The archway was different than the others. They were all unique, many decorated with black metal skulls or real white skulls, black metal teeth or real white teeth; the real white teeth ones made with human teeth were particularly disturbing. This one, bigger than the others, was decorated with weird circular lumps between what looked like rib bones. Eggs?
Oh god. She sucked in a hard breath, as Kas began a slow walk down an enormous stairway. It was the first proof there were rooms that went out further than the spire did, out into the ground the spire grew out of. The stairway went straight down, no spiral. She’d half expected to look down and see a bunch of scary things underneath her, but nope, the stairway was a tunnel that cut into Hell’s depths, forty-five degrees down. She wasn’t sure if that was less, or more scary.
It got more scary. After a minute of walking down metal and stone, with the occasional dangling metal skull brazier their only source of light, the metal turned into flesh and bone. The stairs became bone. The walls became layers of ribs with web flesh connecting them. It was like walking down the inside of a gutted snaked. Thankfully they still had light, except this deep into Hell’s guts, it stopped being metal braziers, and became amber veins again, cutting across the bone ribs overhead. Each time she passed underneath a vein, it smelled just faintly of burnt meat.
Another arched doorway led them into a large room. Enormous. Fucking massive. Instead of the metal and stone, all she saw was walls of meat, and remnants growing out of the meat. Walls that reached high and low, with floors that flowed as rolling hills. Tunnels vast and long, with further, deep curves that told her eyes there was a network of huge paths, like a maze of flesh. Amber veins cut along the bone, and the walls of flesh never touched them, as if afraid they’d get burned.
Someone had decorated. Metal chains dangled from the giant rib bones holding up the huge ceiling, each with a black metal brazier holding a flame inside, some of them swaying and jingling as remnants above grabbed at anything they could. Huge metal things covered some of the walls, and only after staring at them for a second did she realize they were sort of like wardrobes or cabinets without drawers or cupboards, and covered in skulls. Real skulls. And a few statues too, more statues of Zel holding a tiny flame in her four hands. Other statues as well, of another feminine demon kind alike Zel but not. The other female tetrad species?
There was bone furniture around the cabinets, chairs of all shapes and sizes, and a few hundred thousand loose bones sitting around waiting for someone to pick up and stab or beat someone with. Some of them were in shapes she’d thought were maybe big chairs, but that couldn’t be right. So many weird shapes.
But even staring into a giant maze of flesh and bone and its gigantic rooms couldn’t hold her eyes for long. Three demons stood near one of the weird, giant metal cabinets, chatting among themselves. Clicking, chirps, all the same sort of noises Kas made, if a little higher pitched.
They were tall, almost as tall as Zel, and wore many red silk scarves that dangled over their bodies. They had wings, huge but spindly, thin, probably not able to hold any weight. They walked on hooves. They had long, thin tails, smooth and flowing. Unlike every demon she’d seen with tails, or other demons in general, these three ladies stood tall, a very upright posture. They were absolutely stacked with the biggest tits on any demon Mia had seen. But even more majestic was their four enormous horns, giving them an unusually regal look combined with their very upright posture. Like Kas, they were eyeless, and their faces were completely black. Completely, from forehead to chin. Onyx black.
Kas clicked a few times in his throat, and gestured to Mia as one of the tall, busty ladies walked toward her. That, was a lot of hip sway.
“Kas, talk Eng–Estian!” Mia said.
He grumbled. “Acelina, this is Mia.”
The eyeless, tall demon lady with the most absurd, ridiculous curves, grinned. In her obsidian visage, her mouth appeared, wide, too wide, and full of white sharp teeth.
“Hello Mia. So you’re the bitch that has all of Zel’s attention lately.”