~~Day 123~~

~~David~~

Back on the march and a week away from the spire. Sazillia insisted it'd be an easy walk with her to dissuade any demons from thinking him an easy meal. And nearby Cainites. And nearby hellbeasts. So far, she was right.

The bailiff's army stayed a fair distance away but circled the crew. 'For protection', Sazillia insisted. She walked in front of David's crew with Laoko and Moriah, while the other girls stayed near David and behind him.

David peeked back. The gabriem Tsila was talking with Caera about something, nodding, until Caera walked up to David and looked up at him, the tiger walking on all fours.

"David," she said.

"Yeah?"

"You want a ride?"

He laughed. "You sure you want to carry me?"

"You weigh less than a suit of meera metal." She gestured to the few pieces of black metal she wore.

"We're still days away," he said. "I know demons hate walking."

"And yet!" Caera matched his laugh and thudded the ground with her thick tail. Pegasus clopped after it. "We walk everywhere."

"Once we save the Great Tower," he said, "we can stop the civil war in Heaven, and then the angels will fly us everywhere."

Moriah looked back long enough to squint, and laugh.

Caera shrugged up at him and nudged her shoulder into his hip. "If you're sure."

"I'm fine walking. But I do wanna know what you were talking with Tsila about."

"You."

He winced. "Oh?"

"Yeah." Her voice dropped to a whisper, and she pressed against his hip again. "You really tore into Sazillia before."

Oh. This conversation. It was bound to happen.

"She said people on the surface were weak."

Caera shrugged. "So? A demon insulting humans. Seems pretty innocent."

He took a deep breath. It wasn't Caera's fault she didn't know how much this topic grated on his soul. He'd never told her. But the thought alone had bile -- or some Hell equivalent -- boiling in his gut, and he closed his eyes. Tell her? Tell her.

"One time," he whispered, "I had to attend a funeral. My sister and I were orphans, and we never stayed with any family for long. Never connected with them. Never connected with anyone, really. Our guardians at the time, a married couple, had it rough. They were trying to be good parents to us, but--shit." Eyes still closed, he stumbled on a rock. "That offer for a ride still open?"

Caera smiled and lowered her back, arching it, and he climbed aboard. It took a bit to find the groove to sit on just below her shoulders and between two big spikes, and even then, one spike's base was up against his junk, and another was up the crack of his ass. Not good for riding, and he didn't plan to for long. Just long enough to talk.

"I wasn't lying," he continued, "or exaggerating, when I described what life is like for people on the surface. My guardians just kept getting screwed over and over, losing their jobs, getting replaced by automation, getting..." He shook his head. No point in explaining the finer details to a demon, but Caera would believe him if he just said it was bad. "It was bad."

"I can't wrap my mind around a life like that," Caera said. "I doubt any demon can."

"Just remember what I said before, and then... imagine what happens when you finally do snap. Imagine you just give up."

"Give up?"

"You stop fighting." He leaned over her, his palms on her tiger shoulders. "You realize you can't get a job anymore and you're going to lose your house, and those kids you've been trying and failing to connect with will get taken away from you. You just give up."

Caera tilted her head and looked up at him with her single eye. "What happened?"

"It wasn't just our guardians having trouble. Tom's sister, Jenny, she... she was in a car accident. She died." He shook his head. "That was the snapping point. Tom and Margie fell apart at the funeral. There was crying, and screaming, and... and they yelled at me. I was ten. And they yelled at me like it was my fault." Saying it out loud made it sound a thousand times less serious, and he laughed. "I know that doesn't sound like it means much. Demons grow up in a hatching pit, killing each other to survive. But to a kid, seeing a parent break down, screaming, crying, and tearing into you because they just need some kind of outlet? For just a second, Tom was convinced I was the reason his life was falling apart.

"Mia and I were sent back to an orphanage after that, and put with new guardians the next year. But I never forgot the look in Tom's eyes. A few years later, I looked Tom up. He'd killed himself. I don't know what happened to Margie. I think she moved in with family. But..." Every word tasted bitter, and he made sure only Caera could hear him. "I don't blame Tom for blaming me. Not because I agree with him--I don't. But I'd have probably done the same thing, just snap like that. And ever since then, I guess I've... I've understood how hard life can be for adults, you know? Know it, understand it, even at my age. Fuck me, I was, and still am young, but seeing what happened to Tom made me understand.

"I know Mia says she wants to be a psychiatrist because she wants to be a couples therapist. She's all into helping people get along, especially romantically. But she saw the whole thing: how Margie and Tom yelled at me more than her. I... shut down, during and after the funeral, and it was weeks before I could even talk again. Mia was just a kid, too, but she helped me understand what happened. I bet that's a driving force behind her job choice, too." He leaned back and let the anchor off his neck. "I miss her."

Caera looked up at him, staring, face unreadable. The gap to understand was just too wide, and he shrugged down at her and patted her back.

"Mia would explain it better," he said. "She'd go on about child psychology and how it affects you growing up. Formative years. How affecting a child's neurological growth causes massive, life-lasting, deep changes in how a person thinks for the rest of their life, etcetera, etcetera. I guess I'm an example of that. But it sounds so minor, so... irrelevant, compared to a single day in Hell. I haven't been talking about it, because, yeah, it was a big deal to me, but--"

"It's not irrelevant," Caera said. "It's not. I don't understand it. I can't. But demons and angels know one thing about souls: the Great Tower was made for you, not for us. Whatever it is on the surface you feel, all that... that stuff, that's why we're here, right?"

David shook his head. "I don't know. I can't say that demons and angels are less important than souls."

"I can. We are."

And that was that. Caera looked ahead, marched along, and David held on as he let his feet recover. He looked back, and from Tatiana's side, Tsila smiled at him.

That damn angel had planned this. Probably thought all he needed was a nudge, and he'd talk about his past. He'd fallen for it, too. He squinted at her, and she finger-waved.

"Why're you talking with Tsila about me?" he asked the tiger between his legs.

"Why not? I wanted to know what you were upset about. Now I know a little more about you." She shrugged and gave her tail a wag. "Think we'll find any interesting runes in the old tongue? I know we don't really have time to go crawling through ruins and tunnels looking for more interesting things, but after seeing Azazel and the statues of the children fighting, and that plaque? I bet we'll find more stuff!"

He laughed again. A direct question like 'why were you talking about me' would make anyone else defensive. Not demons. Not Caera.

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

~~Day 129~~

Another week of walking, and Hell had more twists for them. Much as the province was mostly flat, flatness was subjective. Each province was hundreds of kilometers long and took a month to walk across. Small dips in the ground opened up into wide craters, filled with remnants that screamed and churned into a blender. Anthills dotted the ground, and they only grew bigger the closer the crew got to the center of the province, some towering over the crew as they subtly popped remnants within and leaked their contents, like squashing grapes.

The ground turned flat, and a million faces poked out from it, just enough to expose the mouth, nose, and eyes of the remnants. Their fingers stuck up, the ground hiding their hands so only the digits themselves were free. They could grab nothing. They could bite nothing. And hellbeasts took their sweet time killing them.

The spire was in the distance, half a day's walk away, but it looked like every other spire, a colossal, skinny thing of spiky black metal and circular balconies, and the damn thing was probably filled with red flesh, too. But the field of remnant faces that surrounded the spire was infinitely more interesting, and horrific.

"What," David asked, "are those?" His finger pointed at the ant-like creatures munching on the literal million faces on the ground.

"Mandals," Sazillia said. "Souls call them fire ants."

They were ants, that was true. Red, too, but that was to be expected from hellbeasts, always a mix of black and red like demons. Unlike red ants, they were a foot long, and spiky. Like ants, they swarmed, and at least ten thousand of the red swarm crawled over the faces and munched on them, cutting off fingers and digging holes into skulls with their mandibles. A flowing red river of moving bodies, casually moving through fields of screaming remnants that might as well have been flesh grass. The ant river turned, thousands upon thousands of little ant legs guiding the flowing current of hellbeasts to fresh new crops to nibble on.

"I have to say," David said, "I thought the Red Pits wouldn't be as horrific as the other provinces. Hearing that the demons here are organized into a military made me think the terrain wouldn't be so awful. But this province is fucked up. This!" He gestured at the closest ant, maybe fifty meters off, casually biting off the fingers of a crying remnant. "This is fucked up. I thought maybe it'd be giant hellbeasts that you had to fight off regularly."

