by Diem, J. C.
Several swings of his axe later, the tendon snapped audibly and the leviathan shrieked. Proving how stupid it was, it tried to run to escape the pain and its leg buckled. It went down to one knee and my hellhounds moved in. They savaged its flesh, being careful to dodge aside when it tried to swat them away.
With the gargantuan distracted, Morax began to climb higher. Avoiding the wings that flared behind the leviathan, he made his way up to the base of the creature’s neck. We’d learned how to take these things down and he rapidly chopped his way through its spinal cord.
With a bellow, the leviathan went down. The hounds scattered to avoid being crushed by its body. Morax leaped off the paralyzed gargantuan and hit the ground hard. He rolled a few times then popped up to his feet and turned to confront it. The axe had changed back to a dagger so we weren’t sliced to pieces while we’d been tumbling. He didn’t bother to change the weapon back to an axe. My hellhounds were already gnawing at the creature’s throat. Giving a final gurgle, it faded back to mist.
The battle hadn’t taken long enough for Morax to become exhausted, but he relinquished control over me anyway. That was most enjoyable, he said, sounding almost cheerful.
I’m glad you had fun, I said dryly. I’m sure there will be plenty more opportunities for you to kill things while we’re here.
I hope so, he replied. You have no idea how boring it is to be imprisoned inside someone’s mind. It was a not-so-subtle reminder that I needed to find a way to release the legion from captivity. It was just one of the many tasks that I was working on.
₪₪₪
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Seeing the mist swirl, I readied my weapon. Sam stepped out of the gloom and I relaxed again. He hadn’t used his camouflage abilities this time. His skin was darker than mine, which made it easier for him to blend into the shadows. “That seemed almost too easy,” he said and looked around warily.
“We should get out of here before anything else turns up to challenge us,” I replied. Instead of disappearing, the hellhounds stayed close. I realized why a few seconds later when I felt the ground shake again. This time, it wasn’t one set of footsteps, but several. “Uh oh,” I said quietly so I wouldn’t draw their attention.
“What is it?” Sam asked. He held onto my arm to keep his balance as I increased our pace.
Hearing the footsteps coming closer, I didn’t bother to respond. I just picked him up and took off at a sprint. My hounds easily kept pace with me as I kept going straight ahead. Bellows of rage sounded as the leviathans caught sight of us.
Sam turned to stare at them over my shoulder and his eyes went wide with terror. “Run!” he shouted. He kicked his legs for emphasis, as if I was a nightmare and he could somehow make me go faster.
I flicked a look over my shoulder to see four leviathans storming towards us. When I turned around again, I crashed face-first into the slick black stone wall that guarded each realm of hell. Staggering back a step, I put Sam down. “Gate!” I shouted even though I knew it would appear right in front of me.
A section of the volcanic rock shimmered and a wrought iron gate appeared. Thirty feet wide and fifty feet high, the bars were decorated with human souls being tortured in disturbing ways. Twin black stone gargoyles rested on the top of the gate. They swiveled around and peered down at us. They almost seemed to be grinning.
A rudimentary face of gigantic eyes and a mouth formed in the rusty, pitted metal. “Whom may I ask is calling?” the gate said in a falsetto voice. I was baffled to realize he was pretending to be female.
“You know very well who I am,” I replied in an impatient growl. “Open up!”
“I am afraid the hellgate is not available for requests right now,” he replied in a fake cheery tone. “You will have to wait until he is free.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” I said and banged my hand on the iron bars.
His eyes narrowed and he frowned down at me. “There is no call for rudeness. The gate is currently occupied in another location. You will have to be patient and wait until he is able to comply with your request.”
Morax spoke before I could start screaming at the gate in fury. This is not the time to throw a tantrum, he told me bluntly. We must deal with our foes.
A gigantic hand reached down and snatched me up before I could respond. Lifted high into the air, my arms were trapped at my sides and I couldn’t get free. The creature tossed me into its mouth and I landed on a gigantic tongue with taste buds as big as my hands. Its teeth closed with a snap. Scarlet light from my axe lit up its cavernous maw. Before it could swallow and send me into the depths of its stomach, I bounded over to its cheek and started chopping.
It took only a few blows before it decided I wasn’t good to eat and it spat me out. I didn’t fall far before I was caught again. A second leviathan roared in triumph and held me in the air as if I was a prize. The first beast took offense and balled up a fist. It crashed into the second goliath’s face with a crunch of breaking bone.
Jolted free, I fell again. Morax took action and swung the axe. The blade dug into the monster’s thigh, halting our fall. Deep in a battle with its rival, the leviathan paid no attention to us as we climbed down its leg.
All four of the shadowy illusions descended into a brawl. They’d already forgotten me and were now focused on killing each other. I backed away from the foursome slowly until I reached the gate again. Turning, I saw him roll his eyes at his idiotic creations. Looking down, he pretended to be surprised to see me. “Ah, Hellscourge! How lovely to see you.” His smile was wide and fake, but at least he’d stopped pretending to be female.
“Who exactly was I talking to a few minutes ago?” I asked suspiciously.
