She slid closer and closer, and turned over onto her ass and dug her heels into the balcony, but they found no groove or friction to latch onto.
“Mia!”
Mia looked up. Adron had fallen toward the hole between the circular balconies, and held onto one of the chains dangling from the balcony above with his good arm. Vinicius did his best to keep his back against the double doors of the dungeon, but the with the spire tilting on its side almost perpendicular to the doors, his weight eventually slipped out from under him. The lower of the two doors to the dungeon flung open, and two of Vinicius’s hands reached up and grabbed it to keep from sliding down the balcony toward Mia. But neither of them had said her name.
Her brother had. David, wearing nothing but a silly, weird skirt thing, and a piece of black demon armor across half his chest that probably weighed a lot, slid down toward her. He made no effort to slow down, and half stood up on the slanted, bloody surface, borderline surfing down it.
“Mia!”
“David, what’re you–” She sucked in a breath as the edge of the tower came up to her. Her hands flailed out to the sides, but the metal beams to her left and right were too far to reach. The spire’s inner balcony floor came to an end, and gravity, apparently out to kill her, pulled her down into oblivion.
David’s hand grabbed hers. David grabbed the metal beam just outside Mia’s reach.
The scream of pain from her brother ripped her eyes away from the abyss waiting below. His right hand held hers, and she dangled over the newly opened canyon. His left hand held the side of the metal beam between some of its bloody spikes. David’s left shoulder did not look good, and a new coating of blood came out of his nostrils as every muscle in his arms and chest flexed.
He was going to break. She had to grab something, anything, and get her weight off him before he couldn’t hold on anymore, but something grabbed her eyes and demanded she look around.
Hell had been ripped open directly under the spire, a canyon that cut across as far as her eyes could see, in both directions, toward the center of Hell and toward its outer edge. A giant ravine that’d spread at least a few hundred feet across, and was only growing wider.
The spire, a colossal structure as deep as it was tall, black metal framework that held red flesh and white bone, was half falling half bending into the canyon that’d ripped open underneath it. The only reason it hadn’t fallen into the abyss was the metal framework and the way it latched into one side of the ravine and hooked into the stone wall. The canyon wall that’d ripped away oozed and bled, and a few thick strands of sinew still connected the distant ravine wall to the spire, but they snapped as the ravine grew wider again. There were tunnels in the canyon walls, too, ones that’d once connected to the spire’s depths, and sex demons and souls stood in them and stared down. Not across the canyon to the spire, but down.
Mia looked down.
Hell bled into the darkness. The spire, bending under its weight with half its body exposed, oozed blood and lava that spilled and ran down the canyon wall. Veins of lava in the opposite canyon wall poured down the stones as well. The crimson and glowing amber fluids fell into blackness.
The depths weren’t black or dark because of shadow. The fire sky burned above, and lit the canyon walls all the way down, to where they eventually stopped. Hell had a bottom? Unless her eyes were lying to her, the canyon wall opposite of her didn’t go down infinitely, but stopped, and exposed the blackness below. True, unending, real blackness. The amber, glowing lava poured upon the obsidian eternity beneath her, beneath Hell herself, and broke apart upon nothingness. The crimson liquid of the spire did the same, its fleshy growths and torn muscles bleeding onto the blackness below, only for the blood to hit something, break apart, and vanish.
She stared down into the endless eternity. It stared back up at her.
Demon roars tried to pull her vision away, but failed. As she looked into the black hole, shapes fell past her in her peripheral vision, dark red bodies wearing black armor, and a couple wearing gold. Their screams and roars of rage and frustration echoed through the canyon, and ended instantly when they reached the bottom. No, before they reached the blackness. At the edge of the canyon’s floor, above the shifting, living darkness, the falling demons hit something else. They shattered like glass, and vanished, before reaching the void.
New vibrations flowed up through the canyon wall. The earlier hellquake had been from the canyon ripping Hell open, but had thankfully stopped for the moment. The new vibration didn’t move her, shake her or the tower, or do anything she could feel. But she felt it nonetheless.
Something in the darkness below roared. No sound, but it was roaring. Something in the darkness moved, something she could not see.
Endlessness.
Nothingness.
She forced her eyes back up to David. Like her, he stared down into the emptiness that wanted to devour them.
“David!”
His eyes snapped back to her with a jolt.
“Jesus,” he said. “Je–holy fuck my arm!” He looked back up to his fucked up shoulder, back to her, and ground his teeth hard enough she almost heard his jaw click. “You got fat!”
“Oh fuck off and hold on!” She swung her other arm up and grabbed onto his wrist. He groaned and cursed, but nothing he hadn’t told her a thousand times before, and she summoned a grin for him as she helped him pull her up. They were both small and light, and that meant they’d forever be weaker than people bigger than them. But they were damn good at climbing.