DIRE : HELL (The Dire Saga Book 6)

by Andrew Seiple

  Finally we came to the edge of the ring, hemmed by curved mountains that caught the clouds and milked torrents of water to rain endlessly down below. We clambered our way down, falling through the mists, following a waterfall down.

  They had clouds down here too, I noticed as the Direnaut straightened up. An actual climate, more or less. And plenty of trees, ranging from the bloated, brown and dull green ones full of thorns and mouths that you’d expect to find in Hell to brightly colored plants of every hue of the rainbow, swollen with tantalizing fruits that the gator-like hellspawn moved around without tasting.

  Of course the place was a swamp.

  I surveyed it from the bridge, with Vector and Khalid at my side, and my three captive demons in attendance. Epsilon had been here when I’d arrived, already looking over matters since it was his turn on shift. He’d called all-stop, to see what we could make of the place.

  “Dire’s going to bet that every attractive looking piece of fruit down there is pure poison,” I said, folding my arms. “Because Hell.”

  “I don’t think you’d find a single person here who’d take that bet,” Vector said, his tone emotionless.

  “Okay. Odds of the meat being edible, at least? We’ll need to feed the Striges, and the Damned have gotten used to eating regularly.”

  “We’ll need to harvest from here if we want to keep them happy,” Khalid said, folding his arms. “We could take extra meat from the Striges and feed them regenerative concoctions back when there were fifty Damned, and us aboard. Now there are over six hundred, and the Striges are still recovering from fleeing the dragon. Feeding on them exclusively will kill them.”

  First Whisper cleared her throat. “And you must keep feeding the Damned, now that you are here. For you will eat and they will not and that will grow and fester within them.”

  “Envy.” I drummed my fingers on the viewing port. “Dire doesn’t feel any different.”

  “You don’t feel different, that’s the problem with it,” Epsilon turned to look at me. “But you are. We can tell.”

  “She’s got a ginormous mecha, a cadre of loyal followers, the best teammates in this plane of existence, and a solid plan to beat up Satan.”

  “Lucifer,” interrupted Khalid.

  “Whatever. The point is, why should she feel envious?” I rolled my eyes. “Other people should envy her. Of course they don’t see the responsibilities, and work, and time and suffering it took to get to this point. The injuries she’s had to get treated for, the stress of the decisions, and oh gods she’s doing it, isn’t she?”

  “In the words of our Monster Master,” purred The Cat, “you have totally failed your will save.”

  “We knew the second you stopped wearing the mask,” Epsilon said.

  I took a breath.

  That wasn’t me, was it? I rubbed the back of my neck, looked away. Too many strangers around, or folks I barely knew. I hadn’t been... I had been trying to blend in with the crowd, I supposed. Trying to feel a camaraderie I’d never had.

  Well, fuck. These emotions were harder to detect, if a bit easier to squelch.

  “This is going to get annoying.”

  “I could help with that,” Vector offered, his voice still in that weird monotone.

  “She’s going to guess your help has something to do with your new voice... thing.” I glanced his way, studied his face. He looked bored. Either that or it was a pretty terminal case of resting bitch face.

  “Hormone suppression. Tailored bacterial cultures that cloud the amygdala and a few other basic structures.” He tried a smile that barely filled his mouth, didn’t touch the rest of his face at all. “It stops you from caring so much, about... oh, most things.”

  I looked to Khalid, who shook his head. Behind Vector, Epsilon was shaking his head too.

  “She’s going to pass on that one. Thank you,” I told him. “Probably going to tough it out.”

  “You’ve always been better at that than me, I suppose,” Vector said, still smiling-but-not-smiling. “I’ll leave you to it then.”

  He left through the turbolift.

  I looked to Khalid. “Time to worry?”

  “Yes. Something eats at him, and I have no clue what.” He sighed. “Something beyond this infernal assault upon our souls. Excuse me. I must go tend to my own.”

  And then we were five. I looked at Epsilon, who nodded. “We feel it too.”

