“Oh. Oh! We can get that! Right?” She hopped off Kas’s back and got directly under the tree. Mistake. Drops of black ooze hit her forehead, and she groaned and wiped the muck off before it reached her lips. As long as she kept thinking of it as ooze or muck, and not the endless swamp of remnant guts it actually was, it wasn’t too bad. Didn’t mean she wanted to taste it anymore than she already had.
Adron shook his head. “I don’t see how.”
“But we need it. We have to figure something out.” Forbidden fruit had lots of resonance and essence, good for anyone to eat.
“There’s a reason the fruit are untouched,” Faust said. “It’s gotta be… three hundred feet up?”
“Probably around a hundred meters, yeah,” Mia said. Everyone looked at her. “Shut up. Metric is better.”
“We can throw our weapons at it,” Oudoceus said, “but that’s a hard target to hit. And meera metal isn’t aera metal. Our swords could break when they land.”
“Or just get stuck up there,” Gallius said.
The incubi nodded, got into a small huddle, horns together, and brainstormed, complete with lots of mumbled whispers.
“Throw a rock?”
“I’m not seeing any rocks.”
That was true. The cavern walls were smooth, the ground too, which meant not many small rocks, with only a few enormous boulders here and there. Nothing easily thrown.
“Let the unmarked solve the dilemma,” Julisa said.
“Solve?”
“Yes. Solve. You controlled the ground and sky and slew hundreds of angels. You have already committed acts that no demon has managed since the First War. Surely you can tell that tree to release its fruit to us?” And because she just had to embody manipulative bitch as much as possible, she folded all four arms across her chest, and grinned.
“I can’t! I… um…” Mia looked at her hands and gently squeezed the air. “I mean, I haven’t tried for a bit, because it hurts. My fingers, the inside ones, they’re really bruised from when I… did all that stuff.”
“But?”
Mia frowned. “But… I think they’re healing. So, I mean, I can… try?”
Without breaking her grin, Julisa took a small step back and gestured to the spot directly under the tree.
“By all means, unmarked. Impress us.” Jackass.
Mia peeked at the rest of the group. All of them watched her now, dark eyebrows raised and glancing between the tree and her, as if they couldn’t fathom the idea Mia could somehow actually do what Julisa suggested. But, much as Julisa was trying to get under Mia’s skin, she had a point. Maybe Mia could? Ever since the battle with the angels, Mia had noticed she could feel Hell, as if it were attached to her somehow. Maybe she’d healed enough to try something?
She reached up with her sixth sense; as good a term to use for it as she could think. She could feel the cavern and the ground, but not the demons around her, or the swamp of black guts above. She could feel the remnants, but not in the same way. They were like insects crawling on the skin, but not something she could directly feel. The tree, though, she could feel that, and she could feel its note, the string that would affect it, the sound that would make it move.
She very, very gently plucked the string. It hurt. And the tree didn’t move.
“The battle with the angels was different!” Mia clenched her fists and stomped around in a circle. “That time, something… something…” No, don’t share any more details than needed. Just keep trying.
She wasn’t unused to pain. Anyone who’d lifted weights to failure knew what pain was, the deep, uncomfortable kind that had your limbs shaking, muscles turned to acid, and lungs burning. This felt kinda like that, and also the annoying pain of sore fingertips from learning guitar. She’d given up on guitar, but this was too important. She plucked again, and bit down as the pain ached through her fingers up into her arm. The parallels between her inner soul fingers and her actual fingers were too strong, and the inner pain shot up her real arm, too.
But she plucked the string, and the tree moved. Barely. A tiny shake of a branch, but it was something.
“I’m getting somewhere.”
“I see nothing,” Julisa said.
“It’s too high up, but I can feel it.”
“Or perhaps you are simply lying to hide your–”
Mia plucked the string as hard as she could, and bit down the urge to yelp. The tree shook hard from trunk to tips, and several fruits fell free. Flung free, problematically.
“Oh shit! Got it!” Faust ran to the side, and the other incubi did the same, spreading out in perfect formation. One of them did a running jump onto their stomach, and the other three managed on quick feet, each catching a fruit. Faust caught two.
Fruit was a weird word to describe them. They looked more like human hearts than anything, but at least they weren’t covered in blood and dripping. And there were still more on the tree.
Julisa eyed Mia. Mia eyed Julisa. Yeah, fuck you. She aimed her hands up at the tree, gently plucked the air, and hit the string again, softer this time, but harder than the first time. A different pitch, too, like bending a guitar string on the fret.
Don’t just move, tree. Release the fruit.
Release it did. Instead of shaking violently, the tree released its grip on the fruits, a tiny tearing of where the dark, dead wood connected to the not-flesh. The fruits fell, and Julisa and Adron caught them. It was a lot of fruit, enough for everyone.
Kas grunted and sat beside Mia. “How did you do that?”
“Uh, it’s… it’s hard to describe, but I can feel Hell, I guess. It’s like music. Everything is attached to the music, and I can play a note and make things happen.”
“Anything?”
“If it’s connected directly to Hell, yeah. I think. The fire sky, the ground, things growing out of the ground. It’s all Hell, right?”
The incubi joined them, each munching down a heart fruit.
“That’s pretty crazy, Mia,” Faust said. “I mean, the firestorm was–”
“Hey! Don’t eat all the fruits. Vin needs them.” And if she didn’t interfere and made sure he got some, the big guy would take them by force.
“Playing favorites?” Adron asked, wearing a grin as he tossed Vin a couple.
Mia glanced Vin’s way long enough to make sure he caught them; the hit to his ego if he dropped them would have been massive. The child of the Belial swallowed them whole, and the subtle relief in his dragon eyes sent a warm, calming buzz through Mia’s body. She relaxed.
“Vin used hellfire,” Mia said, “twice, to save us from those things. He needs fuel if he’s going to do it again.”
“Agreed,” Julisa said. She had several heart fruits, and gave two to Vin. “Eat, mister protector.” And of course she had to tease him.
Vin didn’t take the bait. He ate the fruits, gave Julisa nothing more than a quiet grunt, and sat down against a nearby wall. A dry spot, one of the few in the cavern where blood didn’t drip from above.
Adron handed Mia a fruit, and squatted in front of her.
“You can do some really crazy stuff.”
“I… I guess, yeah.”
“Can you do anything with remnants?”
Oh, that. The idea had percolated a few times in Mia’s brain, that maybe if she could affect Hell, she could affect the remnants, too. If she could affect the remnants, then maybe she could do something about Hannah.
“I… can’t. Sorry.”
He sighed and nodded, and his eye wavered for a moment. But only a moment.
“Eat.”
Holding the demon’s gaze felt weird. So much had happened, but there was still a giant wall between her and him. Between her and all the demons, really, but with Adron, it felt more personal.
She bit into the fruit, ignored that it looked and felt like a heart, ignored that it tasted amazing, and sat in the center of the dry spot near Vinicius. The fruit came with no nasty memories, and it was dense with nutrition, or Hell’s equivalent. If decadent chocolate could be healthy, it’d be this.
Adron smiled and gave her another. And she ate it. Her hunger was endless.