DIRE : HELL (The Dire Saga Book 6)

by Andrew Seiple

  I found it, slapped it, and with another crack and a rush of air, my armor was gone, teleported out as suddenly as Khalid had been teleported in.

  When the glare faded, I saw Khalid rolling on the floor, clutching his hand. Blackened, seared, clenched around the remnants of a sword hilt. I rushed to help him, but Beta got there first, scooping him up and heading to the medical kit we’d stowed in the back of the room.

  I glanced down at the scorched hole in the floor, edged with bright metal. All that remained of the Last Janissary’s blade after we’d teleported him in, and he’d driven it into ‘Pagliacci’s’ back.

  “Test him for radiation,” I said, whirling around. I’d probably gotten a good dose from that.

  “The armor’s breaking!” Alpha called back.

  I sighed. That had been a good suit. I reached down and slapped my traveling mask on my face. “DO IT.”

  And with a push, a fusion-powered miniature star bloomed over Hell.

  We’d teleported him a few hundred miles away. It wasn’t a bomb. It was just my fusion generator, calibrated from the readings I’d taken from Buer. Combined with the Jannissary’s most powerful blade, it... might have done the trick.

  Maybe.

  But my luck had never been good, and I wasn’t sticking around to test it.

  “What was that? What was that all about?” First Whisper cried, sticking her head up from behind the auxiliary console, flesh seared and cracked.

  “PAGLIACCI WAS A TRAP. A PLANT. TAKE US IN, EPSILON, MAXIMUM SPEED.”

  The Direnaut lifted off the ground. The city of Dis had evacuated once Buer showed up, and nothing remained to stop us as we sped ‘south’. I left the Damned heroes and villains we’d freed fighting behind us. Their fate was on their own heads now. They’d sort it out or not.

  It was time to have a word with the man in charge.

  “Movement from the direction of the teleportation coordinates,” Gamma said, and I ground my teeth. The Fallen Angel had survived our one-two punch. The plan had about a fifty-fifty shot, and we’d failed the coin flip. Only one shot now.

  “WE’LL HAVE TO GET TO LUCIFER BEFORE IT CATCHES UP TO US.” This plan hinged on two possibilities. One being the exit from Hell being true. The other possibility being that we could find an audience with Lucifer and get him to send at least the living among us back.

  “He’s picking up speed,” Gamma reported.

  “TELL OUR METAS TO BURN RUBBER.”

  Alpha opened up the link to American Paragon and Punching Judy, and I watched as power levels spiked. Then I was on the controls, recalibrating like mad, shunting energy around and molding the forcefield by hand, to give us a more aerodynamic form and to keep the sheer friction of our progress from ripping the mecha’s limbs off.

  “Three hundred miles!” Gamma shouted, and we broke past the black maze of Dis, into a vast ocean, the pooling of all the rivers Styx from all across hell.

  “Two hundred miles!” Gamma shouted, as the ocean gave way to ice, sheets of ice, and spires reaching up.

  “One hundred miles!” Gamma shouted, and there was darkness under the ice, a vast shape... something like a serpent, I thought.

  “He’s on us!”

  I glanced at the rearview screen, saw a comet, a man-sized ball of fire with crimson wings outstretched, roaring as it came.

  And at the last second, right before impact, I grabbed the flight yoke and twisted.

  Four years a pilot. Four years tooling around in a flying suit of armor, surviving heroes and villains alike.

  Four years paid off, and, by a hair’s breadth, we dodged the Fallen Angel.

  “Mist ahead! Hard to get readings!” Epsilon snapped.

  I killed our speed, brought us down into it. If it was hard for our sensors to get readings, then I couldn’t imagine it was doing our pursuer any good.

  Then the mist cleared, and the sensors shuddered. An iron throne, splayed with supports over a vast pit, sat like an immense beast squatting over the rocky landscape. Light played up from the pit below, shifting lights of all colors, none of them in friendly hues, dancing across the steam that rolled up in great clouds.

  The throne was about as big as Tulsa, I wagered, a city-sized seat over a state-sized pit.

  And it was empty.

  Gamma slapped her hand on the collision alarm. “He’s on us—”

  It was a hammer blow, a strike from a meteor, a hole clean through the mecha. I closed my eyes as damage signs sprang up on the monitor, bright red ones...

  ...and then the monitor went dark. As did the entire room. Emergency power flickered to life, and I saw scraps of the Direnaut trailing behind us, the mecha disintegrating as the ground came up. “All power to forcefields!” I shrieked and got on the systems, shoving Gamma aside as my hands flew, my fingers flickered, and there wasn’t enough time—

  CRUNCH.

