited their weapons with gentle gold glows and raised them high, but they might as well have tried to light the endless dark of the Mines of Moria with a cigarette lighter. The chasm stretched wide, spreading out what had to be at least a couple of kilometers in either direction, and if it had an end, David couldn't see it. And the ground dropped before them like a hard cliff edge. Moriah held her glowing sword over the edge, but they couldn't see the bottom, only some distant, rolling mounds of black.

"Strange," Caera said, "for the lava to just... stop." She looked back. Amber, oranges and reds, glowed in the distance on the path they'd walked. But here, at the edge of nothing, no light reached.

"That's what's strange?" Jes asked. "Look at this!" Her voice took several seconds to echo.

David looked. He couldn't help it. Beside them was a pile of skulls so high, shadows hid the top, and a couple dozen betrayers knelt around it, quietly chanting and humming, the only noise in the cavern. They tended the pile like gardeners, while others got on their knees and bowed, foreheads to the stone, before rising and again fixing the pile as best they could.

There was no way emaciated, damned souls could pile skulls that high.

"There's something in here," David said. "Down there."

Moriah shook her head and stuck out her sword. "I see nothing, David. Only hills, far belo--"

Rumbling shook the cavern. Without so much as flinching, the betrayers tended their piles as hundreds of skulls rolled down, but hundreds meant nothing to the hundreds of thousands piled high. And when the dark shadows below rose like a slumbering dragon, again they didn't react. David did. The demons did. They all jumped back, and David held on as his mouth dropped and his eyes opened wide.

He let go of the spire aura.

Gasping, he reached for the strings again, but something else crushed the spire aura into utter silence. David grabbed the strings, but there was no point. Not a note got past the stranger's suppression of the music. It was absolute.

David gulped hard, hands trembling around Caera's back spikes as the tiger stepped further back. The looming shadow rose above them, above the colossal pile of skulls beside them, and over them, its very movements shaking the cavern and bringing stalactites above to shattering ends on the ground. It rose higher, and Moriah and Tsila jumped back, Tsila taking to the air. It rose higher, and Septima hissed and ran away; not far, but still, she ran. Back with her army, she turned and faced the rising mountain, arms and legs spread like a cat ready to bolt.

Laoko drew her swords. The Las whined and fell on their asses, wings limp behind them. Daoka clutched Jes's arm, and the gargoyle kept her wings spread. The gargoyle always looked ready for a fight, but now she looked like David probably did, eyes wide, mouth hanging open, unaware of her girlfriend squeezing her arm. Even Acelina somehow looked terrified, featureless face pointed up, egg clutched tight to her breastplate with both arms.

The moving mountain brought claws up from the depths and set them on the cliff edge, but darkness hid the hand they belonged to. Each claw was bigger than Laoko. The mountain turned, and aimed the side of its head down at them, like a snake looking at them from the side on. An eye, a demon eye, but so massive David saw different cuts of red sparkling within, just like a red-eyed snake. But the face it belonged to was wrapped in the black of the cavern.

"Unmarked," the mountain said, voice multi-layered, like a choir of deep, guttural, hissing voices rumbling at once.

David looked back at the demon army behind him. They all stared up at the monster, but flicked their gazes at him, too. No one said a thing. Right, because he was the unmarked. Fuck.

"Yes?" David asked. The fuck else could he say?

The hand pulled back into the shadow, but approached again, as big as a blue whale, and it gestured to the pile of skulls, lit just enough by Moriah and Tsila's light.

"Climb. Alone. Speak."

"Climb? I..."

The titan set its clawed hand beside the giant pile of skulls. The hand was so much bigger, and had a dozen claws. It didn't look normal.

"Don't," Moriah said.

"I have to. It's got the spire aura pinned down, not me."

The demons sucked in a breath, each ready to say something, but Tsila flew back down and hovered over David.

"I will take you up."

David groaned. Of all the times for Tsila to be helpful, taking him up faster to an encounter with some colossal entity was not what he wanted. But it was definitely better than climbing, and he could use the break.

Caera shook her head. "I'd rather you didn't."

"It's got the spire aura under control," he said. "I'm free to play the music if I have to. I can defend myself." He climbed off and kissed his girlfriend's head. "I'll be fine. It guided us down here, and it's not an alien invader, I don't think. It won't kill me." He didn't add 'and it could have done so already.'

Caera growled, but relented with a sigh and licked his cheek.

Septima came forward. "Don't get us killed, unmarked."

"That's the plan."

