“I guess I’m just not seeing it,” Mia said. “But I’ve only been in Hell a bit over a month, so it’s not like I’m some kinda demon angel expert.” Not that she wouldn’t mind being that, if she had to stay here. Maybe she could continue her career choice as a psychologist, except with demons as patients, or maybe even angels? Assuming she saved the world. Assuming Heaven wouldn’t do everything in its power to kill her, considering what she’d done.
Livian shrugged. “Either way, I suggest you stop trying to settle problems and make people happy. It will backfire.” With a wicked little grin, she winked at Mia and hopped ahead until she disappeared in the shadow.
Mia sucked in a breath, and followed, and her bodyguards stuck close.
The mist was thick enough she hesitated to breathe once it enveloped her, but Hell was Hell, she was a ghost, and it wasn’t actually oxygen she was breathing. Sure enough, she could still breathe, and even see a little further than she figured; not that fifty meters was a far distance, but better than the five feet she’d expected. Alas, as much as her mind had been worried about the black fog, it quickly turned into an afterthought.
The ground turned from dirt to swamp in minutes, and Mia whined and groaned as her gladiator sandals failed to protect her toes from the moisture. Wet. Everything was warm and wet.
“Vin,” she said, “can I… um…”
Vin hadn’t been talking to her much lately, but her whiny begging voice — perfectly crafted, of course — was enough to convince him to help her out. With an annoyed rumbled, he grabbed her, set her on his back again, and she groaned some more as she shook one foot out at a time. Her feet were soaked, and she knew it was blood from the texture; super gross she knew that. But what made it a thousand times worse was how black it was, like it was rotten, and tainted.
It didn’t smell rotten? Or at least, only a bit, and her nose adjusted quickly.
“I’d gotten used to fire and lava, and rocks,” she said. “A swamp in Hell is just weird.”
“Wait until you see Angel’s Spine,” Adron said.
“You’ve been there?”
“Just the edge, and I couldn’t see much from the fog, but… it was a pretty messed up sight. A giant mountain, except not a mountain. It looked… unnatural.”
“Focus on what’s in front of us,” Kas said, “not what’s beyond. Alessio controls the Black Valley with a very… loose grip. The land is harsh, and the hellbeasts here are deadly. Demons struggle to survive as much as the humans. Be on your guard.”
Vin grunted agreement. Much as the child of Belial didn’t like Adron, he’d get along with Kas if he gave him a chance. They were both quiet, cranky assholes, just for different reasons.
A small part of her drifted off into La-La Land as she rested her cheek against Vin’s shoulder, and fantasies crept up into her thoughts. Kas, Adron, and Vin, all fighting for a piece of her, until eventually they agreed to share, and passed her around like a toy. And then they’d get jealous waiting, and all three would get on her at once, each desperate to get their cocks into her all at the same time.
As much as she wanted to hold on to that fantasy, that small part of her disappeared under the wet blanket smothering her. Everything sucked. Having Kas and Adron back was awesome, and having a group to work with instead of just Vin was great, too. But despite that, everything sucked. Yosepha wouldn’t talk to her, probably because Mia killed hundreds of her kind. Demons had died by the droves, too, and not all demons deserved that fate.
Even if this journey didn’t suck, it was hard to think about sex right now. She couldn’t even get the faintest hint of the aura going, and that felt… weird. She’d been creating a small aura around her since arriving in Hell, usually barely anything more than a buzz that did nothing, and now she wasn’t emitting even that. Her inner fingers just ached too much, just like her stupid heart.
She hated poetry, but right now, she could probably write something.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Black Valley only got worse. The fog remained consistent, fifty meters, but worse was they were walking, borderline swimming, in guts. Actual guts. It didn’t seem to get deeper than a few inches, maybe half a foot in certain places, but that was enough that their walk slowed even more. Not just guts, either, but other organs, too. More than a few times, an eyeball sat in the black mess, along with other organs she couldn’t identify at a glance. And in the mess ran streaks of red, like little red rivers on black sand. Except it wasn’t black sand, but more flesh, tainted by… by the land?
There were mounds. Gross, bloody, gory mounds, things that stuck up out of the ground twenty or thirty feet, were flat on top, and were covered in large, sharp bones that stuck out of them. And because that wasn’t bad enough, the mounds twisted, some sections turning left and others turning right, so the white bone spikes sticking out of the fleshy mess ripped up the hundreds of remnants growing from its surface. A meat grinder.
Some bone spikes met each other where they rotated around, and a remnant between them was crushed and ripped apart. For a small second, the surface of the mound beneath all the twisting remnants was visible, exposing alien bone, white but dripping with fresh red blood, only to mix with black blood that oozed from the crack’s between the bones.
The only reason she could even see the gross display of alien, fleshy destruction, was drifting blue fires. The burning sky was all but invisible behind the black fog, only enough light to show the silhouettes of distant mounds in the swamp, but every so often, a blue light danced in the distance. From so far and in the fog, it looked like giant blue fireflies that moved little, and blinked out of existence ten or twenty seconds later.
Those were gas pockets, bursting up from the gore they walked on, and something lit them. Why they burned blue, no idea, and she doubted the demons knew, either. But randomly, a blue fire erupted from the gore, burned a few feet high, lasted long enough they could see around the endless swamp, and disappeared. Thankfully, it was a recurring thing, blue flames lighting the way. Not so thankfully, they were random, and Kas snarled as one erupted under his tail.
This place was a thousand times worse than Death’s Grip.
“You okay, Kas?” Mia asked.
He snarled and clicked once, and kept his eyeless gaze pointed down from then on.
“How does anyone know where the fuck to go around here?” She swung her free arm out at the endless black. “Where are we even going?”
With a slow arm, Vin pointed down at a trench nearby, the biggest one.
“Romakus is following the main trench. It will take us to the largest trench in the valley. We orient from there.”
Getting information from Vin was always difficult, but every so often, he dared to grace them with his infinite wisdom. Vinicius had been all around Hell, and probably knew it even better than Romakus. And of course, because demons were assholes, they hadn’t bothered to grace Mia with much information before arriving. That was how they did things, on the fly, no preparing, no planning.
Zel had been unique in that regard. And Romakus was unique. What would Alessio be like? Better to not find out.
“Last I made it through this damn place,” Adron said, “Vicente was in charge of the Trench.” The way he said ‘Trench’ sealed it as a place, the place the little trench led to. “A major asshole of a korgejin.”
Korgejin. A tetrad, ten feet tall, big horns, hooves, no tail, and two giant wings. And the two Mia had met, Zel’s right hands, had been mean. Big, big meanies.
“I’ve met him,” Kas said. “If he still runs the Trench, he will be a problem.”
“Maybe Romakus plans to go around?” Mia asked.