  —I came to.

  My ankle hurt. I hauled myself up, gasped and almost fell. My mask gave me nightvision, and I looked around the darkened bridge, found my Chorus picking themselves up. Alpha adjusted his torn arm, metal showing under the artificial fungus of his flesh. The rest of them were standing.

  I glanced back to the demons. First Worm was nowhere to be seen, and a dome of metal surrounded his last position. Then the dome peeled away, and the mandibled man-serpent peered out, followed by First Whisper’s burned face, and The Cat.

  Good. They were demons, but they were my demons.

  Then the wall groaned. Fiery hands burst through it, grabbed the edges, and pushed. The reddish light of Hell seeped in, replaced by a fiery face, beautiful and stern at the same time.

  It regarded me, as I leaned against the remnants of my console, and stared back. “YO.” I waved.

  The arms of the Fallen Angel tensed, and it ripped the hole open further. It stood revealed, a nude being, genderless, with a pair of wings on its back made from fire and light. It considered me for a moment longer, then beckoned. As I watched, it turned and hovered across the ground, to the empty throne, fading from a figure to a spark as it went.

  I started to hobble after, but it quickly became obvious that this wouldn’t work.

  “Here. We can do this at least,” Alpha whispered in my ear, as he and Gamma took my arms, and picked me up effortlessly between them. They’d stripped out of their skin and fake flesh for this, I saw. I wasn’t sure why, but I trusted their judgment.

  “STAY BEHIND AND MAKE SURE EVERYONE GETS OUT CLEANLY,” I told Beta and Delta. “BETA, HOW’S THE JANISSARY?”

  “Recovering. He’ll be a while.”

  The room shuddered, and the turbolift blew open. American Paragon and Punching Judy burst out, glaring around.

  “Where’s that glowing bastid!” Judy yelled. “I’mma punch him!”

  “THAT WAY AND DON’T, YET. DIRE HAS A HUNCH HERE.”

  “All right ma’am, you’re the boss.” Paragon glanced over at my supporting Doppelgangers. Still felt weird to think of them with that name, but that’s what they were. “I can take you off their hands. It’ll go faster.”

  “No, actually,” Alpha grinned. And then they were leaping and away, and I sat in a cradle of their arms, with my hands curled around their necks. I heard Paragon laugh, and then he was flying, trying to keep up with us. Judy came along on the other side, running with her arms back, anime-style.

  “It’s reached the throne,” Alpha told me. He had more hardware in his head for telescopic vision than my mask could support. “Now he’s... sitting on it.”

  “YEP. THOUGHT SO.”

  I watched as the distant spark became an ember, became a man of fire of proportionate size to the throne. And as my bearers ran, the ground trembled, and ice pillars rose under us. Judy and the Doppelgangers slowed to a halt, and I slipped myself free of their arms, standing as best I could, hands on my hips.

  “That’s ah, Satan, is it?” Judy asked.

  “YUP. HE WAS POSING AS GREAT CLOWN PAGLIACCI.”

&n
bsp; The pillars lifted us up, as the fiery fallen angel watched us rise, bigger than the Direnaut, bigger than Buer, bigger than a mountain, he watched us come.

  “And we basically shanked him prison bitch style and threw him out to blow up in a contained nuclear reaction, didn’t we?” Gamma said. “The guy were were trying to have an audience with?”

  “YOU KNOW HOW DIRE HATES THE WORD BITCH.”

  “Sorry. But—”

  “BUT YES, THAT’S BASICALLY WHAT WE DID. COME ON, WHAT ARE YOU WORRIED ABOUT? IT’S LIKE YOU THINK HE’S SOME HATRED-FILLED ETERNAL BEING WHOSE SOLE EXISTENCE REVOLVES AROUND GRUDGES.”

  Everyone turned to look at me. I shrugged. “IF HE WANTED US OBLITERATED WE WOULD BE. NO, IT’S TALKY TIME. AND SHE CAN HANDLE THAT.”

  “Well alright ma’am, we’ve gotten this far following your lead,” American Paragon nodded. “If it turns into punchy time we’re here for you.”

  “SHE KNOWS. AND SHE’S GRATEFUL IN WAYS YOU CAN’T IMAGINE.”

  I was. They’d put their faith in me to get them through, whatever through might mean. I would not abuse that faith.

  The ice pillar shuddered to a halt, level with the serene, fiery face, still miles away. Then the air shuddered, and a man in a snappy suit stepped out of a small rift next to us. Handsome, swarthy, and with eyes that were black pits filled with stars.

  “LUCIFER, SHE PRESUMES?”