The bailiff tetrad shook her head. "Of course not. We have the Navameere Fields to hone our teeth and power. There are deadly hellbeasts in the Red Pits, but no. We aren't--what was the word? Darwinian."

"Right, right." Sighing, he gestured ahead. "Okay, so... how do we get to the spire?"

"We walk." Sazillia shrugged and started walking. The ants dispersed, the curving river turning away, leaving dead remnants in their wake. But more remnants grew up from underneath and around the dead, and the screams resumed. Infinite growing flesh grass.

David looked down and did his best to avoid stepping on any faces or fingers. Crunch. Crack. He stopped.

"Okay, I uh... A little help?" Fuck worrying about looking weak, he didn't care. This was too much.

Caera came up beside him, and he climbed onto her back without hesitation. Some nearby demons laughed, and he didn't so much as give them an evil glare. Let them laugh. This place was messed up.

Sazillia's battalion walked ahead, killing remnants as they walked, but new ones grew in quickly. Each step was walking either on a pile of gore, or a newly grown remnant's fingers or face. David looked down, regretted immediately, and did it again anyway. Numbers carved into foreheads blurred together, and desperate eyes stared up at him.

If he saved the Great Tower someday, he'd fix this. He'd find a way to make Hell a better system, instead of this... ecosystem of brutality.

Make a better system than God? Well, God wasn't around, so, yes.

The closer they grew to the tower, the more familiar things got. Black spikes jutted up from the ground with the curve of rib bones, and many held a black skull from a chain with fire burning inside. Imps and grems perched on them, as did gargoyles, and they watched with wide eyes as Sazillia's little army spread apart, allowing Sazillia, David, and the crew to approach the tower. Thankfully, the field of flesh stopped as they approached, and regular black and brown dirt awaited them.

In front of the spire, the cavernous opening awaited, blocked off by a dozen brutes wearing aera metal and wielding an enormous aera sword, held in front of them, point down.

David froze. Aera armor. It was beautiful, bronze and red, with edges highlighted in gold. And brutes were so much bigger than the rider, always naked, never wearing armor or wielding a weapon. But these were.

"Uh... that's aera armor," David said.

Moriah and Tsila stood at Caera's sides, both grimacing and clenching their teeth.

"Of course," Sazillia said. "I wore it, when I defended the border. And I will wear it again." The tetrad grinned down at him and ran her fingers through her short dreadlocks. "When I take your head to Khazeer, surely he will grant me my armaments again."

David hopped off Caera's back and--

Sazillia put up her four hands, empty. "Kidding, unmarked." Laughing as if she could've been waving a glass of ale around and recounting old tales of fighting monsters, she gestured to the dozen brutes. "Khazeer's elite guard. He saw us coming. Come." She walked toward the spire, leaving her army behind.

Caera looked up at David. "I don't know if I should laugh or bite her."

"Me neither," Laoko said. "Come." She followed her fellow tetrad.

"Pegasus," David said. "Stay close."

Caera clucked once, and Pegasus pulled up to David's side. Nearby demons stared, unsure of whom to stare at more: the two angels wrapped in red silks, the spire mother outside her spire, the goort with wings, or the human boy in the center of it all. But once they realized what he was, all eyes locked on him.

"Sazillia," David said. "I'm not going to attack, so don't freak out."

"Freak out? What--" The tetrad spun, but stepped back as David summoned his armor and staff.

The crowd stared on, and a thousand demons gasped -- more like snarled, really -- as a red puff of light covered David. He held out his hand, and a black staff filled his grip. Black armor covered him from neck to toe, with red silk dangling from between the joints of the spiky metal suit. Batlam rune gave him a crown, too, black and lined with spikes and red jewels.

Sazillia stared at him as he stepped past her and walked up to the dozen brutes. A brute in meera metal was scary enough, but in aera metal and wielding aera swords? Thankfully, they only wore a few pieces of it: a breastplate, and pieces on the forearms and thighs; otherwise, he might not have approached at all.

But this was Hell. He had to look strong.

He led the group up to the blockade of elite guards and tapped the ground with his staff.

"I am David," he said. "Unmarked. I'm passing through this province, and I must speak with Khazeer. Step aside."

The brutes looked at each other, their first signs of life. But they said nothing, hands resting on their sword grips.

In any other universe, David would be juggling a thousand concerns about diplomacy. Not anymore. The demons wanted direct, aggressive, and he could do that.

"Did I stutter?" David asked. "I said, step aside." He held out his staff to his side and slammed the base into the ground. A small hellquake rumbled through the ground, and a dozen black spikes erupted from the dirt, each as tall as him. With a silent tune, he let the spikes go, and they crumbled into dirt back onto the ground.

Showing off. Pure ego boasting. It was the sort of shit that made him roll his eyes whenever he'd seen guys do it on the surface. Like gorillas thudding their chests. But in a world of literal predators, it worked wonders, and the dozen brutes stared at him with a mix of respect and trepidation.

"Or," a voice behind them said, "I come down and see you myself."

The twelve brutes stepped aside and revealed the source of the voice.

No introductions needed. Khazeer. A korgejin tetrad. Hooves, no tail, and four colossal horns on his bald head. Two enormous wings spread out as he walked forward, with each wing finger pierced with black chains that held dangling demon skulls.

His armor was terrifying. He didn't wear just a few pieces of aera armor, but a full suit of it that covered nearly every inch of him. The only pieces he didn't wear were a helmet and boots, what with giant horns and hooves. But every other part was wrapped in bronze, red, and gold armor, making each step he took clink quietly as he moved into the enormous archway entrance of the spire. Skulls rattled, dangling from leather strips on his waist, like some Hollywood Roman legionnaire's skirt, demon skulls of all shapes and sizes to match the skulls on his wings.

Like all korgejins, he had a very skull-ish demon face, barely any lips at all so his sharp teeth were always exposed. A long, straight scar cut across his face, between the eyes and down to the corner of his jaw, as if to perfectly match his narrow head.

He wielded two axes. Aera metal, of course. For a moment, David prepared to see glowing blades, ready to chop into flesh and unleash hellfire. But no, they were just metal.

David didn't back up, and stood in the opening lip of the archway as Khazeer came closer. Sazillia stood to the side out of the way, but Laoko, Tsila, and Moriah stood directly beside him, and Caera and Jes directly behind him.

"Hi," David said with the most casual tone he could muster. Khazeer blinked. Good. "I'm David. I'm going to deal with the unmarked girl attacking the Red Pits with Morgana's armies. And you're going to help."

Khazeer looked at him, axes in hand. The body language seemed fine, but from the calm look on the demon's face, Khazeer was the sort of man who could get deadly violent without wearing his intent on his sleeve.

"Am I?" he asked.

"Yes. But I'm not here to bully you into obedience, Khazeer." He gestured back to Tatiana, and the naked, slim succubus stepped out from her small group and joined him. "I'm looking for an ally."

Khazeer slowly shifted his gaze between the succubus and him, back and forth, scanning. He stood up straight, sheathed his axes onto small hooks in the armor on his hips, and squatted down in front of the succubus. Tatiana was damn tall at seven feet, but Khazeer was over ten.

"You come from the Scar for this unmarked?" he asked her. "You've even abandoned your garb."

Tatiana sighed and gestured to the angels. "We had to hide their damn white wings. And besides, I look good naked." To prove it, she did a slow spin. Yeap, she looked very good, with small black piercings piercing... all the good stuff. "I was ordered to come here, if you must know, by the new spire ruler of the Scar. But that doesn't mean I didn't want to see you again."

Khazeer half grinned, half sneered. Not the response David expected. Whatever history these two had, it wasn't simple.

"The spire ruler of the Scar," Khazeer said, looking at David again. "Is not you?"

"It is me," David said. "But I doubt I can go through the ceremony to become a new spire ruler. That ritual looked specifically for demons."

The korgejin nodded and tapped the small amber horn jutting from his forehead. "So you picked a bailiff to rule in your stead. Why not Tatiana?"

"I hadn't met Tatiana at the time. But I had met Septima, and I trust her. Now that I've met Tatiana, I trust her as far as I can throw her." David gestured at himself with his free hand. "I can destroy mountains with a wave of my hand, but with my muscles? I can't lift shit."

Mia would have called that sort of comment disarming, a way to test the waters and see how the opponent reacted.

Khazeer smiled. Barely, but he did. Test successful? The smile turned into a chuckle, and he nodded as he stood up.