He took a couple of deep breaths, held out his hands, and Tsila took them from behind. Wrists locked, she guided him up the mountain of the dead, and set him upon the bones.

The eye glared down. "Begone, angel."

David winced and looked up at Tsila. "I'll be fine."

She frowned down at him from within her helmet, but nodded and joined the others. Leaving him alone, literally sitting on skulls, and so high, if he fell he could break his damn neck. And rolling off was a real possibility, each movement sending skulls rolling down, a few hitting the ground hard enough to shatter.

David faced the eye in the dark. It was far, far bigger than he was tall. The fuck was he looking at? Godzilla?

"Unmarked," the creature said, and again a dozen voices, each thick and vibrating like a crocodile's, rumbled through the cavern. "You have journeyed far."

"You know me?"

"Your notes ring, distant on the strings. I heard. I listened. Six of you remain, but only one other is close."

"How do... Who are you?"

The eye came closer. David's estimation of the size was off. It was bigger. Its snake-like face came at him from the side, slow and lumbering, and the eye stopped a few meters over him, drowning him in its beautiful colors, red and amber and crimson and sparkling orange. It was hard to see the whole face from this close, and because David was too paralyzed to move a muscle, but he found some courage and peeked left and right. A snake with colossal horns along its head and back, including two that pointed forward like Caera's, meant for skewering. Considering each was twice as long as a bus, what the fuck could this thing skewer?

"I," the voice said, "am Azazel."

Ice stabbed David in the back, and cold sweat dripped down his skin.

"I uh... recognize the name." From the surface, and from a list the Grave Valley spire had put in his head.

"The names of the Old Ones are known to all on the surface. We cannot be forgotten." Its mouth didn't move much, as if the chorus of voices were made by muscles hidden within its snake mouth, behind the thousand teeth.

Stabbing ice turned to cold dread, and he stopped breathing. It really was an Old One.

Okay, what would Mia do when making first contact? Probably speak politely and officially, at least.

"Azazel. What do you wish of me?"

A deep, sinister chuckle resonated in the deep cavern, and some skulls rolled out from under David's ass.

"To continue on your journey."

"I--what?"

More laughter, subtle, but something this big being subtle meant the vibration rumbled in his bones.

"Angels war above. I know not why. But they have killed other unmarked, the fools. They will doom us all to the alien and its deadly silence. So your journey must continue."

"You know about, uh, the plan?"

"Yes." It raised its head, but kept its eye pointed at him, the rest of its head and body invisible in the thick shadow that now seemed almost like a black fog. "You must reach Lucifer."

"They're alive?"

"He is alive."

David sighed. Was that good or bad?

"He?"

More laughter, with a hint of a snake's hiss coming through. "The Great Tower bleeds into the surface. The surface bleeds into the Great Tower. Perception alters. But it matters not. 'He' has no more meaning in Hell than 'she', or 'it', or 'they'."

David had a hundred questions, and considering every demon below could hear him, he knew Caera had a million. If there was ever someone he could get answers from, this was that someone.

"You want me to reach False Gate?"

"Yes. In the Unholy Lands, you will find tools to reach the Frozen Heart." It knew the real names of the provinces. "The Frozen Heart was Lucifer's bastion, his fortress against his brothers. And to march his armies across the deadly river Styx required tools only an archangel could make. Go, reach the Unholy Lands, learn the runes to cross the sea, and meet with Lucifer. Only with his help can you stop the invaders."

Well. Hot damn. That was a straight-up explanation of what he had to do and why. It left out a bunch of details, but still, holy shit.

"Can... you help me get there?"

"I did."

"I mean, thank you! Thanks, for rescuing us from those angels. But I still have a long way to go, and--"

"My kin and I are trapped here, in the Scar, this ruin of pain and failure. My power cannot reach far. And I must hold them back."

He raised his head. "Hold who back?"

"Belial, and Astaroth."

Each name sucked the heat out of David until he shivered.

"They--"

"They are here," Azazel said. "And unlike me, they will not respect our creator. They will consume you, devour your song, your music, and use its might to free themselves from Hell." Another chuckle, more snake hisses coming through. "They are fools to think they can control Hell. That the mother would listen."

David gulped hard. "Free themselves?"

"The Old Ones are trapped. The archangels Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael broke our bodies and bound us to Hell's flesh. For all our power, for all the might of our songs, we cannot break free."

"Holy fuck. How... How are you still alive after all these years?"

Another shadow crept up from the depths. The cavern rumbled, and deep in the dark, things moved, titanic slabs of shadows shifting, each bringing more tremors that sent skulls rolling down the pile.