  “You have souls?” That was surprising... no. No it wasn’t. I wasn’t sure what criteria determined the benchmark for souls, but I was pretty sure they fulfilled it. They’d sprung full-grown from Alpha’s head like gods and goddesses out of a dead titan’s body and grown so much in such a short time. If any androids had souls, they would be—

  “I don’t believe in souls,” Epsilon interrupted my reverie.

  “Oh. Ah, okay.” I looked around. “We are literally in Hell.” I pointed at my demonic minions. “Those are literally demons over there. Go on, poke them. They exist. Ergo, souls would seem to exist as well.”

  “I disagree. What we’ve found here is an alternate dimension, populated by things that appear to resemble dead people from Earth. The effect causing emphasized negative urges could be explained away by any number of things, most of which are not unknown on Earth. How many varieties of mind control and emotional influence are possible given the ruck and run of existing inventions and common powers?”

  “You know we’re standing right here, yes?” The Cat asked.

  “Absolutely.”

  “Ah yes, you’re the one with no social graces.” The Cat groomed himself.

  “Among other traits, yes,” Epsilon smiled. “But at least I don’t lick my own asshole in public.”

  “Interesting ideas,” I propped myself up against one of the railings. “Not the asshole-licking part but the theological implications. You’re positing an experience either deliberately designed after a common image of the afterlife or one that seems to draw in thought-forms that take the part of Damned souls, with enough accuracy that occasional visitors are fooled.”

  “Perhaps. The fact that most of the people we’ve encountered down here are Christians and we haven’t found a single person from before the rise of Christianity would seem to lend credence to the first idea. What if... and this is just a wild theory, but what if the raw, organized belief of humanity was manifesting itself and generating a shared hallucination, constructing a dimension where Hell is real?”

  “In that case, Dire would ask you to show her the proof. But she’s a bit busy punching demons to properly prove or disprove the theory herself.” I shot a glance at First Worm, who cringed away. “Oh not you, calm down. Just the ones who try to stop her.”

  But as it turned out, I wasn’t too busy punching demons.

  They pretty much fled as soon as they saw us. We passed by abandoned settlements, occasionally scared up wagon and boat trains full of fleeing envy demons and were otherwise thoroughly avoided by the denizens of this ring. Which was fine by me.

  It did leave me with a lot of free time, though. That wasn’t necessarily a good thing. Time to brood, time to sit there, feeling envy writhing around and through me, time to watch my friends and acquaintances harden, looking at each other with suspicious eyes.

  Fuck it.

  Five days after our discussion on the bridge, I went and gathered my Chorus. “All right. Morale is bad, and we can’t afford bad morale right now. Buer hasn’t hit us yet, which means he’s probably waiting for us in Dis. We can’t afford not to be in game shape at the point we find the guy. Thing. Fallen Angel.”

  “What do you propose?” Beta asked.

  “For most of the Damned, we need to find a way to keep them busy. Monsters and Mangonels is still insanely popular, but sessions are breaking down left and right due to people arguing. Maybe something where people can’t compare themselves to each other quite so much? Something with less potential for dick-measuring contests?”

  Gamma tapped her teeth. S
he’d had fake teeth put over her metal ones, I noticed. Of course she would. They were straighter than mine, and I found it annoying beyond— I shut that thought down, quickly. “Video games,” Gamma finally decided.

  “You really think those are less competitive?” Alpha grinned. He’d kept his teeth metal, I noticed.

  “No. But we can make them indirectly competitive. To the point where people don’t have faces to put their blame upon. Or where they’re playing against the machine, and the competition comes in the form of high scores.”

  “Easy enough to do. We’ve got plenty of electronic components left over. Give it a whirl, set up some Soldiers of Duty action all down in the lower decks. Or something like that. Call it... hm.” I had an epiphany. “No. Make it like Doomed.”

  “What?”

  “Oh yeah!” Delta leaned forward. “Call it a training simulator, for the final battle! Doomed, you know that video game with the space marine romping through Hell, blowing up demons?”