"I don't trust the succubus either," Khazeer said. Tatiana snarled up at the man, but snarl turned into squeak when he picked her up, and literally put the naked woman on his shoulder. "Come. We will speak in my throne room."

David nodded, but kept his armor and staff. He could let his guard down later.

The crew followed Khazeer into the tower, and yet again, the trip up to the throne room was a giant pain in the ass. All spires were the same, spiky towers of black metal with weird flesh and white bone growths on the inside. The deeper you went down, the more flesh you found, especially if you went underground; the tower went as deep underground as it went above it. Cages dangled from chains with remnants inside. Black skull braziers burned like lanterns. And the center of the spire was a giant hole from top to bottom, with an inner balcony that circled the hole at each floor.

Like last time, the demons didn't bother with the bone stair tunnels to the side. They stepped up to the hole, and jumped up, catching the floor above and climbing. Khazeer was no exception, his armor not weighing him down at all.

"Zazee. Tacharius." David turned and faced Tatiana's crew. "Just... don't get into trouble, okay? I'll make sure we get rooms."

"You got it, boss," Tacharius said. The incubus turned and faced the other volas and the betrayers. "Let's just take the stairs up. Try not to look too appetizing, okay?"

Naoko frowned at David, opened her mouth to say something, didn't, and followed Zazee to the stairs.

Sighing, David climbed onto Caera again, and she laughed as she followed Khazeer and the bailiff Sazillia up the spire. Up and up, and up a bit more.

Khazeer waited for them near the top, and made for the colossal black skull with the open mouth. The doorway to his throne room. He sat on a throne of bone, alien bone that no demon or hellbeast had. The room was filled with furniture made of the same weird bone, grown to fit the purpose of furniture, chairs and tables. Blood dripped down the black walls and along tiny streams on the floor's outer edges. Just like the other throne rooms.

Provinces were unique. The Old Ones were unique, judging from Azazel and what little he'd seen of Astaroth and Belial. The spires were not unique at all. Something to do with how they worked, maybe? More questions.

Khazeer's elite guard followed them in and took up stations near the throne, while the spire ruler stood in front of the throne, facing David and his crew as Tatiana got to work. She stood behind Khazeer and found places to pull, helping slide the armor off one limb at a time. Khazeer's gear was a proper suit of armor, and that meant getting it off was a pain in the ass.

David stayed in his batlam rune, armor on, staff in hand, and watched with a raised eyebrow.

"So you have come in our hour of need?" Khazeer asked, half-naked. "How fortuitous."

"I wish," David said. "More like, the other unmarked is in my way, and I've been wandering Hell long enough to realize she won't let me just slip past. There's--" He looked at the twelve brutes lining the walls. "Can I speak freely?"

Khazeer tilted his head. "You have something to say you're worried about others hearing?"

"Yeah, I am."

The spire ruler looked at him, and David held his gaze.

"And you expect me," Khazeer said, "to entertain you, alone, without my guard to protect me?"

Good point. Nodding, David paced left and right, staff clinking on the floor.

"Close the door, then."

With a quiet grunt, Khazeer gestured at the door, his amber horn glowed, and the enormous black skull mouth closed, locking everyone in: Khazeer, his twelve brutes, David's crew, and Tatiana. The throne room was big enough for it all, but if a fight broke it, it'd be a mess. And Khazeer didn't know that David couldn't manipulate the spire directly. Whatever the spire was made out of, his music could touch it but not manipulate it. Spires were weird, like unnatural growths on Hell's body.

David took a deep breath. "The alien invader is coming for us. For all of us. Unmarked like me seem connected, but we're not entirely sure how. I'm on a journey to defeat the alien. I got spire rulers betraying me, trying to feed me to Old Ones in exchange for power. I got angels fighting angels, some trying to stop me, some trying to help me. I got the rider, randomly showing up and chasing my ass. And to top it all off, the alien is finding ways into Hell randomly, so I can't always predict when they'll attack."

He took another breath and gestured to Khazeer. "I'll make this simple. Tatiana's here to convince you I'm serious. I need to get through the Red Pits and the Navameere Fields, and I need to do it without bringing a million angels down on our heads." A quick nod to the two angels wearing red got the point across. "So my crew and I are going to join your army, hide out in the masses of demons, and when the fighting starts, I'll deal with it. You let me walk straight through your forces, and I'll kill the unmarked girl in my way." Which would have to be a quick battle, or he'd get another Death's Grip situation. "I help you, you help me."

Khazeer, naked, sat on his throne; thankfully, male demons didn't have their dicks hanging out unless they were horny. The tetrad nodded, eyes locked on David's the whole time. It was intense. Eye contact was always a problem for David, and with the way this man looked at him, he felt like he was a witness giving testimony.

"The unmarked from Navameere Fields," Khazeer said, "now uses her own body, instead of Hell, to attack us. I have reports of her growing long limbs full of claws, teeth, and eyes."

David tilted his head. "Eyes? I mean, I can grow my body too, but eyes?"

"Yes. Eyes. And her pet hellbeast has grown to an absurd size. Assuming that is yours"--he gestured to Pegasus, standing with Acelina and the Las--"then you are outmatched."

"I'm not going to use Pegasus to fight."

"Pegasus?" The tetrad chuckled. "I suppose not, with how small it is. But the unmarked girl's fassila spider has killed hundreds of my forces. Beware."

David nodded. "Thanks for the heads-up. I'll deal with that, too, assuming you stick to your end of the deal."

Khazeer returned the nod and relaxed back on his throne. Without a word, Tatiana crawled onto his lap and sat, naked body on full display as she got cozy against him, her legs spread around his. Yeap, pierced everything. The spire ruler set a colossal hand on her hip, but kept his eyes on David and the crew, face calm and stoic, as if a naked succubus wasn't sitting on his pelvis.

"Sazillia?" Khazeer asked.

"Far as I can tell," the bailiff said, "the unmarked boy is trustworthy. Even Heaven-bound, if not for the weird circumstances."

Khazeer chuckled again, but every time he laughed, it didn't have the joy of a happy person, nor the dark, sinister edge of a clearly evil demon plotting something. It was just a regular chuckle from a person used to chuckling at insane problems.

"I think we understand each other," Khazeer said. "Did you know angels came to my spire weeks ago? They told me to hunt down and kill the unmarked."

David froze. "I uh... didn't know that."

"I imagine some spire rulers would listen to them. The angels said anyone who eats an unmarked's heart would likely gain great power."

"But?"

"But I know never to trust an angel. They scheme and manipulate."

Wings trembling inside their red wraps, Moriah glared at the man and took a step forward.

But Khazeer put up a hand. "A jest, angel. I rarely deal with angels. I wanted to see how you would react."

"And how did I react?" Moriah asked, fists clenched at her sides.

"Like an angry warrior, which I can appreciate. But the fact remains, your peers visited and suggested I kill and eat your friend."

Tsila stepped up. "Angels are... There are problems in Heaven, Khazeer. Angels are both trying to kill us and help us."

The spire ruler idly tapped a horn. "I don't suppose you will tell me about these struggles of Heaven?"

Tsila shook her head. "No. But know that David must succeed in his mission, or Hell and Heaven both will perish."

"Yes. I believe you. But I would be a fool not to wonder why angels come to my spire and lie to me."

"They do not lie," Tsila said. "Some do wish for the unmarked to die, and you 'may' gain power by eating his heart. Possibly. Come what may, we will save the Great Tower from this alien invader, and we will have strange allies and stranger enemies while doing so." With every word Tsila spoke, she sounded less like the friendly, fun therapist David knew, and more like an official ambassador.

"And will angels attack my armies? I have spent centuries growing my numbers. Where once a hundred thousand would suffice, now far more roam my lands. The surface seems willing to provide the souls to feed them, but even my armies cannot fight off the forces of Heaven."

"If it comes to that," David said. "I'll do something."

Khazeer tilted his head. "Something?"

"Yeah, something. Something drastic. But Heaven seems happy to let demons fight each other until the end of time, so let's just pretend I'm not here in the middle of it, okay?"

Chuckling yet again, Khazeer slowly wrapped fingers around Tatiana's throat. Her eyes rolled up, and the slim volara shivered. David put his aura in a box and sealed it tight.

"You will have a room to stay tonight, of course," the spire ruler said. "But do me a favor and step out onto the balcony and look clockwise. You will see what awaits you."

David nodded. "Balcony. Clockwise. Got it. Thanks for the help." He was risking it, saying 'thanks' to a demon he was trying to be allies with, but Khazeer took it in stride with a raised eyebrow.