“That was Francine, my secretary,” he said with a smarmy grin. “She takes messages for me when I am unavailable.”
Exchanging a look with Sam, I saw that he was as incredulous as I was about that. “Now that you’re back, would it be too much trouble for you to let us into hell?” I asked.
“Of course not!” he replied in a jovial tone that was bordering on hysterical. “You need only ask and I shall obey.” Grinning madly, a crack appeared down his middle. He opened with excruciating slowness. I knew he was stalling in the hope that his minions would remember what they were supposed to be doing. His eyes shifted to the brawling leviathans and he nearly scowled. He’d conjured them up to kill me and they’d become easily distracted.
When the gap was finally wide enough to let us through, I nudged Sam to get him moving. He’d been watching the leviathans tear at each other in morbid fascination. At my urging, he turned away from them and started walking.
“Welcome to the third realm of hell,” the gate said in a perfect imitation of a tour guide. “I am sure you will have a memorable time here!”
I was sure we would, too. “Thanks,” I said flatly and ushered my hounds ahead of me. I didn’t want to leave anyone behind to be at the mercy of the hellgate. The twin gargoyles turned around when the gate began to close. They were just as disturbing as their master as they watched us. They reminded me of vultures waiting for an animal to die so they could feast on the flesh of the carcass.
Hearing the fluttering of wings, I turned to see a black shape hurtling through the gate a moment before it snapped shut. I ducked as my feathered nemesis swooped towards me. I barely avoiding having my eyes gouged out. Croaking with laughter, the raven flew off into the gloom before I could retaliate.
Muttering beneath my breath, I started walking. Sam waited until we were a safe distance from the gate before he spoke. “I think that gate has lost his mind.”
“No kidding,” I said and shook my head. “He pretended to be his own secretary.”
“A female secretary no less,” Sam corrected me.
“He did a pretty good impression of a girl,” I said with a straight face. Sharing a look, we broke into sniggers.
Drawing the sour smell of sulfur into my lungs, I did my best to cough it out
again. I looked around to see the gloom wasn’t quite as dark here. The magma that glowed up through the deep cracks in the arid ground was the cause of it. Petrified trees, volcanic rocks, distant villages and mountain ranges were the only scenery. It was warmer here, but my body temperature adjusted to it. I didn’t feel the urge to take my jacket off.
One glance around told me that it wasn’t going to be easy to sneak our way to the center of the third realm. There were too many settlements scattered throughout the wastelands for us to go unnoticed.
A thought had my nightmares appearing a few feet away. They snorted in greeting and I walked over to pat them both. Their noses were soft, even though they looked like they were made of shadow. I wasn’t sure how it had happened, but they’d changed from hating me to tolerating me. Neither of them tried to bite my hand off for patting them. It was definite progress.
Sam was watching me strangely when I returned to him. “What?” I asked.
“You are the first Demon Lord to ever show affection towards your hellbeasts.”
My blood ran cold to hear that. “I’m not a lord yet,” I protested.
Instead of arguing with me, he merely pointed at my image on the door. “I do not think the transformation will be very far away.” I reluctantly looked at the picture of my face and winced to see it had now become a true Demon Lord. My horns swept backwards roughly halfway to the back of my head. Instead of wearing the black metal armor the other lords wore, mine resembled my favorite jacket. The twin brass skull buckles had become a breastplate that would guard my chest from harm. Looking down at my real jacket, I saw the buckles were slowly changing. They would soon match the image.
I lifted my hand and traced one of my horns. It was still a few inches short of the mark. I checked my skin and it was dark gray rather than black. I still had some time left before the transformation would be complete, yet I felt the urgency to hurry. If I spent too much time here, it was likely that I’d become a demon permanently.
“Come on, Sam. Let’s go raise some hell,” I said, hoping to distract us both from the inevitable process that was happening to me.
₪₪₪
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Sam came up with an idea before I could climb inside the carriage. “I think we should try to cover up your image. It might help us to traverse through the settlements without being discovered.”
It was a good idea, but I wasn’t sure how we could pull it off. “How are we going to do that? I don’t have any paint on me to cover the blond hair on the images.” That was the main difference between myself and the other Demon Lords. I’d somehow retained my long blond locks. It was probably because I’d been born, rather than created like angels or demons. The new breed of Nephilim were imbued with demonic essence, but they were made of flesh and blood. My soul had a combination of both angelic and demonic spirits, which is why my mother had removed it. My soul was one of a kind and it would somehow draw too much attention to me.
“We can use the curtains to cover the images,” Sam explained. “At a glance, the carriage will appear to belong to a captain.” Lower in rank than the lords, the captains’ vehicles didn’t have their faces emblazoned on the doors.
My carriage had grown to accommodate my new size and it was fancier than a captain’s. There was only one problem with his idea. “My nightmares aren’t nags,” I pointed out.
His face fell when he realized the flaw in his plan. Undead gray horses drew the captains’ vehicles. Demon Lords, princes and the Hellmaster all had nightmares as their beasts.
I wasn’t ready to dismiss his idea, though. “What happens to the carriages when a lord is defeated?” I asked. He’d told me before, but I just wanted to check to make sure I was remembering it correctly.