  “Old school,” Alpha nodded. “Not a bad thing, not by any measure.”

  “That should keep them busy, or less occupied with blaming each other. We only have to get to the border where Pride starts kicking in, and Dis is on that border. But that leaves a few very important people to check in on.”

  “The demons are doing fine,” Delta reported. “First Whisper’s listening device and comm equivalent was confiscated, and she’s on her best behavior. The Cat’s The Cat, and First Worm is happy now that he’s not being regularly abused and gets to play his cleric of the Earth god. But the metahumans...” She rubbed her face, stared at her fleshy hand.

  “Even Judy?”

  “Yeah. Things... haven’t been so good lately.”

  I chewed the inside of my cheek. “Dire’s going to check in with them. Probably should anyway. Vector’s been having issues for a long while now, Khalid’s gone silent, and Dire barely knows the other two.”

  “Three. Don’t forget Pagliacci.”

  “Right.” I wasn’t sure if he qualified; he didn’t have powers. But then, he’d lead a long and successful career by relying upon insanity and luck, so I supposed that counted. “Yeah, alright, she’ll bite the bullet and check on him, too.”

  “Do we really care about him?” Epsilon asked.

  “No, not really. But he’ll find a way to cause trouble if we don’t. Besides, Dire has a working theory about him.”

  “Oh?” Alpha leaned in.

  I told them and had the satisfaction of watching their eyes go wide. “Remember, keep this one quiet.”

  “Oh, no fear there. If it’s true, wow. Talk about a serious case of boredom.”

  Putting them behind me, I headed out of the war room and into the turbolift. The Direnaut had a pretty robust internal camera network. It didn’t take long to find Pagliacci. I figured I’d get him out of the way first.

  “Nice murder den you’ve got here,” I told him, as I stared around the room full of black tapestries, inverted pentagrams, and candles. I hadn’t known that we had candles. He’d probably made them from human fat or something.

  “Just getting into the spirit of things,” he told me, sitting on a thoroughly desecrated altar. It had piles of the Obols that we circulated as currency on it, pairs of dice, and cards lying to the side. “Welcome to the Afterlife.”

  “She’s not quite there yet.”

  “No, this is my casino, the Afterlife.”

  “Doesn’t look like you have too many gamblers right now.”

  “They ran when they saw you coming. The Romans try to shut us down now and then, invoke your name and say that it displeases you.”

  “That was back when we were in Sloth...” I gnawed my lip. “Here, Envy would probably cause more problems.”

  “It does, and when they do, violence happens. Keeps me in candles. I take a pound of flesh for every blow struck in anger.”

  Goddammit, there were times I hated being right. “Never figured you for an arts and crafts sort of guy.”

  He shrugged. “I rise to the occasion. So, are you going to shut me down?”

  I shook my head. Then I stood, turned my back on him. “Dire remembers that time we met. When you carved her out of her armor.”

  “Ah yes, good times. You ended me, finally. It took much work.” He applauded. “I was satisfied.”

  “You wanted to be ended?”

  “People like me don’t die of old age. All I could hope for was a beautiful death. You did not disappoint, you and your friends. Even if that fire did sting like a bitch.”

  I turned, flipping blonde hair over my shoulder, and studied him.

  My theory was right. I’d have to figure out how to deal with that later.

  “There’s a strangeness to you,” Pagliacci said, eyes on me. “The sins of Hell barely touch you. You master them with but a little concentration. Now why is that?”

  “Clean living,” I said, deadpan.

  He tilted his head. “No. Something more. Something about you that even you yourself do not see. I wonder...”

  “Keep on wondering,” I said, turned, and left.

  “So I can keep running my casino?” he called out. I ignored him.

  Vector was next. I found him in his lab, staring at a petri dish full of pulsing pink sludge.

  “Bad time?” I asked.

  “Yes. Wait, no. Yes, I am having a bad time. No, it’s not a bad time to talk.” He hitched his battered spectacles up on his face. “If that’s what you mean.”