  “I hope you don’t mind the Sending. That’s what I was when I was Pagliacci.” He shrugged. “That’s a Sending as well,” he gestured at the fiery figure. “Most of me is down there, below the ice.”

  “SO THAT’S HOW YOU SURVIVED.”

  “Pretty much. Your attacks destroyed the Sending, I created a new one to slow you down, and here we are.” He stepped forward, wings folding out from the back of his suit as he approached, hands in his pockets, nodding to the Damned as he passed them. “Lady. Gentleman.”

  “WELL, THEN, YOU KNOW WHY WE’RE HERE. DIRE HAS A WHOLE CREW THAT HAS SERVED THEIR TIME AND WISHES TO MOVE ON FROM THIS PLACE. AND DIRE AND HER TEAM WISH TO RETURN TO EARTH. WILL YOU AID OR HINDER US IN THIS TASK, LUCIFER MORNINGSTAR?”

  “There’s a third option,” he said, smiling, teeth white against his skin. “I could decline to do either and let you try to find your way out. So that’s two options I could take that don’t help you and only one that does.”

  “TRUE.” I shivered. Cold out here. “WELL, TAKE YOUR TIME AND LET HER KNOW WHEN YOU’RE GOOD AND READY THEN. SHE’LL BE WAITING IN WHATEVER SHELTER SHE CAN MAKE FROM HER GIANT ROBOT.”

  “No, I don’t think it’ll take all that long. Stay a while.” The ice pillar shuddered and fingers grew up around the edges of it, five massive digits that curled around us. “I insist.”

  “IT IS YOUR HOME,” I conceded. “A SHAME TO BE RUDE BEFORE YOU’VE EARNED IT.” I snapped my fingers and pointed. Alpha and Gamma twisted themselves into the form of my throne, and I sat back in it, getting my cold feet off the ice.

  “An odd choice of words.” The swarthy man stalked around us, like a predator circling prey, looking for weakness. American Paragon and Judy tensed up, shot me glances. I shook my head, shot them an ‘ok’ sign, praying that the signal hadn’t changed too much since Paragon’s time. He nodded back and didn’t try to punch the devil, so I counted it a minor victory.

  “OH, YOU’RE GOING TO EARN SOME RUDENESS,” I said, turning to face him as he moved. “JUST A MATTER OF WHEN.”

  “Hm... let me ask you then, have you solved the riddle of Hell?”

  “CAN’T SOLVE A RIDDLE THAT WAS NEVER PHRASED. BUT SHE’S PUT TOGETHER SOME ROUGH CONCEPTS.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “THE ONLY ONES HERE ARE THE ONES WHO WISH TO BE HERE. WHICH IS WHY THEY’RE MOSTLY CHRISTIANS, OR FOLKS FAMILIAR ENOUGH WITH CHRISTIANS TO UNDERSTAND THE NOTION OF HELL. EVERY ONE OF THEM BELIEVED THAT THEY DESERVE TO BE HERE. THAT’S WHAT GOT THEM IN.”

  Judy looked shocked. Paragon nodded and said, “But I don’t, now.”

  “WHICH LEADS DIRE TO ONE OF TWO CONCLUSIONS THAT ARE GOING TO BE TESTED HERE. ONE IS THAT YOU’RE A PART OF THE PROCESS OF THIS INFERNO, THAT IT IS BUILT TO HELP PEOPLE SUFFER JUST ENOUGH TO GET THROUGH THEIR GUILT, UNTIL THEY ARE READY TO MOVE ON. BUT HUMANS BEING HUMANS, THIS TAKES A WHILE. EVENTUALLY THEY MAKE THEIR WAY DEEPER IN, AND FIND THEIR WAY TO YOU, AND ASCEND TO WHATEVER AFTERLIFE THEY BELIEVE THEY HAVE EARNED.”

  “And your other conclusion?”

  “THAT THE PURPOSE OF THIS PLACE, EVERY LIVING THING WITHIN IT, IS TO CREATE A VAST ENGINE TO BRING A SECOND WAR AGAINST YOUR MAKER.”

  “What if I told you both of those conclusions were true?” He smiled.

  “ELUCIDATE, IF YOU PLEASE.” I clicked on the vox and threw the channel wide, for all my crew to hear, once Epsilon and Delta and Beta relayed it to them. They’d earned this.

  “The war went poorly. I came to terms with the entity that some call ‘God’. Here I was cast, but I was granted dominion over this place. And as my allies followed me, bringing their powers and talents, my own powers grew. The more that came, the more I could do...”

  “WHICH IS WHY YOU MOVED BUER OUT OF REACH ONCE IT SEEMED LIKE DIRE COULD DAMAGE HIM.”

