The Heart of Hell

by Wayne Barlowe

  In the end, it had been difficult. As they had ventured out of the fetid darkness of their cells, their spirits had not lifted as he had hoped. Nonetheless, while they had no real chance of regaining their full strength, they were still a band of the most potent, highly trained, and merciless Demons Minor Hell had to offer. And this sense of elite power—weak as it might be—bound them together yet. Eventually, with his flatteries ringing in their ears, they rose above their hushed anger and found themselves almost enthusiastic about the hunt. But the nagging wariness never left Adramalik.

  When a smaller Abyssal crossed their paths, Adramalik generously offered it up as a potential meal. It was a poor, lean creature, but it provided them with enough to raise their spirits. He did not even venture to ask whether he could take it aside before they cooked it and assuage his needs. He thought of their needs first. Or so he lied to himself. Renewed, with small morsels in their bellies and small jokes upon their lips, they set back out for larger game. And Adramalik breathed easier.

  When they came upon their quarry, as pallid as the dead eyes of souls and covered in heavy folds of flesh and armor, it moved quickly to defend itself and the Knights, slipping and sliding in their ice melt, only barely stayed clear of its claws. Adramalik had to admit that Demospurcus would truly have been only a burden had he survived and been forced to accompany them.

  Eventually each of their ancient lances found a home in the creature’s vitals and it slumped to the ground in a bubbling cascade of dark blood.

  They had to chop up the enormous carcass and drag the massive, steaming chunks of meat back through a sudden ice storm. And Adramalik thought he almost saw relief on their ice-crusted faces as the dark gates of Pygon Az reared up before them. The only thing that reduced their collective pleasure at their accomplishment was the knowledge that they would have to accomplish it all over again when Ai Apaec’s huge belly grew hollow once more.

  The Bearer of the Knife was there to bring them directly to the throne room and for the remainder of the journey to the palace the only sounds were those of the demons’ labored breathing, heavy footsteps, and the scuffing of their bloody burdens over the icy flagstones.

  When the party made their way into the shadowed Audience Chamber of Ai Apaec, Adramalik wondered how they would manage to drag the meat to the throne, given the obstacles the piled heads presented. This was soon answered. The enormous headless champion strode forward and relieved the Knights of their burden, shouldering the massive chunk easily and striding back to the throne.

  The demons saw their new god descend upon the flesh, his god-body left to sit motionless on the throne. As he feasted, his many sharp palps carving through the bloody meat feverishly, his body distended until he could expand no more. The champion reached down and picked Ai Apaec up and gently placed his saggy, bloated body upon the lap of the seated soul and then withdrew to his usual position, squatting, club at the ready. The Bearer walked ahead and then took up his place at the right hand of the throne.

  Only then did the Bearer diffidently wave to Adramalik to approach. With a jerk of his head the Grand Master indicated that the other Knights remain behind and then began to make his slow way through the piles of souls’ heads. Their murmuring began almost with his first step.

  “It rises.…”

  “Something awakens.…”

  “It hungers.…”

  Adramalik peered into the shadows.

  “… It … urges.…”

  “… Something … craves.…”

  “… It … demands.…”

  He saw eyes and teeth glittering in the darkness.

  “… from…”

  “… from…”

  “… from…”

  He stumbled.

  “… the Pit…”

  “… the Pit…”

  “… the Pit…”

  And that made him slow his pace.

  “… annihilation!”

  “… obliteration!”

  “… apocalypse!”

  The words hit him like a javelin.

  “… IT AWAITS YOU!”

  And, in that moment, the horror of their words echoing in his head, he knew that he would not be able to resist the Pit. Somehow, deep within his breast, he had known it all along. The pull of the place, the hold it had had over him, was undeniable. He would have to push aside his unreasoning terror and make his way there. And it would have to be alone. Had the words been overheard? He looked back at his companions but saw nothing amiss. His Knights could not know about this.