Another snake head came for him, identical to the other, and it stared at him from straight on with a skull as big as a large home. Larger.

"I live," the two heads said at once, "because the spire lives. I am bound to the Scar, even as that insufferable irka Tarkissa controls it." Irka? Hellrat. "It should be me controlling the spire. My pillar. My life. But my kin and I are bound and able to control our spires no longer."

Uh oh. David knew where this was going, but best let the verbose, ancient creature get to the inevitable request on its own. Freedom. Hopefully, it'd ask later.

"Does... Does that mean all the Old Ones are alive?" he asked.

A third head rose from the black, and they nodded in unison.

"Yes," it said. "All are trapped. All strive to heal our wounds and take control of our homes. Astaroth seeks to return to the Grave Valley. Belial seeks to return to Death's Grip. The three of us are here, and my two kin are weak. Tarkissa seeks to revive them, lured by the promise of power and rescue from the invaders. A fool."

"Can they use the Scar's spire?"

"Yes, if they are freed." A fourth head lifted from the blackness below, and rising higher than the others, David spotted hints of a long neck. It was looking closer to a hydra every minute.

"What does using a spire entail? I don't understand."

"Our lives are bound to our spires, but any Old One can seize the power of a spire and double the strength of their song." A head came in closer, and colossal teeth danced only a few meters from David's face before the snake turned and looked at him with a single eye again, but from so close David could have touched it. "We are but insects compared to our father. But you, unmarked, wield the power of the mother herself. She listens to you. And my kin believe devouring your heart will give them your power, to play music with the mother who has ignored our song since our birth."

David sucked in a slow breath. How much could he say without accidentally tripping over some reason the Old One might decide to kill him?

"I've killed an unmarked before," he said. "The man dissolved into bone in seconds."

Azazel snorted, and the rush of air almost sent him rolling.

"That is strange," it said. "Are you certain?"

"Y-Yeah, I'm certain."

The snake heads nodded, and a fifth flowed up from the black. Slowly, the snake came forward, lower to the ground, and circled around David's skull pile. The neck was thicker than the skull pile was tall. The demons below probably had to get out of the way to not get crushed.

"Someone is playing a dangerous game," it said.

"You don't know who?"

"No. My father Lucifer remains trapped in his prison, powerless to affect anything outside it. Perhaps the council angels?"

"Any idea what the angels are up to? Any at all?" David asked.

"I listen, and I observe. The angels are not behaving as they should. A billion years ago, they would have rallied together, come down from on high, and demanded the cooperation of the spires. They would have marched headfirst into Armageddon to stop the invaders from harming the Great Tower." Azazel hissed a laugh. "But they do not."

"You think--"

"I think, little, strange, unmarked soul, that you should make haste to the Unholy Lands, travel to the Frozen Heart, and speak with my father and creator. If the angels do not unite against this threat, your only option is the help of Lucifer."

"What about the other Old Ones?" He risked another question. "What should we call them?"

The hydra laughed, head circling him, aimed down at him from above.

"Abaddon of the Navameere Fields. Apollyon of the Red Pits, forever at war with his twin brother Abaddon. Azazel of the Scar, I am who I am. Astaroth of the Grave Valley. Belial of Death's Grip. Asmodeus of the Black Valley. Beelzebub of Heaven's Tears. And Molech of the Unholy Lands."

The runes in David's mind lit up. That was them, enormous runes that vibrated with power.

"Wait, what about the Frozen Heart? There's a spire there, right?" And a name he'd expected to hear but hadn't. Malphas.

Another snort, from all five--six heads now.

"Buried and bound not far from our father, lies Malphas." It sounded annoyed with the name. "Lucifer's first. A failure. Mindless. Addicted to chaos and murder." The hydra hissed, and three more heads, each the size of a small mansion, rose up from the black. Nine heads. "Malphas could not be reasoned with. Cannot be reasoned with. He has gone by other names, Baal, and Samael, and has tricked others into thinking many things of him. He is destruction and ruin. Avoid him."

David skipped asking about the 'it' versus 'he' thing.

"Do you know where your other kin are?"

"Malphas lies within the Frozen Heart, as I said. Abaddon and Apollyon fought each other as much as the angels. They are likely together, warring, even bound and broken as they are, and will be an obstacle on your journey. Asmodeus, I saw struck down in his home of the endless, now tainted swamps. Beelzebub is also trapped in his home, beneath the corpses of the archangels. Molech, I do not know."