  “No, I did that because he’s an old friend. But yes, my power would diminish without him.” He walked a bit past me, studied the horizon. After a time he glanced over his shoulder. “Could you have slain Buer?”

  “WITHOUT A DOUBT.”

  He nodded, studying our reflection in the ice that surrounded us. He didn’t have one, and I wondered if it was intentional. “All I had to do in return, was receive those souls who came to me, and treat them as they desired. At first, it was a moot point. They came; they died, for there was no air here, nothing to breathe. They died, spewing blood and tissue out onto the soil. Then they would heal and die again, coughing out lungs in a place where they could not draw breath to beg for mercy.” He shrugged. “There’s still a place or two like that around here. It was a simpler time, and I’m vulnerable to nostalgia, so sue me.”

  “CAN’T. YOU’VE GOT ALL THE LAWYERS.”

  He snorted, shook his head, and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. “Want one?”

  “NO.”

  “Eventually, and with the prompting of some of my more bored peers, we started working with the blood and flesh they left behind after each death. And then we started taking parts off their living forms, when we needed more. And from them, from their pain, we made plants. And from the plants came microscopic things that consumed them. The tiny life forms collected, more and more, from the dead parts of men and women and made hellspawn. And from those we made demons.”

  “That’s downright disgustin’,” Judy frowned.

  “It gave Hell breathable air. Good enough for the Damned, anyway. And it gave us a solid workforce in the demons, to keep the Damned souls busy. They were piling up by then. I adjusted time to give us a chance to keep a handle on things. It runs faster in here... perhaps you’ve noticed?”

  “YES.” I’d experimented with chronal tech in the last month. It hadn’t gone well, which was why we’d gone with the Direnaut.

  “But as time went on, and Hell took shape, I realized that I had something Heaven didn’t... we’d created beings with souls, no matter how vile and loathsome. And some of them had enough power that a few million might be able to wound an angel. What’s more, we could harness the power of the Damned to generate whatever we needed. Iron. Water. Pain, for our rites and sorcery.” Lucifer smiled. “That’s about the point I stopped sending souls onward.”

  The icy hand opened up from around us, and the light shifted, revealing what was under the ice. Bodies after bodies, mute forms of the Damned, frozen in prostration, ringing the pit in mandala patterns in layers endless and deep.

  “WHY?” I asked, feeling affronted to the very core of my being. “WHAT PURPOSE DOES THIS SERVE?”

  “There is a chance that they move on to Heaven from here,” Lucifer shrugged as he lit a cigar
ette. “I am simply preventing the enemy from gaining reinforcements.”

  “YOU’VE MADE IT ALL ABOUT YOU.” I said, shaking my head.

  His eyes went wide, and he puffed a cloud of smoke in my general direction. “It is all about me. It was my rebellion, my punishment, my prison that I have turned into a place of power. It is my story, and all these little mewling things are merely supplicants and witnesses to my eventual triumph.”

  “SEVEN OF TEN.”

  He raised an eyebrow.

  “THAT’S YOUR SCORE. SHE’S HEARD BETTER MONOLOGUES FROM AMATEURS.”

  “Then perhaps you can teach me a few tricks.”

  “AND NOW WE COME TO THE CRUX OF THE MATTER.”

  “I am going to offer you a bargain that no mortal has ever had the honor of receiving. I want you to rule Hell by my side. I want you to help me... optimize it. Yes, that’s the word. I want you to help me win the eternal war, cast down God in Her heaven, and reveal the truth of her hypocrisy for all to see.” He spread his arms, face glowing, perfect teeth fixed in a rapturous grin. He’d even lost the cigarette along the way.

  I considered it for half a second.

  “NOPE.”

  To my side, I saw Punching Judy let out a bark of laughter.

  And oh, didn’t that irritate Lucifer. The slightest of wrinkles, marring his forehead. The way his arms rose to smooth the lapels of his suit. The flare of his wings, as feathers flew free and drifted down, darkening as they fell.

  “Why?” he asked. “I’ve studied you. Mined the thoughts of those who have come into my domain, seen the truth of you through broadcasts captured by very expensive sorcery. You’re a rebel. You’re dissatisfied with Creation, just as I am. I’m offering you a stable base, a secure location with as much power and all the resources you need—”

  “AND A WAR THAT’S NOT HER OWN.” I folded my arms. “SHE FOUGHT ONE OF THOSE, ONCE. ONCE WAS ENOUGH. DIRE HAS HER OWN WAR TO WAGE, AND IT’S NOTHING TO DO WITH GOD. WHO IS FEMALE? INTERESTING, THANKS FOR THE INFORMATION.”