Some more hellbeasts ran past them, but they didn’t look emaciated or hungry, and they went on by. They had to be eating something. Maybe some hellbeasts could scale the cavern wall? Probably. Maybe some could climb a ceiling while hanging upside down? Probably not. They were eating souls, or demons.
Turn around? No, this was, as best they could figure, the counter-clockwise direction they needed to go. If the cavern was slowly turning, they didn’t notice. Best they could do was press on like Vin said, and just hope something came up.
Something came up.
“What the fuck,” Mia said. The incubi grunted agreement.
A pit opened up before them, maybe ten meters deep, a crater that spread out what had to be a kilometer in all directions. Several pillars dotted the crater, thick stone that reached from ceiling to floor; probably the only thing keeping the weight of the swamp above from collapsing the whole cave. Blue fires danced above the pit, lighting the ceiling in far greater number than before. It almost looked like an array of chandeliers of blue candles.
The crater wasn’t empty. Statues. There were dozens, maybe hundreds of statues, black with hints of bronze. Meera metal, and maybe some other stuff from the ground? Whatever they were made of, every one of them was naked, and fighting each other. And every one of them was as big as Vinicius.
“Children of the Old Ones,” Faustinus said, and he stopped at the edge of the crater.
With a heavy growl, Vinicius started down the gentle slope into the strange, wide pit of ancient violence. From the way he walked, he was trying to make himself look bigger, as if the statues were to be challenged.
“I don’t understand,” Mia said. “What’s this about? Why are all these statues fighting? It’s almost like a scene from Pompei, like they were actual demons and got flash frozen in metal.”
Adron and Kas followed the big guy, and Mia shivered the moment Kas took the first step into the hallowed ground. Hallowed? More like unholy. They walked past the enormous statues, and Mia sucked in a breath each time they got a little too close to one of them. Some had four arms. Some had two, but also had wings. Some were male or female. Every one of them had faces a little more alien or dragon-like than other demons.
Maybe older breeds had more inhuman faces? Julisa’s face was flatter than a human’s, nose subtle, alien-like, and oddly exotic and beautiful. Kas had a shark face, so maybe his breed was super old, too? Whatever the reason, walking near a statue felt all too similar to what it’d felt like to first time she’d stood in Vincius’s presence, a bound, twelve-foot-tall titan of power and rage.
She was scared.
Adron walked close to Kas’s side and patted her leg. He even winked at her, too. Or blinked. One eye and all that.
“This,” Julisa said from behind, walking with the incubi, “is a monument grown by Hell. I have seen them before.”
“Grown by Hell.” Mia set her eyes on a statue and reached out with her sixth sense. Julisa was right. These weren’t bodies that’d been cast in meera metal, but more statues grown like the ones she’d already seen. But the music note to touch them was like some kind of thick bass string. She wasn’t plucking that anytime soon.
Vin stood in front of a statue and growled at it.
“An abdarin,” Julisa said, joining him. She touched the statue’s giant arms with hers, and chuckled. “Bringing back memories of Belor, Vinicius?”
The titan snorted at her and moved on.
“An abdarin?” Mia asked.
“A child of Abaddon, like Belor.” She shrugged and circled the statue. Twelve feet tall like Vin, but with only two arms. Wings and hooves but no tail, he almost looked like a korgejin, the two tetrads who’d worked for Zel, but his face was decidedly more… demony, a cross between skull and dragon. Combined with four giant black horns and two black tusks, he looked very imposing.
“I’ve heard of these sites,” Locutus said, following after Vin. “Giant rooms filled with statues of the children of the Old Ones. If I had to guess, they used to get into big brawls like this and fight for the right to own a spire?”
“Yes,” Vin said. He didn’t look back.
“They killed each other off?” Mia asked. “I mean, if there used to be plenty, but now there’s just Vin, they killed each other off and no new ones were born?”
Julisa shrugged. “You’re asking questions we cannot answer. These things happened millennia ago, and though some of us may be centuries old, memories don’t last forever.”
Memories don’t last forever. That was bone chilling, and Mia shivered and rubbed her arms.
She knew Hell grew things to echo the past. Areas where a lot of death happened had more decorations to mark that. But growing complete statues in actual battle positions, fighting each other, some with fangs bared, some grabbing and clawing, was not something simple or easy. This was elaborate, specific, and oddly beautiful.
Kas followed, taking Mia with him. He stepped around statues, coming a little closer than Mia liked, but once the first half dozen statues didn’t strike out and attack her, she risked touching them. Solid metal. Maybe not as detailed as a professional sculptor on the surface could have managed, but still, damn detailed, and she yanked her hand back in case her touch awoke its long slumber. It didn’t.
They were all naked, and while none of them were having sex or had their dicks out, their naked bodies were a sight to behold. Muscle, tight stomachs, breasts of all sizes. She was surprised some of the more alien female ones didn’t have four boobs, but nope, they all sported two.
“Hell’s history,” Mia said. “It’s all just violence, isn’t it?”
“Is the surface much better?” Julisa asked.
“Yes, it is. There’s a lot of violence, sure, but we’ve had a lot of moments of greatness, too. Lots of peaceful moments, lots of progress toward making lives better. People only notice the bad and only record the bad. They never notice the good.”
The demoness snorted but didn’t argue, opting to walk alongside Vinicius instead. Maybe she had a disdain of humans in general, and not just Mia?
“Demons,” Kas said, “are pathetic.”
That got her attention. Julisa snapped her glare back and snarled at the sarkarin.
“You are a demon.”
“Am I?” He gestured to the statues with his big, flat head, and his two bull spikes swung with it. “I would take peace over this.”
“Peace? You do not want peace. Demons crave violence. Even the soft incubi crave it.”
Mia looked at the boys. They didn’t deny it.
But Kas snarled back at Julisa and clicked once in his throat.
“I’ve known Kas a while,” Adron said, “and he’s got good reason to be sick of this shit. I’m sick of this shit.” He gestured to the burn marks covering half his body. “You might be happy to lose things if it means indulging in more death, Julisa, but some of us aren’t. Not anymore.”
Kas grunted. Julisa scoffed. Mia caught Adron’s eye, and smiled at him. Hopefully, he noticed.
“Then perhaps,” Julisa said, “when we find Romakus and the rest of the Damall, you can all speak with Yosepha. I’m sure she will happily whisk you away to Heaven, where the lot of you can share your new found pacifism with the souls and angels above.”
Adron looked down, and the incubi sighed.
But the tetrad wasn’t done. “For all your desires to change, you are demons. You will crave bloodshed until the day you die. And we’re all the better for it! Or did you not notice that the souls sent to Hell are the most loathsome, despicable, deceitful creatures the surface produces. What better target for our hungers.” She held out her hands and squeezed the air, like she was sinking her claws into a fruit. “What is this truly about? Is it the unmarked? Is it as simple as meeting a girl, the first soul you have ever encountered, who is not a monster deep in their hearts? Pathetic. Abandoning who you are for the soft skin of a soul, who in any other circumstance, would be food or a betrayer slave.”
Mia glared. Why did the woman have to be so fucking mean?