  The sibilant chorus of voices had faded completely as he drew closer to the throne. There, glutted and once again atop the enormous soul, Ai Apaec squatted. He was even more grotesque than when Adramalik had first seen him. The god’s body was distended, sack-like, and barely fit upon the broad shoulders of his god-body. His short legs needed to constantly readjust for him to stay atop the thick neck and his palps flicked about leaving dark, glistening rivulets of blood to drip down the broad chest below, pooling where he sat.

  Adramalik knelt.

  “You have done well for your first effort, Adramalik. Better than I had imagined. I was quite sure you would have lost at least one of your Knights. They are more formidable than I had thought. Which is good because on your next adventure out into the ice I would have you bring back two Abyssals.”

  Adramalik glanced at the hard-won remains of the god’s meal. There was more than enough left for a hundred such feasts. But even as he watched, he saw servants begin to push the rent chunks of meat into deep channels of blood that edged the throne. There they bobbed briefly before slowly floating out of sight.

  The Bearer of the Knife stepped forward.

  “My god, Ai Apaeac, demands that two such creatures should be killed and their flesh be brought back for his pleasure on your next journey to the ice. His appetite has merely been whetted by this first serving. In his generosity and as a reward to strengthen your Knights for their next hunt, he has ordered that a measure of the meat that you brought back be divided among you.”

  The Bearer prodded a small chunk of meat that had fallen from Ai Apaec’s mouth with his staff, a leaving not nearly large enough for him and the five remaining Knights to satisfy their needs.

  “Retrieve it, split it as you see fit, and go back to your domicile. We will call upon you again, as we see fit.”

  Adramalik drew in his breath and, head still bowed, rose. He scooped up the meat and headed back to his waiting Knights. As he passed a shadowed mound of heads, he dropped the chunk of meat amidst the heads and they immediately and noisily began scrabbling for it. He would not, could not, insult his companions with such an offering and was doubly grateful for the meager meal they had found out on the ice. It was a lesson he would not forget.

  As he approached them, the Knights formed around him protectively. As one, sullenly and disheartened, they withdrew, but as they crossed the Audience Chamber’s threshold great peals of deep laughter echoed throughout the cavernous room and continued until the sound was dimmed only by distance.

  * * *

  Adramalik sat in the dark corner of his domicile, scratching heartening symbols—small incantations—on the wall, surrounded by his scuffling, mindless inmates, weighing all of his alternatives. Much time for fearful, restless contemplation passed. Staying in Pygon Az was no longer a real option for him. He and his Knights were all but prisoners. And, truth be told, he was not exactly sure that in their current state they could break away from the place. They were still seemingly loyal, but it was only a matter of time before they grew mutinous. Ironically, it was probably just as well that they were separated—plans could only grow when they were together. All this considered, he had to make his own plans. To remain within the confines of the city was to accept incarceration and subservience for eternity. The only way, he concluded, to free his Knights would be to free himself first. But would they see the reason of that?

  Seizing the moment, Adramalik began to push the
headless souls out of his way. Any resistance he encountered he met with the snapping of limbs. At least they could not scream. After only a few moments the majority of the souls who could still walk had scrambled to the four corners, pressed up against one another, shaking. With a slight smirk, Adramalik crossed the threshold of his domicile.

  In a city with no one upon its streets, it was not difficult to stay in the shadows and make his way to a secluded spot. He did watch as the countless eyes in the bricks followed him, at every moment prepared for an alarm to be raised. But none was heard as he made his way into the gloom of the Black Temple Lucifuge had built so long ago to honor Lucifer the Lost.

