DIRE : HELL (The Dire Saga Book 6)

by Andrew Seiple

  I checked the status of his collar, found it still armed. “ONE SUPPOSES. WE ARE NOT FAR FROM ENVY, THOUGH.”

  “Mmm. Envy and Wrath. A perfect place for a dragon. Well, there are probably more around Greed. Have you seen that ring?”

  I weighed my words, decided they were of little risk. He was a creep, a murderer, and everything I stood against, but at the minute he was toothless as far as I was concerned. With a word I could trigger his collar. If my armor ceased to function, then his collar would trigger. If my life signs even fluctuated, boom would go the collar. He was nothing and inconsequential.

  And if I kept telling myself that, sooner or later I might believe it.

  “Doctor?”

  “NO. SHE MANAGED TO SKIP THAT RING. ALONG WITH LUST AND GLUTTONY.”

  Probably for the best, to tell the truth. I was still recovering from a bad breakup, and the food down here that I could eat was, in a word, lacking. Though even that would be lost to me if Vector was gone for good. I picked up the pace, shuddering at the thought of having to eat demon or hellspawn without the various treatments and de-toxifications he could work upon the meat.

  Although, if push came to shove... I eyed Pagliacci in the rearview camera, eyed the new pink skin over his layered muscles. I was already in Hell, what was one broken cannibalism taboo?

  My stomach turned, and I hastily shelved the idea.

  “I should have liked to have seen those rings,” Pagliacci mused. “Perhaps I will, if you fail.”

  “NOT AN OPTION.”

  “An easy thing to say. A harder thing to do.”

  Glimmers in the sand ahead, the formless light of Hell winking on metal fragments from Beaky’s remnants. They sat around strings of ropey purple flesh, all that remained of my faithful lair.

  That was another reason to get to the wreckage. It broke up the barren terrain of the waste and would catch the attention of any survivors.

  At least, it would if the larger chunks of machinery weren’t sinking into the soil. Like they were right in front of my eyes, at this very minute.

  “WHAT THE FUCK?”

  We watched the remnants of a thermal lathe descend below the sandy gravel, with a scraping noise that reminded me of nails on a chalkboard.

  “I have no answers here,” said Pagliacci.

  “THEN IT’S UP TO DIRE TO DO THE HEAVY LIFTING.” I activated my sonar mode, the spectroscope, and the gravitic anomaly tracker, and went to town.

  Reports trickled in through my display, and I blinked to see them. “THE METAL. EVERY SCRAP OF METAL ON THE GROUND IS BEING DRAWN INTO IT, DOWN TO TUNNELS BELOW.” I was suddenly very glad I’d switched to hover mode a few miles back. “SOMETHING IS EXERTING A CONTINUOUS, CRUDE ELECTROMAGNETIC FORCE UPON THE FRAGMENTS...EXCEPT NO, THAT’S NOT QUITE RIGHT. FASCINATING.” It was even drawing in the non-ferrous materials. And going by the errors it was throwing, this was more sorcery. Except that it was blended with an effect that I found far more understandable than the usual physics-defying bullshit.

  “That is incorrect,” Pagliacci said.

  “WHAT?”

  “You say that something is exerting a force. I say that someone is doing so.”

  “GOING BY THE TUNNELS DIRE IS DETECTING DOWN THERE, YOU’RE PROBABLY RIGHT.”

  “Oh good, that’s simple then.” Pagliacci smiled and flipped a knife up and down in one hand. I had no idea where he’d gotten the thing. “People are easy to murder.”

  “IT’S PROBABLY DEMONS.”

  “Oh, they’re people too. Just particularly pathetic ones.”

  “UNLESS IT’S A FALLEN ANGEL.”

  “Doubtful. One of those would not let a little thing like your flight stop it. And the only one after your skull at the minute is Buer. We are far from the territory of any of the rest that I know of.”

  “YOU’VE SUDDENLY BECOME AN EXPERT ON THEM?”

  “I asked Buer about it, during the few days I spent in his presence. They are not legion, as the Bible says. They are fewer than a thousand, and Hell is vast. There are none here, not until the iron city of Dis. You are going there, I assume?”

  I hadn’t told him any of my plans, and I didn’t see any reason to change that. “THAT’S OF NO CONSEQUENCE RIGHT NOW.” I frowned. “COME ON. LET’S GO SEE IF WE CAN FIND A VENT OR TWO. IF THERE’S SOMEONE FUCKING AROUND UNDERGROUND, THEY’LL HAVE AIRSHAFTS.”