"And you," Khazeer said to the succubus wiggling on his lap. "You and I have some catching up to do." With a tap on his amber horn, the skull door opened, and David and the crew left.

A peek back showed all twelve of Khazeer's elite guards approaching the succubus, circling the throne, and Tatiana grinning up at each of them as many hands reached out for her.

"She's going to be sore tomorrow," Jes said, laughing as the group stepped out into the main area of the spire's upper floor. Up here, the spire was thinner, with half a dozen doors made of giant, black metal teeth. One room was filled with meera, piles of bent slabs of metal, with some borjin minotaurs trying to figure out how to attach leather straps to them. Another was filled with meera weapons with a couple borjins hammering away at them, too. Hammering with what? From the look of them, aera hammers?

Where did Khazeer get all this gear?

David and the crew circled around the inner balcony of the spire, stepped through an archway of black bone, and walked out onto the outer balcony. A colossal ring of flat black metal that reached out ten meters, a disc balcony, with giant black fangs on its edge and white bone-like spikes, too.

Moriah and Tsila stayed inside the spire with Pegasus. This high up, angels might spot them, and David dismissed his armor and staff. Everyone else followed him out onto the balcony, including Tacharius, Zazee, the other volas, and their betrayers. A nice big group where David would blend in from any eyes above.

The look of Hell from the near-top of a spire was fucking insane. As if Hell herself wanted to make sure you could appreciate her, the air was cleaner this high up, nearer the burning sky, giving him a mostly clear view of the neighboring province. He was on the clockwise side of the spire, so the Scar was out of sight in the counter-clockwise direction, hidden by the spire itself. But facing clockwise and out into the distance, he saw so many things.

To his right was the center of the Hell donut, the Forgotten Place, an island with a raging storm above it, hiding the island in black clouds, and a massive red sea circled it, the River Styx. A bit to the left of that, he could see across the curve of the river to False Gate and the giant vortex tornado that reached from the fire sky down to the ground. One province lay between him and False Gate: Navameere Fields.

From the spire and looking straight out clockwise, half of the Red Pits province lay before him, with the Navameere Fields just beyond it. From above, the Red Pits earned its name, a flat province stretching out long and covered with thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of tiny red dots. Only tiny from a distance, almost like his own freckles. Each one was a pit of gore.

And below the tower, a few kilometers out and past the field of faces and fingers, enormous red square blocks moved. Formations. Demon formations. They were too far to see any details, but using the pits for size context, the demon formations had to hold a thousand demons each. How they stayed organized, he had no idea. Giant blocks of sheer bodies, slowly making their way forward. Some trampled over the red pits, so thick and heavy they probably crushed the remnants, impervious to the pits' dangers by sheer numbers. Most marched toward the Navameere Fields in the distance, while blurry red lines churned further off. Battle?

"That," Laoko said, peeking out over the balcony down at the formations, "is far more demons than a province normally holds."

David smiled. "But my Lord, there is no such force." The girls looked at him, and he rolled his eyes. "Nevermind. I guess Acelina was right. Spire mothers everywhere have been allowing more demons to be born. How fast can a province grow an army of demons of... say a million?"

The spire mother joined him near the edge and stared out into the distance, featureless, black face almost glimmering with the embers above.

"In a decade, Hell could grow such a force. It would be chaotic, though. We would have to let demons out of the hatching pit early, and allow more eggs to hatch as well. We do not, because Hell only provides so many souls. There is little point in letting demons overflow when they would simply starve or eat each other. There must be a balance between cooperation and competition."

"Makes sense," David said. "The surface uses the same principles with predator and prey systems. But Khazeer said Hell is dropping off more souls."

Caera joined him, stepping up to the balcony's edge and peeking down. "Maybe the surface world's explosion of population is to blame?"

"Maybe?" David squatted beside her and held a ledge spike as he peeked down, too. Falling would be bad. "We know the flow of time here isn't uniform. I bet a billion years ago, thousands of years passed every few hours. But it's also true the surface world has gotten ridiculous. It's doubled in just the past fifty years."

David knocked on his temple. No point in worrying about shit they couldn't figure out now.

"The Navameere Fields," he continued, and gestured out at the giant black blob of a province, too far for details. "What are we in for?"

"Not sure," Jes said.

Daoka shrugged, shaking her head.

Acelina said nothing.

The Las, who'd come up to the edge and were having fun hanging from it and flapping their little wings, were oblivious to the conversation.

"I have never been there," Laoko said. "But I hear the fields are dangerous."

"So the fields are an actual thing?" he asked.

Caera grabbed Lasca's hand and yanked her back onto the balcony, saving her the trip back up from her inevitable fall.

"I've read about the Navameere Fields," Caera said. "Nothing I've found talks about who Navameere herself was, or whatever she did to piss Azazel off. But Navameere Fields is hostile terrain."

"What isn't hostile terrain?" David asked.

Caera shook her head. "This is different. It's filled with fields of black stuff, and those fields kill you. I've been all the way to the Red Pits before, but never to Navameere Fields. And all the demons who go there rarely come back; the war and all."

David hooked an arm around Caera's shoulders, hugged her, and kissed her cheek. "You're so hot when you talk about stuff."

She rumbled and licked his cheek.

"I know a thing or two," Tacharius said. The incubus joined them, wearing his mischievous 'I know something, and that makes me valuable to you' smile. "Navameere Fields is the only place in Hell with grass. Grass, like on the surface. Except black, sharp, and the grass moves. There's fields of it, some tall, some short, and moving through it gets you diced into pieces." He shrugged. "Or so I've been told. Some demons with hungers sneak past the Red Pits and visit the Scar."

"Hungers." David sneered. Hungers meant the indulgences of the Scar, which ranged from exotic dancing, to raping and killing human cattle.

Once everyone got an eyeful of the utterly massive demon army they had to walk through to reach the border of Navameere Fields, then went back inside. Pegasus stomped his hooves and joined David's side again, pressing his shoulder into David's hip.

"Sorry," David said, petting his beloved pet. "Alright, this is our room, I suppose." He gestured to one empty room ahead. "And this is--" A loud squeal of pleasure poured out of Khazeer's throne room, the door open. He didn't peek inside. "This is Tatiana's room, I suppose. If she'll even use it."

"Wonderful." The succubus Zazee guided the betrayers and other sex demons into the huge room, and Tacharius followed her with a small salute for David. They looked happy to be in a spire and not out in the open where anything might find them: wandering demon bands, angel battalions above, hellbeasts, Cainites, or surprise attacks from more aliens.

As usual, Naoko snuck a peek back at David, smiling, before following her master into the room.

Jes rolled her eyes, pinched David's ass, and went into their room first. After a quick spin, she motioned them in.

"This," Acelina said, following the crew into the room, "is a far cry from the treatment I deserve. Look at this. At least the Scar had silks."

Acelina had a point. The room was devoid of anything soft, just a big room with a black floor, bone furniture, a raised section on the side with a bone table and bone chairs. Black walls in the shape of rib bones. Windows with bars of white bone. It was not comfortable.

Tsila and Moriah tossed their red silks onto the bone table, and both sighed with bliss as they stretched and flapped their wings.

"Angels," Jes said, standing in the center of the room and looking at the cruel, hard floor. "Can we borrow some feathers or something? A lot of them?"

Moriah snarled. Tsila smiled. Both shook their heads.

Laoko walked out of the room without a word, leaving everyone staring at the open archway. Five minutes later, she returned, drowning in enormous brown leathers so big they might as well have been blankets. Four arms full of them.

She dumped them in the center of the room, and the Las got to work immediately spreading them out and covering the floor in a couple of layers.

"There is little silk in the Red Pits," the tetrad said. "But I knew they farmed hellbeasts for their skin." Satisfied, she sat in the center of the room and nodded, getting comfy on the leather and sitting on her hip, Acelina-style.

In the hardness of the Red Pits, a pile of leather blankets was Heaven.

Everyone got comfortable instantly, falling into old habits and piling onto each other with the blessed leather as their cushion. Wings over wings, hooves knocking hooves, the ladies kept their armor on but otherwise relaxed, leaning on each other as they got comfortable. Only Moriah and Tsila didn't join them, both stretching out their wings and hovering a foot above the floor. Each flap stirred the air with a pleasant breeze.

"Thank you," David said to their resident tetrad.

Laoko rolled her eyes and gestured for him to join her on the leather blankets. He did. The tetrad scooped him up and sat him in the center of the leather so that all the ladies surrounded him.