  His wings, kept folded for so long, ached and twitched when he finally spread them wide, their flight-enhancing glyphs flaring to life. Still making sure he had no witnesses, Adramalik climbed with some difficulty to the top of a temple spire and only then dared to launch himself into the air. It had proved to be a simple, uncontested thing to leave Pygon Az behind, so easy that he felt angry and bitter at the plight of his now flightless and handicapped Knights. He would have to see if some obscure incantation could revive their tattered wings. Otherwise their lethality was severely compromised. But first he would have to manage to free them, a task that would not be easy. A wave of something akin to dread passed through him as he contemplated his next, dangerous moves. For millennia he had avoided even thinking about the place, let alone what lay beneath the ice. But to the Pit he would go.

  He had not forgotten the way—how could he have?—despite the passage of time. And the growing stench on the light wind helped him focus, filling his lungs with the fetor of Hell’s depths and his mind with the chaos that was the Great Lord Abaddon.

  The terrain below grew more mountainous with waves of black, ice-sharpened peaks reaching up to claw him from the sky. The mountains, themselves, took on an unnatural demeanor, carved into aggressive abstract forms and adorned with parallel grooves to enhance their artificiality. Strange totems surmounted the mountaintops, each lit with a striking blue glyph, each unfathomable to his otherwise educated eye. He knew they were signs of Abaddon and knew, too, that he would never understand them. Had the wind been as it usually was in this realm, fierce and wild and erratic, he might well have succumbed to the mountains’ jagged edges. But luck or fate or the will of That Which Dwelt in the Pit was with him and he gained the flattened valley ringed in as it was by towering, dark cliffs, where, ahead, the Pit lay open.

  Instead of flying over the Pit itself, Adramalik chose to land some hundred paces away. He needed to steel himself for what was to come.

  As he moved toward the opening he felt the once-familiar, almost irresistible rush of air that, growing with each step, seemed bent upon sucking him down into the abyss of the Great Lord’s sub-infernal kingdom. What am I doing? What in Hell’s name am I thinking?

  His pace became labored as he fought the wind, but, eventually, Adramalik found himself standing close enough to the Pit’s edge to feel its undeniable power. Wind whipping at his wings and robes, he found himself trembling slightly, closed his eyes, and breathed deeply. Which he immediately regretted. The stench of the Pit, despite the downward surge, was nearly overwhelming. What was it? Decaying demons’ flesh mixed with brimstone and something else that Adramalik dared not guess. He knew the legends.

  Shaking on the edge, he kept his eyes shut for some time until his terrible apprehension subsided.

  When he opened them again, a thing was squatting nearby, silently observing him. He did his best not to register too much surprise, but he was sure that it was impossible to completely mask. He stared in silence at the creature. It was a thing wholly unlike anything he had encountered in Hell—neither demon nor Abyssal. It was large, gangly, and bony, had four legs, and sat tall on its haunches on the Pit’s edge dangling its long, skinny tail into the void. A ring of dark fire like a wavering crown flared and guttered around its head and within it a mesmerizing glowing black glyph hung. The creature tilted its head jerkily as it regarded him and, distorted as it was, the face it bore seemed somehow … familiar.

  “What brings you all this way … Chancellor?”

  Adramalik blinked and his brow knit.

  “Has Pygon Az’s new lord grown tiresome?”

  That voice! I know that voice, that accent!

  “He has,” Adramalik admitted. “Are you from…?” He waved a hand toward the surrounding landscape. “Or from … down there?”

  The creature shifted on its haunches, its movements abrupt.

  “Down there, of course. But once, not so long ago, I was as you are.”

  Adramalik’s mind raced. And then it all snapped into place—the voice, the odd movements.

  “Faraii?”

  “I was.”

  “But how? You are so changed. How is it possible?”

  The creature that was once Faraii cocked his head, his dark eyes peering down into the gaping hole.

  “Because my god wanted it so.”

  “Your god? Do you mean Abaddon?” Adramalik could not keep the astonishment out of his voice.

  Faraii nodded. “He is down there. Waiting.”

  “Waiting for what?

  “For the time when he will rise. For the time when all this”—he looked around him—“will fall. For the Second World to rise. And for you.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes. Ever since the fall of the Prince Regent, my god has awaited your arrival.”