  As it turned out, they did, though the caves were a few miles distant and hollowed out of what had once been a pretty tall mountain. Beyond it, fumaroles of thick, black smoke dotted the wasteland. And surveying them, my spectrometer told me a fairly interesting story. “THOSE ARE THE SIGNS OF A LARGE-SCALE SMELTING OPERATION.”

  “Then it would explain why they want metal.”

  The ground shook below us, and Pagliacci stumbled, went to one knee.

  “NO IDEA WHAT THAT WAS.”

  “Earthquake?”

  “UNLIKELY. THEY COULD BE SHOCKWAVES FROM A GOOD-SIZED EXPLOSION, PERHAPS.” I pointed to the ‘north’. “BLASTING NEW TUNNELS, POSSIBLY. IT’S A MOOT POINT.”

  “How so?”

  Because I’ve got one more day of clean air, less than a day of stored rations, and enough water to live for four days before I fucking die.

  But I would be damned before I’d show weakness to one of my oldest enemies, so instead I said “BECAUSE WE’RE GOING TO GO DOWN THERE, SEE WHAT WE’RE UP AGAINST, AND DESTROY ANY WHO WOULD STAND AGAINST US. THEN WE’RE GOING TO GET BACK OUR SALVAGE, RE-ESTABLISH THE VOX SERVER, AND MAYBE MAKE A FEW MORE WAR MACHINES FOR SHITS AND GIGGLES.”

  “I do like my giggles.” The mad clown considered me for a long moment. “I have an idea. You will hate it.”

  “OH?”

  “Your armor is quite black, but still shiny in spots.” He reached down, grabbed double handfuls of gritty soil, and offered it to me as he straightened up from kneeling. “Care for a rub down?”

  I hated the idea, but accepted its necessity. Once he deemed me camouflaged enough, we descended into the tunnels. Based on the fact that I hadn’t been drawn down into the soil, I trusted that I’d probably be fine so long as I avoided direct contact with the ground.

  That was the hope, anyway. Magic was cheaty.

  We descended into the bowels of the underworld, following the draft. The foundries below ground pulled massive amounts of air to keep their fires going. I had a notion of the processes they were using, based on the output of their chimneys, and this would lead us straight to them, barring weirdness or interception.

  Nothing intercepted us. We crossed through tunnels gouged out of solid rock, past old scaffolding made from bones. This place bore odd patterns on the walls. They’d definitely been mined; I could trace the cavities where seams of ore had been pulled out of the stone, but I had no idea what had done it. No pick marks, no scars from acid. Probably the same sort of sorcery that had pulled my precious scrap down through the soil, come to think of it.

  I muted my voice modulator down to the level of howling wind as we came to a place where the tunnels narrowed, and leaned in to talk with Pagliacci. “ONE THING PUZZLES DIRE.”

  “Oh?”

  “THIS REGION. ON THE MAP, IT IS UNCLAIMED TERRITORY. NO ONE IS SUPPOSED TO BE OUT HERE.”

  “You have a map?” He looked surprised. Then it faded. “Any map of this area would be suspect. It is hostile to settlements, haunted by dragons, and barren. Clearly nobody has explored here overmuch.”

  “WHICH WOULD WORK, EXCEPT THAT THE AMOUNT OF DUST IN THESE TUNNELS IS NOTICEABLY LIGHT. THEY HAVEN’T BEEN IN EXISTENCE VERY LONG... A FEW MONTHS, AT MOST.”

  The caves shuddered around us as another explosion rocked them from what had to be at least fifty miles away, going by my seismic trackers.

  Claim jumpers. That was the first thing that came to mind. A wildcat mining operation, using the wastes and the dragon as cover. I reviewed the borders surrounding this area, thinking back to this particular region of the map. Only a few, and far between. And
given that it wasn’t far to the next ring of the massive crater that was Hell, there was no real reason for anyone to be roaming out here. Yeah, claim jumpers were a possibility.

  “Where to from here?” Pagliacci asked, as we came to a junction, a regular honeycomb of tunnels branching out in multiple directions.

  “THAT WAY.” I pointed.

  “You are certain?”

  “IT’S WHERE HER DAMNED LATHE IS GOING.” I hadn’t turned off my various vision modes, at least the ones that could track that thing through the solid rock. No real point in giving up an advantage.