"We go to war," Laoko said. "You understand that, yes?"

"Y-Yeah."

Jes nodded, and both she and Daoka pulled him into their arms and picked him up, literally. They laid him out across their laps and poked him a few times for good measure, like he were some baby they were passing around to the ladies in the office. Like she'd read his mind, Daoka smiled down at him, clicked and chirped, and squeezed his cheek.

"Not really war, right?" Jes asked. "We're just pushing our way through."

David shook his head. "I have to stop that other unmarked."

The gargoyle frowned. "If you get close to her, those aliens might rip Hell a new canyon again."

"I know. But--"

Caera picked him up, put him on his back on the floor beside her, and leaned in. Growling down at him, she licked his neck, like a cat stripping a bone clean.

"We'll figure something out," she said. "But David's right. We have to deal with her. She's going to be a problem sooner or later, if she's going against the woman-in-armor's advice. No choice but to think she's the enemy." Rumbling, the tiger opened her giant mouth wide and encased his throat. Gulp.

Acelina plucked him out from under Caera's teeth and set him on her leg. She held him like a baby, too, her hands under his armpits, and she stared down at him with her eyeless gaze.

"Are you ready for war, boy? There is a difference between the skirmishes you have fought, and wading through bodies."

Jes scoffed. "Bitch, you've been living in a spire your whole life, pampered by silk and cock every night. The fuck do you know about war?"

"I listen, and I learn," Acelina said. The spire mother smiled, exposing some of her enormous sharp teeth in a disturbingly large mouth. But when she closed it, the mouth vanished, disappearing into her black, smooth, featureless, mask-like face. "Are you ready for war, boy?"

"No," he said. "But I don't have much of a choice, do I? One foot in front of the other, I'm just dealing with things as they come up. And if this woman is anything like that Greg asshole, yeah, I'll go to war with her, and kill her." And he was doing everything in his power not to think about that right now.

The Las slipped in between the ladies and their giant legs, and grabbed David. Four red goblins grabbed his limbs and pinned him back onto the leather. Laria and Latia sat on his legs, and Lasca and Laara sat on his arms. Maybe if they weren't wearing pieces of heavy black armor, he could have freed himself. But they were, and he was trapped.

"Las protect you," Lasca said, nodding sagely and folding her arms across her small breastplate.

"This is protecting?" David asked. "Pretty sure this--"

"Las protect!" Laara said, and she tapped his forehead with a claw. "Maybe find more imps and grems? Like in Scar?"

Laoko shook her head. "I doubt that will work here, little creature. The Red Pits and Navameere Fields do not take kindly to imps and grems."

Lasca frowned. "Not nice in Scar either. Maybe imps and grems hide here, too?"

"It is not the same," the tetrad said. "Imps and grems are considered a waste here. The spire mothers rarely let them hatch, and any imp or grem who dares touch a soul is killed on sight. They are only allowed to scavenge on remnants. There is no hidden army of little demons to be found here."

Yet another thing David would take a stab at fixing.

Pegasus pushed his way between Laoko and Jes and leaned down, nudging his snout into David's temple.

"I'm fine," David said. "I'm fine. Just... demons wanna bully little me, I guess."

Jeskura nodded. "You are very bullyable."

Moriah hovered over him, tilting her head as she looked at him. But slowly, her frown turned into a smile, and she reached down for him. The Las slid off him, and Moriah pulled him up from the ground. With a small yank, she hooked her arms underneath his knees and back. A bridal carry, while she hovered above everyone in the large room.

"It is infuriating," Moriah said, "that we cannot simply fly you to where you need to go."

"Agreed," he said. "But we'll fix that problem by fixing the alien problem, I bet. I hope."

"Agreed," Tsila said. She scooped him out of Moriah's arms, and flew around the room, beaming a smile as she did. This was what gabriem spent their time doing, playing with souls and making sure they had a good time.

It was nice to get a taste.

"Hey," he said. "Can you take me down the spire to the ground? I wanna try something."

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

It wasn't easy, and took the tiniest, gentlest, most complicated music, but after a few failed attempts, he succeeded, and returned to the room with the angels as his express drivers.

"Okay," he said, and he rolled the maybe-too-large dice onto the blanket. "Maybe someday I'll be good enough to make some cards for games. But for now, dice it is. Time to learn how to gamble."

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

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

~~Day 118~~

~~Mia~~

The demons were insane.

It wasn't all of them. Sometimes they found a cluster of imps and grems munching on some remnants, and they seemed fine. Spires rarely cared about their imps and grems since the red goblins resisted spire auras; Mia didn't want to say it, but it was probably because they were kinda just too dumb for the auras to affect them the same way. But there were other demons unbranded as well, and they stared at Mia and the crew from a distance before running off. Usually.

"We're not worried about them reporting us?" Mia asked.

"No one to report to," Romakus said. "False Gate is chaos. No one's in charge. Demons kill each other as often as souls. I have no idea what's going on in the spire, but it can't be organized."

"I hope you're right." She took a deep breath and followed the crew into a black forest.

Branches reached out and cut her skin. Sharp twigs cracked under her sandals. Cerberus snarled at sticks that scratched his leathery hide, and fell in beside Mia, the two hiding behind the others. Vin, Julisa, and Kas were the biggest without wings, so they pushed ahead, snapping branches with their bodies and creating a path for the rest of them. The angels did their best to avoid the trees, keeping their wrapped wings away from the hostile branches, but the deeper they got into the forest, the more problematic things turned. Mia used quiet little tunes to nudge trees aside, but doing that without giving away to spying eyes above meant she could only make slight movements.

"We really gotta push through this?" Mia asked.

"Fastest way to the spire," Romakus said.

"You sure? It's a big province, and it's probably changed in the, what, two thousand years since you were here?"

Romakus gestured to the angels.

"Straight ahead," Yosepha said.

Right. If angels could orient themselves, they knew their North East South West -- or the Hell equivalent -- better than birds.

With a heavy growl, Cerberus dashed ahead, took a sharp right, and tore at the base of a tree.

"Cerb?" Mia asked. "What--"

Cerberus got two sets of jaws on something and dragged it in front of the crew. A soul.

The man screamed with agony as Cerb tore into his flesh, but the man wasn't defenseless. He brought down a stick onto Cerberus's center head, and something hard thudded on his skull, earning a dog-like yelp, and blood.

A swarm emerged from the trees, literally from them, dropping from the branches and out of holes in tree trunks. They wore no metal armor, but brown leather tied snug around their chests, groins, legs, and forearms. They moved fast.

"Cainites!" Romakus yelled and withdrew his sword. He swung it a whole meter before it got stuck in a large tree.

Julisa's swords were easier to manage, and she cackled with glee as she brought the four down in separate beats like some sort of farming equipment mulching through crops. Half her swings tore through branches, and the other half tore through flesh.

Cainites were strong, stronger than regular souls, and stronger than even betrayers. Something to do with eating demon hearts that gave them physical strength, a perk Mia did not get. It was enough for some of them to wield meera weapons, and some even wielded swords the size of Julisa's. A Cainite came in from the side, and the angels hopped back, but without the use of their wings, or armor, or weapons, they'd have to use their fists if it came to it.

Mia raised a hand, pointed it at the man, and--Cerberus jumped the man and ripped him to pieces. The tiger-sized three-headed hellhound pinned the man under his weight and ripped into him like a scene out of Jurassic Park, teeth and claw ripping into meat. The man got a hand under Cerberus and pushed him up, but the weight was too great, and Cerb's bite too strong. The hellhound thrashed his heads side to side, separating muscle from bone.

It wasn't like killing a remnant. It wasn't even like killing a normal damned soul. Cainites were tough, and the man gargled on his blood for far too long.

"Angels!" a woman from above said. "Get the angels! Kill them! Eat them!"

They weren't here for the demons, for Cerb, or for Mia. They wanted angel hearts. Like Cain and Lilith.

More Cainites poured out from the trees, wearing the same leather. Their bodies blended into the dark bark, black soot rubbed into the grooves of the leather. They weren't crazy. They'd planned an ambush. Some had rocks tied to thick sticks, but it was the ones with small black daggers that were scary, running toward the angels like the devil was after them.

Mia focused, held out a hand, and played a harsh tune. The ground here was softer where the trees grew and had little blackstone to work with. So she used the trees themselves. They weren't like forbidden trees, but simpler, with all the inner nuance of glass: almost none. They responded to the music, and attacked.