  I took in his appearance: stained and disheveled. He had a fair amount of wispy stubble going on, and his clothes looked to be the same since we’d discussed matters on the bridge. “Are you... no, you said it was bad.” I pulled over a chair, turned it to put the back to him, and sat down. “How is it bad?”

  He looked to me, looked away. “It’s stupid.”

  “Bad can be stupid. Let’s hear it.”

  He put the scalpel he was holding down and snapped a lid over the pink goo’s dish. “All right. I want someone I can’t have.”

  My first thought was that he was talking about me, and I stifled laughter. My second thought was that he obviously wasn’t talking about me, and how dare he choose someone over me, after all I had done for him—

  Yeah, fuck Envy. The third thought fell into place, as I remembered all those sidelong, troubled glances he shot Delta whenever Judy hugged... her...

  “Oh! Oh.” I said. “Delta.”

  He sighed. “Yes.”

  I gnawed on my lip. “Have you told her that you were interested in her?”

  “I was working up the courage for it. Then we found Judy.”

  “And it wasn’t long after that you offered the Chorus their skins.”

  “I’d been working on it for a while.”

  “Because you wanted to... be more intimate with Delta.”

  “Well, it sounds horrible when you say it that way. But yes. I didn’t want to just come out and say it, though, that would have been... too much.”

  If anything, his monotone voice made it creepier.

  “Vector...”

  “She’s the only one who calls me Ray, you know that?”

  “No. Dire didn’t.”

  I looked away, thinking. If he’d been an equation or a complex engineering problem I could have solved him with a few seconds of thought. But he was a human, and for humans, there are no easy solutions. Not for the things that mattered. “Why Delta?” I wondered. “What’s the attraction, there?”

  “What’s not to like? She’s funny, enjoys life full-bore, takes nothing seriously, and she games. It’s rare enough to find a good woman who appreciates throwing dice and leveling up. Let alone one that would be fine with dating a supervillain.”

  “Mm. And the fact that she’s an android doesn’t matter to you?”

  “Gynoid, technically. That refers to the female models, it’s an important distinction.”

  “Actually, Dire had this discussion with the Chorus a few weeks ago, d
uring our trip through Wrath. They prefer android on the whole.”

  “Well that’s wrong, then.”

  I shrugged. “They’re new life forms. Figuring out their own places in the world. She’s not going to dictate how they refer to themselves. But the question remains, you’re fine with her being artificial?”

  “To tell the truth, the fact that she’s not organic probably drew me to her,” Vector sighed. “I know organics. I understand organics, from every errant hormone to every misfiring neuron. Silicoids? There’s more mystery there. There’s more...” he sighed. “More order to things.” He looked at the tub of pink goo, and sealed the container. “It was a nice dream, but it was just a dream, wasn’t it?” His voice was all over the place now, surging out of the monotone drone, to aggravated tension, then back down again.

  “So you were attracted to her because of what she was.”

  “A good part of my attraction is because of that. Is that so wrong?”

  “Generally, attraction only works out in the end when you’re attracted to who they are, not what they are. Anything else doesn’t last.”

  I’d learned that from my last boyfriend, the dashing hero. I’d only really known the mask, and under it, he was a pile of issues.

  Vector shuddered, putting his hands to his face, dropping the goo box. I flinched, but it bounced, stayed shut. He was a hair’s breadth from the edge, I thought. I reached out and put my hands on his shoulders. “You started taking the drugs before we entered Envy, didn’t you?”

  “Yes. And they’re wearing off already. I’m building a tolerance faster than I thought. I’m scared, Dire. I’m scared of what I’ll do when I’m free of them. You don’t know what I’m capable of, the things I could do in minutes, if I stopped caring. Stopped holding back.”

  “She knows it every day, every minute she’s trying to change the world.” I squeezed his shoulders, put my forehead to his. “It’s okay, Vector. It’s okay to feel.”

  He wrapped his arms around me, pulled me closer, and cried. Just cried into my neck, and I let him.