  The tunnels got smaller as we went and I slowed when we came to the first signs of what passed for civilization in Hell.

  Slaves.

  The torchlit corridor we’d come to had perhaps three hundred Damned on either side, men, women and children, all grimy and naked and using rocks to scrape at the walls. As I watched, one of them uncovered a streak of metallic gleam, and turned back to call down the corridor. From somewhere out of sight, another voice replied. The lucky prospector confirmed it, and they relayed the call back further into the tunnels.

  “ODD WAY OF DOING BUSINESS,” I observed.

  “They have seen us,” Pagliacci pointed out.

  The nearest slaves to us were silent, staring up with dread.

  Then the call repeated itself, traveling back the other way, and everyone ran like mad away from us. The just-uncovered seam cracked and bulged, as the rock seemed to shudder...

  ...and a demon stepped out. Metallic and slimy at the same time, it flopped through until its serpentine lower half was clear. It had a torso like a bodybuilder, and a set of three mandibles on a snaky head, that chattered as it immediately whirled to face us.

  Then two more started oozing out of the wall next to it.

  “KNEEL BEFORE DIRE!” I shouted in hellspeech, charging my particle beams.

  “I do not think they will do that!” Pagliacci yelled, as he charged them.

  He was on the first one before it could react, slashing and stabbing with his knives, because evidently that sneaky fucker had at least two that I hadn’t noticed. The serpentine demon recoiled, and I turned my attention to the others, slinging beams into the closest one. It staggered with each impact, eventually falling to the ground, its face a smoking ruin.

  “SHE SAID KNEEL!” I snapped at the third one, sparing a glance to my right. Pagliacci was ripping into the first demon, and it was bleeding something like mercury, but it was giving as much as it was getting, and Pagliacci was slowing down.

  The third one did not kneel. The third one slapped its hand into the wall next to it, and droned a buzzing song.

  The earth rose up and grabbed me.

  “CUTE TRICK.” I leveled my arm at it... and it retreated down the corridor as the stone rose to envelop my hand. I snarled, and rerouted power to my armor’s motivators...

  ...only to see warning lights pop up. Red warning lights.

  My armor reported catastrophic failure across the board, and my eyes went wide as I realized what was happening.

  The demon had grabbed my armor and brought the stone into contact with it.

  A good portion of my armor was made of rare earths and metals.

  Their magic was ripping my suit open, bit by bit.

  I pulled the ejection lever, scrambled out of the back, and whirled around in time to see my suit crumple like a tin can.

  Pagliacci loomed out of the darkness, covered in gouges, with the first demon’s head in his hands. Behind him, a fourth demon oozed out of the wall. “What are you doing?” Pagliacci asked, then froze as the collar around his neck started beeping. “Oh, this is not funny.”

  I dove for cover just as it blew up, managing to avoid the worst of the blast, and staggered to my feet, clawing for my sidearm. I’d just gotten the pistol out, when the ground below my feet writhed, and locked itself around my ankles. I had time for a wild shot at the remaining demons, but then they were on me, and they were far, far too strong to resist as they rained down blows upon me.

  In the end I managed to keep conscious as they unbound my legs from their stone sheaths and hauled my limp, bleeding form down the passage.

  “What shall we do with the big one?” The second demon asked in hellspeech, sparing a glance toward Pagliacci’s headless corpse.

  “Leave him. A new slave for the work crew when he reanimates. He’s of no consequence. This one, now, this one is…..” The fourth demon peered down at me.

  “This one is going to fetch a price beyond compare once we get her back to Dis...”

  CHAPTER 15: HELL HATH NO FURY

  “Remember, if an enemy can profit from a character’s continued existence, then death is not always the foe’s goal...”

  --Excerpt from the second chapter of the first book of the Chronicles of the Shared Lie

  As villainous lairs go, I give it an eight out of ten.

  Spires of stone and zinc curved throughout the chamber, and I was thrilled to see those. Zinc was what I’d braved these wilds to obtain.

  Still, I’d hoped for better circumstances. But I couldn’t complain too much. As soon as I saw that resistance was futile, I’d taken the hits, fallen as far as my leg restraints had let me, and shielded my face. My mask had come through intact.

  My right knee, not so much. It hurt like a sonovabitch and was swollen up to the point it was straining my pants leg. I had to struggle to keep up with the demons as they dragged me by the arms, and the jolting pain was an aggravating counterpoint that exacerbated the other bruises and contusions they’d given me.