The branches shot out, and two Cainites came to a halt as sharp wood pierced their bodies. Momentum broke the branches off, and the Cainites rolled on the ground like warriors struck by arrows.

Mia covered her ears as Vin's roar ripped through the forest. He opened his mouth, and his spikes glowed amber.

"No! Vin!" She dared not approach with the titan thrashing around, breaking trees with his body and sending Cainites running for cover. "You'll set the whole forest on fire!"

She stared back. Adron and Kas were busy, fending off the flanks. Azreal, Noah, and Yosepha stayed close to Mia, and they scooped up meera weapons from the few Cainites that'd gotten close, still writhing on the ground with branches sticking out of their bodies. But more Cainites flooded them, using the trees to hide their approach. Mia summoned another branch and stabbed the closest Cainite, sending her to the ground where Cerberus pounced her and ripped her open.

She had to stop Vin.

"Angels, use your batlam rune!" she yelled, summoning her own.

"Are you sure, unmarked?" Noah asked.

"Yes! Just do it!"

Thank god -- God -- angels were good at obeying orders. They summoned their armor and weapons, and sure enough, the remnant cloaks wrapping their wings and bodies shredded into pieces and fell away. And like they were unleashed, they went on the attack. Azreal put himself between Mia and a dozen of the savage men, and their sticks and weapons bounced off his colossal shield. Noah and Yosepha went on the offensive, and like ballet dancers, spun between the branches, wings avoiding their sharp tips by centimeters as they cut down the damned souls.

A gamble. If Mia was right, the forest would hide the fight from watching eyes above. But not if Vin destroyed it all.

Vin's spikes grew brighter and brighter.

"Vin! No!"

But the titan ignored her voice. He was going to torch the place, like he did with the Maze. Romakus and Julisa couldn't stop him, drowning in bodies and cutting them down. And Noah and Yosepha were busy helping Adron and Kas.

Mia clenched her eyes shut for a single moment, and activated her necklace.

A line of amber energy shot out from the amber jewel into the black chain wrapped around Vin's throat. The seal she'd given the crew to protect them from spire auras couldn't stop this, a direct connection to his body, to his sin, with a simple pulse of agony.

Vin's mouth locked up, his amber glow died, and he fell to his knees. His tail went rigid, twitching behind him as the electric-like pulse worked through his body. Slowly, even as he shuddered from head to toe with the torture, he looked back at Mia, glaring.

One problem down, and bound to come up again later. For now, she aimed her staff at the few remaining Cainites, and summoned more branches. She'd gotten better. Black trees had felt too abstract to make grow so quickly in the past. Now she could. The trees bent, trunks twisting, threatening to crack, and more sharp branches stabbed into the surrounding ground. She stabbed some Cainites and tripped others. Cerberus was more than happy to get his revenge, his own blood trickling down boss-head's skull as he tore into a fresh kill.

But it was the angels that had Mia staring. So beautiful, white and gold, surrounded by trees of black and splatters of red. They wove around the trees as if they weren't even there. And when they attacked, they drove forward with their shields in front, a switch from grace to brutal directness, the shields smashing branches apart as they dove in. Heads went flying.

And that was that. Mia disabled the necklace, and Vin fell forward onto his four palms, kneeling and panting as the blood of a few dozen Cainites seeped along the ground between his claws. The surrounding trees were destroyed, knocked over by the titan, and he growled down at the bloody earth with a rumbling snarl.

"It is done," Yosepha said.

"It is done," Noah said.

The two angels dismissed their batlam runes, Azreal too, and they gathered with Mia as she dismissed her own. The unholy cloaks were destroyed, the ruined fabric resting on the ground, and the three angels sighed down at the mess.

"What do we do now?" Yosepha asked.

Mia shook her head. "I got an idea, but wait a sec." Vin was more important. With a heavy breath, she walked up to the leashed ragarin and stood beside him. "You were going to torch this whole forest, set in on fire, and it would have spread like it did at the Maze in the Black Valley."

Vin growled. From this close, the bass-filled sound almost made her teeth vibrate in her skull.

She wasn't done. "I'm serious, Vin. I know we got swarmed and things got dangerous for a second there, but you jumped to the most violent solution in seconds! What the fuck were you thinking?" Every word tasted like ash. Just when she was getting along with the big bastard.

No vile retort or scathing remark came. She braced for them, expecting the titan to hurl insults at her, or maybe give her an evil eye. He did not. Eyes aimed down, he breathed deeply, sank his claws into the dirt, and ground his sharp teeth.

"You acted quickly," he said.

"What?" She blinked at him and took a step back as he stood up.

He leaned against a tree, snapping a few branches as he braced against it and rotated his shoulders. She stared at his back, waiting for a response, but apparently he'd said all he had to say. Recovered, he brushed at some wounds on his body, small cuts where the Cainites had taken a stab at him.

Was he happy she'd been so quick to smite him? There was no telling with Vin.

"Those Cainites," Mia said. "They were absolutely throwing themselves at us, going for the angels."

"Sounds about right," Romakus said. "Cainites think killing and eating an angel is worth dying for."

"Yes," Noah said, sighing as he squatted beside a corpse. "We angels who visit Hell do our best to avoid them. It is... painful, killing souls."

Mia winced. It hurt her killing the damned, but angels were literally bred -- or designed -- to serve humans. Damned souls were still human. Poor angels.

"What about this?" Yosepha asked, gesturing to her bare, white wings.

"I saw the Cainites wearing leather armor," Mia said. "And after I saw so many of them, I thought maybe we could use it? Shitload better than walking through Hell having to wear remnant clothes." Not just remnant clothes, but the clothes of priests and other similar figures. "I can see how much it hurts you each time you put them on."

"You thought of us, in the middle of combat?" Azreal asked.

"Well... yeah?" She beamed at Azreal, squatted down, and rubbed Cerberus's heads. "And you! You found that first Cainite. I guess having three noses is a nice advantage."

Cerberus nudged his snouts into her, rumbling in his chest like demons did, almost a purr.

Romakus grumbled, scooped up a corpse, and yanked the leather off it hard enough that something cracked in its body. Nasty.

"Cainites are too damn smart," the tetrad said. "Back in my day, they weren't hiding out in the forests. They stayed on the province's borders. And they weren't this well equipped." He tossed the leather skirt and chest wrap to Yosepha, and grabbed another corpse, plucking the dagger from its grip. "False Gate has really shit the bed."

Mia didn't watch as Julisa helped her boss strip the bodies, or when they tore open the ribcages to get the prizes within.

"Are you sure you do not want some?" Julisa asked, holding out a human heart to Noah and Azreal. The boys glared at her, and she chuckled as she came up to Mia and offered the same.

"No thanks," Mia said. "And you wouldn't either if you absorbed memories like I did."

As the group figured out how to wrap the leather flaps of hellbeast skin across the three angels, Cerberus turned and faced a new direction. He snarled through clenched teeth and braced himself, spikes sticking straight up and tail going rigid.

After what'd just happened, the crew trusted Cerb's instincts and faced the same direction.

"Romakus?" a demon said. In a forest of black trees and cruel branches, a devorjin brute stepped out into the open.

"Carius?" Romakus didn't put his sword away, but he visibly relaxed, wings settling to his back, and tail picking up a slow wag. He marched up to the devorjin and swung out his hand for the mightiest handshake of all time. "You son of a bitch!"

The enormous brute took the hand and held it, but failed immediately when Romakus tried to arm-wrestle him in the air. The devorjin laughed. Apparently, he was used to Romakus's silly antics.

All brutes were huge, nine-foot juggernauts with no spikes or horns or tails or anything, just thick... thick everything. Thick neck, thick wrists, thick ankles, thick heavy clawed feet, thick chests, all muscle and skin so dark it was almost black. But this devorjin was especially big. Diogo big.

Diogo. Mia hadn't that about that bastard in months. Was he actually in charge of Death's Grip now?

"Romakus," the devorjin said. "You've returned? And you've brought... quite the crew. You--" Carius stared down at Cerberus as the big hellhound walked around him and snarled at the trees beyond.

Romakus laughed and shook his head. "I haven't returned, no. Not really. Now tell your own crew to reveal themselves, and maybe we'll share our kills with you."

Carius grinned. It looked weird. Brutes had the most skull-ish faces of all demons, flat and wide, with beady, evil-looking eyes inside large eye sockets. They looked scary, as if you could take the word 'bully' and put a demon coat of pain on it.