“The lord’s former entourage leave the carriage in a nearby town. Each time a new lord rises, the carriages tend to disappear from the stable as nightmares claim them. The captains’ carriages are different, of course. Nightmares ignore them completely, as though they are beneath their new masters.”
I hadn’t looked like a demon at all when I’d claimed my carriage. I was pretty sure that besting the master gate had given me the privileges of a Demon Lord. How else could I have called on nightmares for transportation? Sam had found an abandoned lord’s carriage in a small village. As soon as I’d touched it, the images of the former lord had changed to my face and two nightmares had appeared in the traces. “I think we should try your idea,” I said. “Let’s rip one of the curtains down and see if we can cover up the images.”
I ripped one of the curtains free. I started when a new curtain appeared almost immediately. Sam blinked, shook his head then shrugged it off. The nightmares must have their own brand of magic over the carriages. Either that, or the carriages themselves were magical.
Climbing into the carriage, I slid the window up and tossed the bulk of the curtain outside. I slid the window down again to hold the curtain in place. Sam handed me the bottom of the fabric and I drew it inside and tugged it until it was sitting flat against the door. Sam shut the door, made a few adjustments to the cloth then stepped back to examine it critically. “From a distance, it should look like a blank door,” he told me.
Climbing out through the other door, I walked over to him to see the finished product. Anyone with keen eyesight would be able to see that cloth was draped over the door. With luck, the nightmares would be able to rumble through the villages and towns too quickly for anyone to raise the alarm. “It will have to do,” I said.
Tearing down another curtain, we covered the other door. Sam knelt on the plush carpet of the floor and held onto the fabric while I pulled the door shut. My head was almost too big to fit out the window. I moved aside to let him peer downwards at the curtain. With a few tugs, he straightened it out then slid the window shut to hold it in place. “There. Hopefully, they will not pull loose once the nightmares begin galloping,” he said.
The shadowy horses leaped into action almost before he’d finished speaking. We kept our eyes on the curtains, but they were firmly lodged between the windows and the bottom of the doors. A new curtain had grown in place on the back window and both of our side windows were also covered. The carriage was dim with the curtains closed and it was almost too small inside. I had to fight down a bout of claustrophobia. It was a weakness that I couldn’t afford to succumb to.
Not trusting our paltry disguise, the nightmares did their best to avoid the settlements. That wasn’t easy to do when they were so numerous. We barely passed one before another appeared. Trekking through the wastelands wasn’t a good idea. We could see flat plains with sandy soil. Small dimples were a warning that arachnoids were lying in wait. Then there were the copses of petrified trees, large volcanic boulders and streams of lava that barred our way. Bridges had been erected over the streams on the main roads, but they didn’t exist in the wilderness.
We travelled for a few days before the nightmares slowed down. Holding onto the curtain so it wouldn’t fall, I slid the window up and looked outside. We were approaching a larger town and we weren’t going to be able to avoid it this time. Two wide streams of lava flowed past it on either side. Turning to look behind the carriage, I saw that we’d lose at least a day if we tried to backtrack around it.
The closest nightmare flicked a look at me, silently asking me what I wanted them to do. “Stop and let us out,” I said. They slowed to a stop and we climbed out. We weren’t close enough to the town for anyone to have noticed us yet. With luck, we could sneak around it without being seen.
Hefting the backpack over his shoulder, Sam looked me up and down. “You should pull your hood up to hide your hair,” he told me. “It stands out way too much.”
I reached behind me and my hand encountered nothing. “Oops. I forgot to wear a hoodie beneath my jacket.”
Thinking hard, he walked over to the carriage and stripped the curtain off the door. “Here. Drape this over your head.”
It was better to have pathe
tic cover than no cover, so I took it. My hair hung nearly to my waist and I tucked it inside my jacket before pulling the curtain over my head. “How do I look?” I asked and turned to model the outfit.
He sniggered. “You look like an eight-foot-tall nun with fangs and horns.”
“So, I look hot then?” I joked.
“Some demons would probably find you attractive,” he said diplomatically.
I made a face at that. “Eww. Let’s not even go there.” Thankfully, Morax didn’t voice his opinion on the matter. The last thing I wanted or needed was for demons to be attracted to me. Not that that would ever happen. I was their doom and they were terrified of me.
₪₪₪
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Crossing the arid ground, we stayed away from the road that went straight through the town. We moved as close as we could get to the stream of boiling lava to the left. Sam had to squint against the bright orange light that blazed from it. I found it didn’t bother me at all. It was hot, but it wasn’t as uncomfortable as it had been previously. That didn’t mean I’d try wading through it any time soon. I’d had my feet and lower legs burned to a crisp the last time we’d been to the underworld. I didn’t want to put myself through that again.
Moans and cries of pain and despair came from near the back of the settlement. They were issuing from the souls of the damned. Every village and town had a collection of former humans. Lesser demons were tasked with punishing them for their misdeeds. It was the only enjoyment they had in the dismal realms. Apart from when they were gossiping, that was.