  But the important thing was still there; they’d let me keep my mask.

  Which was good, because the air filters were working overtime down here. It wasn’t the dusty rock soup that the atmosphere was above ground, but there were enough things in the mix that I’d end up with some sort of horrible lung disease if I took the thing off for any amount of time. Cancer was not the answer, no matter the question.

  They dragged me up the ramps of stone and bronze, and I winced as the heat was just a touch too much on my feet. The chamber was lit from far below, by pits to either side. Magma? Certainly hot enough in here for this to be the high end of a magma chamber. If not for those huge vents in the ceiling, and the layers of stone between me and the direct lava, I reckoned I’d be sizzling right about now.

  Then the sculpture on top of the spires that I’d taken for an altar turned to look at me, and I forgot my discomfort.

  Ten foot tall from head to tail, it had a few feet on the demons who’d pummeled me down. Like the others, it had multiple mandibles churning on the end of its muzzle, and two dark eyes with pupils like lapis lazuli. Muscled arms bore a scepter and a gauntlet of gold, and he wore heavy jeweled chains over his chest like an infernal version of Mister T.

  “What have you brought me?” he asked.

  “A mortal woman,” My rightmost captor replied. “She and her dead comrade have killed Forty-first Worm and Fifty-ninth Worm.”

  There were that many of those things around? Troublesome.

  “Mortal...” He slithered closer and leaned in, chittering face inches from my mask. “Yes. I smell her soul. You have done well, yet you say there was another one?”

  “He was a Damned. He is a slave now.”

  “Kccch... then you live.” He scrutinized me for a minute more. “Who are you, mortal?”

  “DIRE.”

  He recoiled from my screeching roar, then stared at me, nictitating membranes sliding back and forth over his eyes. “Dire? Dire? The Dire who conquered Caym?”

  “YOU KNOW OF DIRE?”

  “Yes! Ah, did she have her armor of metal?”

  “She was wearing such a thing, Lord Shudderworm.”

  Shudderworm. Okay, now I had a name to work with.

  “Kssss... yes. Fortunate, then, that you wore a thing weak to our shaping. Yes, Great Blasphemy Buer will pay well for you, Dire. Fear not, you shall remain alive until then.”
/>   “OR,” I said, standing as tall as I could with a junked up knee, “YOU COULD GIVE HER BACK THE ITEMS AND MATERIALS YOU HAVE STOLEN FROM HER, AND SEND HER ON HER WAY.”

  There was a pause. “You speak strangely. Are you asking to be freed?”

  “OF COURSE NOT.”

  “Good, because that would be a foolish—”

  “DIRE IS TELLING YOU THAT YOU HAVE THE OPTION OF FREEING HER, SETTLING YOUR DEBT TO HER, AND PARTING WAYS WITHOUT OFFENDING HER FURTHER.”

  His mandibles slid together as he hissed like a thousand snakes having an orgy. My captors followed suit.

  “I do not think you understand the situation.”

  “AND SHE DOES NOT THINK THAT YOU UNDERSTAND THE UNSTOPPABLE FORCE THAT IS DIRE.”

  “We shall see. Take her to the cells. Eh?”

  There was movement to my side, and I turned to see one of the snaky demons ooze out of the wall and land on one of the supporting spires. “He will strike in seventy seconds,” the demon whispered.

  Instantly Shudderworm stopped laughing. “Get her clear of the room and brace. If she falls in the lava I’ll eat your bones.”

  They hustled me back through the entrance and I bit back a yelp of pain when my knee paid the price. Then they held me against the corridor wall, and put their arms over my head. “Don’t move. If a rock falls and crushes you, we will—”

  The cave shook, as another explosion rumbled through the tunnels. North, I’d estimate. I checked the compass in my mask HUD and nodded. I knew about where we were, now.

  But another thought preyed on my mind. “NOW HOW DID YOUR BOSS KNOW OF DIRE?”

  “He is our lord, not our... baaas, whatever that is.”

  “DIRE’S ONLY BEEN ACTIVE FOR TWO MONTHS DOWN HERE. HOW DID HE HEAR?”

  “That is none of your affair,” the rightmost demon told me, then they jerked me away from the wall. He half-guided, half-dragged me down the corridor.

  Fortunately we didn’t have far to go. The cells were pits in the floor, half of them covered with metal grates. They pointed at an open one, and I scrambled down into it as best I could, hissing between my teeth as my knee took more pressure than I’d wanted.