He held up a hand, and from the distant trees, more figures emerged. A couple dozen demons crept forward, a mix of various kinds, including a couple of borjins--minotaurs. Both minotaurs had a diloja -- bat girl -- sitting on their shoulders, too. Only the distance and the density of the forest had kept them out of sight.

Cerberus ran toward them, snarls turning into roars.

"Cerberus! Come!" Mia yelled.

Like a good boy, Cerberus came back to her side, and she rubbed his heads, careful of the injury. He'd heal in no time, but she checked the wound anyway, and carefully plucked a bit of dirt from it. If Cerb felt any pain, he didn't react.

"I knew Carius when he was just a youngin'," Romakus said. "Newly released from the hatching pit."

"So he's old?" Mia asked. "Like, over two thousand years old? That's old for a demon."

Carius tilted his head, eyes scanning the crew as he came closer. His gaze rested on the three angels at first, who'd gone back to wrapping each other's wings in the bloodied leathers. He gave Vinicius a good, long stare, but if the man was as old as Romakus said, then he'd seen Belor before, and knew a child of the Old Ones on sight. His eyes settled again on Cerberus, but went wide when they settled on Mia.

"An unmarked!?" he said, stepping back. His demons behind him froze.

"Yes," Mia said. "And the only reason I haven't killed all of you, right now, is because Romakus hasn't given me the signal." She stood tall, as tall as her five-foot height could manage, and did her best to look stern and deadly, instead of the sex toy the damn potram rune made her look like. "I assume you were here tracking these Cainites down?" She gestured around at the surrounding corpses.

Souls talking out of turn was not something demons were used to, and Carius blinked several times as he looked her up and down. Sizing her up, wondering if he could kill her, if he could eat her, and if he could fuck her. Par for the course, and honestly, guys -- and girls -- giving her those eyes didn't really bother her anymore. But it did mean she had to be on her guard.

Azreal stepped near and slightly stretched out the closer wing, putting it behind her. It didn't have quite the same angelic-protector vibe it would have had without the bloody brown leather tied snug around it. But she smiled up at him anyway and leaned into him a bit.

"You're right. We were tracking them," Carius said. "And... you're saying we can eat them?"

"Go ahead," Mia said. "I--"

Vinicius picked up a corpse, tore the woman in half, got himself a fresh new heart, and tossed the body aside. The approaching demons looked up at him warily, but Vinicius didn't so much as look down at them as he stripped a tree of its branches and leaned against the trunk.

"We don't need the hearts," Mia said. "I keep us fed."

Carius stared at her. "How?"

"A secret."

Frowning, the brute came a little closer, but not in the typical 'I'm going to intimidate you' way demons usually did. Whether or not he believed Mia had power, she had three angels with her, and a ragarin child of the Old Ones, and a special hellbeast.

"We're heading to the spire," Romakus said, and he tossed a corpse to the shocked Carius.

That was enough of a signal for all the demons to come in, and as Mia's crew backed up a bit and gave them space, they scooped up the corpses and fed. They looked hungry.

"You're not insane," Mia said.

Carius grumbled, nodding as he chewed a heart. "Belor didn't mark his closest. Maybe he realized the seal would backfire."

Julisa walked up to Carius, swaying her hips slightly more than usual, and she poked the man's shoulder with a claw. "Any idea how new demons are being branded?"

Teeth gnashing on his meal, Carius eyed the fujara tetrad. He didn't pull away from her, but from minute one, he didn't trust Julisa. Smart. If he was two-millennia old at least, then he had to be. Angels could get that old just by hanging out in Heaven, but a demon had to fight to survive every day and night.

"You want information?" Carius asked.

"Yes," Kasimiro said. "You get to eat, and you tell us what we want to know." He parked near Adron, idly clawing at his horns atop his flat, black skull. "Seen anything strange lately?"

Carius gestured to everyone in Mia's crew.

"Besides us," Yosepha said. "Maybe someone dragging some large rocks?"

"Dragging large rocks..."

Everyone caught onto the brute's inflection immediately.

"You know what we're talking about?" Adron asked.

"Yes. A few miles counter-clockwise from here, we saw a group of branded demons dragging large boulders with flat faces." Carius squatted down as his demon crew harvested meals, and a bat girl handed him another heart with a nod. "They used black chains and a dozen borjins. Not to mention a hundred other demons." He munched down the second heart as he gestured to his two minotaurs getting their fill.

"Black chains?" Romakus asked. "A group that big with black chains? Had to come from the spire."

Carius nodded. "And Thracius was with them."

Romakus winced and finally hooked his sword along his back. "Thracius," he said, facing Mia, "was a gorujin tetrad, like me. He was working his way up, determined to impress Belor and make a name for himself. He picked fights with Angel's Spine for decades, then traveled to the Navameere Fields border and did the same. The Spires War was a mess, and he was one of the reasons. And when Belor upped the ante and started forging aera gear with angel bodies, picking a fight with Heaven and talking about reaching the Forgotten Place, Thracius was one of the generals he relied on."

"Not a bailiff?" Mia asked.

Romakus grinned like a satisfied cat. "Only three bailiffs. Belor didn't pick us based on might."

"And Thracius has the brand?"

"Yes," Carius said. "But tetrads can resist spire auras." He gestured to Julisa and Romakus.

"We can," Romakus said. "But not for decades, let alone millennia. Thracius must be at least part mad."

"I still don't really understand the situation with the brand," Mia said. "Explain. Spire rulers can create spire auras, using the power of the spire to blanket the whole province in an aura. The aura is a command, right? It gives an order."

"A command and the emotional weight behind it," Romakus said. "The more powerful the compulsion, or the more specific and nuanced the order, the more the spire ruler must devote their energy and focus to creating it, and then maintaining it." He winked at her. No need to say it. Her own auras were like spire auras.

Mia tapped her forehead. "Right. And Belor's final order, the thing he sealed into demons? It must have been hard for him to do that."

The look in Romakus's eyes was outright creepy, some mix of nostalgia, admiration, and horror.

"Imagine Vinicius," the tetrad said, and gestured to the titan still leaning against the biggest tree nearby. "Imagine if, instead of trying to suppress his desires, Vinicius fueled them toward one purpose: conquest. Imagine someone putting every moment of their existence into that one goal, driven by it, their raison d'être. And he created an aura to match his obsession: win."

"Win?"

"Yes." Romakus squatted down beside her and gestured out at nothing, like a king showing his child their new kingdom. "Everyone was now obsessed with the goal. Defeat the other provinces, and reach the Forgotten Place. He instilled his desire into everyone he branded. Demons were marched, many at the end of a blade, into the spire. He branded a thousand demons every single day, and each he branded succumbed to his vision. No other spire ruler could ever create an aura so powerful." Romakus coughed. "So, naturally, when these angel assholes"--he gestured to Azreal and Noah--"swooped in and killed him, Belor's plan fell apart. The Spire War ended, brought to heel by the angels, and doubly so for False Gate. The angels cut down the other bailiffs, and I went into hiding. The province devolved in a matter of weeks, with demons compelled to follow a rule they could not follow."

"Wait, these two angels killed Belor?" Carius asked.

Azreal and Noah looked at Carius as they adjusted their new clothes, both glaring at him with their classic, intense angel eyes. A challenge.

Time to play peacemaker. Mia waved a hand. "If Belor is dead, then who gave the order to get the stones?"

The devorjin shrugged, and his nearby crew did the same. No one knew.

"I guess we'll find out," Romakus said.

Carius shook his head. "You're really going to the spire?"

Romakus nodded. "We have to. We need those stones."

"Wh--I suppose you will not tell me why."

Romakus laughed and gave his old friend a buddy-buddy punch on the shoulder. "I always did like you, Carius."

Carius snarled, but it didn't have any bite, and he faced his crew. "We're done here. Back to the ruins. Let's stay away from Romakus before he gets us all killed."

And just like that, the brute walked away, his crew sprinting ahead and disappearing into the forest, but not without a few glances back at Mia.

"Wait," Noah said. Carius and his crew froze. "Do you know a diloja named Varinia?" He gestured to the two bat girls riding on their minotaur demons' shoulders.

Carius shook his head. "No."

Noah nodded, and Carius went on his way.

"That," Mia said, "is the friendliest encounter we've had with randoms yet."

Romakus laughed. "I have some friends in the province. If they're alive and we run into them, maybe things will go smoother than we thought."

A child hiding chocolate behind their back would have sounded more convincing.