  “Your god has a name? Abaddon?”

  “He has many. The Salamandrines whisper theirs … T’Zock. The World Eater. T’Thunj. The Lord of the Second World. To them he is a prophesied savior. A harbinger of the return of their world to them. But yes, you may think of him as Abaddon. But you must never address him directly. That is for me to do, for I am beloved of him.”

  Adramalik blinked. Apart from the physical changes wrought upon the demon, he hardly recognized the inner soul of Faraii in this supplicating monstrosity that spoke to him in worshipful tones of his master.

  He unfolded his wings and Faraii turned and cantered to the Pit’s ragged edge. The stench from below was less than inviting and Adramalik hesitated. This was why he had come all this way. Something had drawn him to this moment. And, to his profound amazement, he had been awaited.

  Adramalik approached the edge and found himself fighting to remain steady against the storm of air rushing downward. He tried to peer into the gloom, but the wind buffeted his face with such force that he could barely keep his eyes open. His garments and wings flapped noisily and he shook his head.

  “We will need to fall together to combat the wind. You will need to put your arms around my torso and leap with your wings open!” Faraii shouted. “Otherwise the winds will dash us upon the ground. It is either that or a much slower, more challenging descent clinging to the inside of the shaft upon my back!”

  Adramalik pursed his lips and with a great effort opened his wings. He turned, took a few steps back, and then rushed at Faraii, his wings lifting and swooping them out into the void in one graceful motion. For a moment it seemed as if the wind would prevail and the pair hovered unsteadily above the abyss. But Adramalik laughed humorlessly and angled his wings downward and their combined weight and his flying expertise brought them into a controlled, braking dive.

  In short moments, the Pit’s entrance above receded into a small, near-round disk of luminous red sky. Smaller and smaller it shrank and soon they were plunged into near darkness as the walls of the chimney slid past. Faraii was heavier than his skinny frame had appeared and Adramalik, arms shaking, had to fight not to let go. He felt the air grow even chillier than that of the Frozen Wastes above, while below he began to see a faint blue luminosity as they dropped toward the floor of the chute.

  The floor was perforated and the icy wind that tried to pull them into the large holes was even stronger closer to the source. It took all of the demon’s strength and flying skill, fighting the pummeling wind, to place Faraii with
some care upon the hard stone floor, away from the sucking holes. Without waiting the creature that had been Faraii bolted off and Adramalik, struggling to fold his wings, followed. They moved along a labyrinthine course of tunnels until, finally, they were away from the tugging of the winds. Panting, they both took some time to recover.

  Adramalik moved to a nearby wall and reached out, touching the surface. The glowing emanated from tiny intricate patterns that covered the rock’s surface. Up close it almost looked like writing.

  “It glows. From what? An Art?” he said, a cloud of vapor puffing from his mouth.

  “No. It is not my Lord Abaddon’s doing. It’s natural to this place. It is something that grows upon the rock.”

  “Really.”

  Faraii stretched his long neck and then nodded to be followed. He turned and cantered off, the rhythm of his bony feet against the foot-smoothed, flagged floor echoing far into the depths.

  Adramalik sped to keep up, finding himself running at times, slipping and barely staying upright as the ice-rimed, polished paving stones afforded little traction. Time passed and the demon, having lost a sense of time passing, wondered how far they had traveled.

  Their path opened into a huge cavern, surprisingly bright from the accumulated light of the glowing rocks. The pair stopped and Faraii turned to watch Adramalik take in the vista. A small outpost could easily have fit inside the space, an outpost with towers many times the height of a demon. The natural walls, curving seamlessly into the ceiling, were smoothed over and covered in vast mosaics, massive scenes filled with hundreds of dimly seen characters engaged in what appeared to be huge battles and strange rituals unfamiliar to Adramalik. At the distant center of the chamber he could just see a single huge figure depicted. It was, he imagined, a crude representation of Faraii’s new god.