David nodded, and because 'thank you' didn't seem like enough, he bowed as well as he could while sitting.

"I don't understand something. The names for the provinces. They sound like they were named after something that happened, but the runes are... are the language of existence. Didn't the runes come first?"

"God named them the provinces, his final act before he left this Great Tower to its ends."

"You met God?"

Azazel nodded. "A blinding light that brought Lucifer down low, and trapped him within the center of Hell. Even from this great wound, this Scar, I saw it. And I saw the creator of all change existence itself, to reflect what his first son's war had wrought upon the land."

Changing the language of existence. You didn't get much more godly than that.

"Then... who is Navameere? Someone alive during the First War?"

Azazel dug its, or his claws into the ground, and David scampered to keep from rolling down his hill.

"If you wish to know of Navameere, explore the depths of her fields. Perhaps you will find Hell's tribute to her death. But I will not speak of her."

David didn't push it.

"Thank you," he said again, and bowed again. "I've been flying blind this whole time."

"You are still ignorant, unmarked soul, as am I. But I am no fool, and I will not let the ambitions of my kin end this Great Tower and my existence with it."

"Then you'll help me?"

"I can only help you with what little resonance my congregation has brought me over the eons. The rest I spend to keep Belial and Astaroth from attacking you, and to keep Tarkissa's spire aura under control." Another hiss, and the ninth head loomed over him. "You suppressed the spire aura under your own power, with only your own power, and not with the help of the mother."

He gulped. "I did, but not nearly as much as you are."

"Still. That is impressive." The nine heads chuckled, and the one coiling his pile of skulls uncoiled. "I know not how you came to be, unmarked. How to came to exist."

"David. My name is David."

The Old One froze and stared down at him. Was sharing a name bad? Did giving his true name to an ancient demigod spell his doom? Hopefully not, but the strange way the nine heads smiled snake smiles down at him did not fill him with joy.

"David of the unmarked," Azazel said. "Continue on your journey. I will keep Belial and Astaroth from interfering." Slowly, the nine heads pulled away. No request for freedom?

"I... I'd planned to take the spire."

Maybe he shouldn't have said that. The nine heads came in close once again, and the middle one loomed above him, right eye pointed down at him.

"Take the spire?"

"Yes. I was amassing an army. I knew Tarkissa was trying to capture me, him and Azailia. I figured the best way to deal with him was to just kill him and take the Scar for my own. My army was growing every day until those angels intervened."

Heavy snarls rumbled through the hydra's body, if hydra was even the right word, its body hidden in the blackness below.

"Angels exploit their God-given privilege and attack from out of reach."

"Yeah," David said. "It's uh... a problem."

"And what can an army of volas do to Tarkissa and his guardians?"

David shook his head. "Volas, imps, and grems. And they can do a lot when you have a million of them." Not that he had that many. Maybe Domnius was rubbing off on him.

"How do you expect to convince them to follow you, unmarked soul? Your own aura, powerful as it may be, is but a quiet note compared to a spire's, and even a spire cannot control the littlest of demons."

David gestured back at what little remained of his army. "They want me as leader, because I'm going to bring something they've never had before."

A snakehead came closer. "Which is?"

"I'm not some tyrant looking to crush all beneath my heel."

The nine heads pulled back and laughed, maniacal, evil, times nine.

"You wish to be a benevolent leader? Of a spire in Hell?"

"It's not my main goal, but it seems like a decent one. Unless you can get me past Tarkissa without him stopping me."

Azazel shook some heads and lowered one down onto the ground. It slithered across the rock and approached the army. The army kept still, as if a sudden movement would provoke the snake to strike.

"Tarkissa will fight to stop you," Azazel said. "And my power is limited. I will keep the spire aura suppressed for you, and guide you to the path back to the surface. If you think you can get past Tarkissa without conflict, I suggest you do so. If you think it impossible, fight him, kill him, and take the spire." The creature chuckled again, softer this time, and raised a hand. Every motion was slow, a kaiju -- a creature bigger than a kaiju -- moving through a world limited by gravity. It set its palm near the side of the skull pile. "If you die, you may doom us all."

David stepped onto the palm. Hard, leathery, dark red skin. And the palm was big enough, he had enough room to not walk, but run around on it. He didn't. He fell to his knees and did his best to not scream as the titan lowered him back down to the ground with the others.

"Yeah," he said. "But I think it's the best chance I got at getting through this place. And maybe get a little help when pushing through the Red Pits and Navameere Fields."

"Then, David of the unmarked, when you become spire ruler, consider what you can, to free me."

And there it was.