"Friends," Mia said. "And enemies?"

"Enemies, me?" Fingers to his chest, Romakus feigned offense and pouted, as much as he could pout. "Mia, I am a beacon of joviality and charity. Everyone loves me."

Everyone rolled their eyes.

The group got underway again, and the angels walked with a lighter step. Not wearing gross, unholy remnant clothes almost had the angels smiling. Not like Azreal or Noah could actually smile, but Yosepha managed a few small ones, and she shared them with Mia as she followed her boyfriend.

Mia walked between Azreal and Noah, glancing up at them. No one else was asking, and there was no way she was going to let something like that slide.

"Varinia?" she asked.

"A demon we met, years ago," Noah said.

"Met?" She air-quoted 'met'.

Azreal frowned down at her, but she smiled up at him. After dealing with Vinicius all these months, she was impervious to the relatively benign frowns of a surly angel.

"She was a friend," Noah said. "We were in False Gate, decades ago, and were attacked by a group of demons. We killed them, but the diloja in the group did not join the assault. We spoke with her. She was... pleasant."

Oh God bless these silly boys. Noah and Azreal kept their faces solid and stern, but the poor guys were oblivious to how much more obvious that made their true thoughts. Whatever had happened between Varinia and the boys, it'd been a little more than the boring, platonic sorta interactions Noah and Azreal defaulted to.

She almost asked what they were doing in False Gate. Probably the thing Yosepha was talking about, something personal. Whatever it was, they could talk about it later.

"I'll keep an eye out for a diloja, then," Mia said. "What's she look like?"

"Your height," Noah said. "A skinny thing, with long tendril hair."

All bat girls were skinny, dainty demons, but being Mia's height with long dreadlocks narrowed it down a little.

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

~~Day 120~~

So far, so good. False Gate was difficult to navigate, with every step a trial of dealing with how many hiding places the province had. There were ruins everywhere, many filled with remnants, and many of those were free, walking around. Not a big deal, unless there were fifty of them.

Cainites loved to hide in the ruins. Demons did, too. Every time the crew made progress, they had to fight their way forward. Far as Mia could tell, Romakus was right. The demons didn't report to anyone, and the sane ones either avoided Mia and the crew, or committed to an attack that was direct and manageable. When they were defeated, the survivors ran off, but not toward the spire.

The insane, branded demons were the bigger problem. She'd heard something about this before, about how in sword-fighting, it was the new guy who didn't know what he was doing who was dangerous. Someone liable to do something stupid and wrong that the expert couldn't predict. It was like that with the marked demons every time. They ran at the crew, zigzagging, tripping, hopping, stumbling, bouncing off ruin walls and jumping off crosses. Practically foaming at the mouth, they rushed headlong into the fight with such direct mindlessness, they knocked the crew over sometimes, even Vinicius.

But Mia's crew were all battle-hardened veterans, even Adron. They cut them down each and every time.

No hellbeasts. And the terrain itself wasn't all that problematic. It was just that every five meters meant a battle. Mia was exhausted.

And seeing Azreal and Noah come back the next morning after twilight, still refusing to explain their almost nightly, mysterious trips, pissed her off. They looked worn and tired, as if they'd been in a fight. Angels healed quickly, and their potram rune wouldn't show any damage they might have suffered. But Noah and Azreal normally carried themselves with perfect posture, as if it would kill them to slouch. They didn't look like valiant warriors right then. They looked... bothered.

Mia had had enough of this riddle. In the middle of a forest of sharp black branches and remnants sticking up like weeds, she played a silent tune and parted the trees, creating a small pocket of open area.

"Guys," she said to everyone else, "can you go on ahead a bit? I want to talk to Azreal and Noah."

Everyone looked at her, tilting their heads or raising eyebrows.

She gestured ahead to a small ruin. "I'm serious. Go ahead and wait. I want to talk to these two."

"Mia," Noah said, "I don't--"

"It wasn't a request, angel. We're going to talk. The three of us." She glared at Noah and his silver eyes, and Azreal and his purple amethyst eyes. "Now."

Every word tasted like vomit and acid. She hated being this girl, the pushy one demanding shit. But the demons and angels were content to let each other do whatever they wanted as long as it didn't immediately stop the mission. Not good enough. Whatever Azreal and Noah were doing, she needed to know before it bit them in the ass.

"Mia," Romakus said, "you--" She glared at the man and pointed a finger at him. Romakus put up his hands as if at gunpoint. "Right, right. Moving on. Hey, that's a lovely ruin over there. We should go check it out, Yos." The tetrad moved on, and after glancing back at her, Yosepha, Adron, Kasimiro, and Julisa followed.

That left Mia with Azreal and Noah in the tiny forest clearing. And Cerberus, of course.

"You two," she said, staring up at the two angels, "have been sneaking around at night. I want to know why."

Azreal shook his head. "It is not--"

"You're going to tell me what you've been up to almost every night. You just... go! You go out into Hell and go do things in private I'm not supposed to know about. Yosepha has a guess, but she won't tell us. And if I were an angel, I guess I'd understand and leave you to it. But my life is in your hands and you won't even tell me what's going on?"

"It is a private matter," Noah said. "It will not--"

"Bullshit. You are literally out there, flying around at night. You don't think the aliens might find you again, like they did right before Asmodeus captured you? Or maybe you'll get captured by demons? Even the Cainites might get a sneak attack on you and drag you down. And angels! The other angels might find you. They--" She pointed at their leather-wrapped wings. They weren't in as good condition as they'd been a couple of nights ago, with some new scuff marks and tears. "You have been fighting!"

Maybe it was the rage mixed with worry in her green eyes that broke the two angels, but the holy warriors looked down. Their wings slumped, and what rigidity they had left in their posture disappeared.

"We are old," Noah said.

Azreal shook his head. "Noah--"

Sighing, Noah put up a hand. "It is time, old friend. You knew we would have to tell her eventually."

Mia blinked. Noah sounded solemn.

"You understand the dread?" Noah asked.

"Yeah," she said. "I mean, kinda. When angels get super old, you start to get... depressed. Really depressed. Existentially depressed." And to a being whose existence was defined by a very specific, built-in purpose, it didn't get worse than that.

"Angels can undergo rebirth, forging new bodies, with pieces of their mind retained. But it was never meant to fight this dread we face." Noah squatted down, eyes aimed at the dirt. "It cannot fight the dread, only delay it. But there is another way to stave off the dread's pull."

Azreal squatted beside his friend, looking down too, as if looking up was a privilege they'd lost.

"The heart of demons," he said.

Mia winced. "It... makes you feel something?"

"Yes," Noah said. "It is not found in forbidden fruit, and we cannot know if it is found in the souls of the damned. But there is... a taint found in demon hearts."

"I've eaten both," Mia said. "There's definitely something those hearts have that fruit don't, but I couldn't ever describe it. It's like some sort of spice that makes me feel... I don't know."

"You are special," Azreal said.

Noah nodded. "Yes. Your body does not react to hearts the way other souls do. When other souls eat the hearts of demons or souls, they grow stronger. And more aggressive. It is the same for demons, but for them, it has always been a natural part of their life. They do not even realize it happens to them."

Mia stared. "You're saying... demons are violent only because of what they eat?"

"I doubt it," Noah said. "But it contributes, surely. And Azreal and I seek that taste, that warmth in the heart of a demon. That warmth, it..."

"It makes us feel," Azreal said. "We dislike what it makes us feel, but it makes us feel."

Mia sighed and sat on her ass. Cerberus was on her immediately, rubbing all three heads into her, but she didn't have the heart to pet him. She'd been ready to go on a rant about them endangering the group. Now, her therapist reflex just wanted to help them. And she couldn't.

They were suicidal. That's what they were saying, without saying it. They were suicidal, and doing all they could to not give in.

"We have been coming to Hell," Noah said, "to taste demon hearts, for thousands of years. Many angels have. It is a secret Heaven does not admit to, and a great shame for many angels."

Vinicius had it right when he said Heaven was deteriorating months ago.

Mia got up, rolled up her metaphorical sleeves, and patted both angels on the shoulders. "Is there anything I can do to help?" She knew the answer.

Azreal and Noah looked at her, and she drifted into their eyes.

"Let us meet your gaze," Noah said.

"What?"

"Let us stare into your eyes. It will help, if only a little. Just... just for a minute, if you'd please."

She did. And for a long, heavy minute, she melted into their eyes.

It was wonderful.