She reached out with her mind. If she had a sixth sense, might as well use it, or learn how to use it, right? But all reaching out with it did was tell her they were surrounded by rock. She couldn’t even get a fix on the shape of the rock, just that they were surrounded by it. Echolocation, her new sense was not.
They found a bottom, and continued on in the new level of darkness, only the occasional amber vein on the walls or on a pillar they almost walked into.
“Need me to walk?” she asked.
“No,” Kas said. “I can see better than you.”
“Because of this?” She tapped her knuckles on the top of his forehead. It was flat, solid black, and had no eyes, but she knew he saw through it.
“Yes.”
“Like, you can see fine?”
“No. It is dark.”
He didn’t have echolocation either. How did the eyeless demons see, then? Maybe their whole black foreheads were actually eyes, protected by a thick layer of black skin or something. But Kas had said the eyeless liked to speak Hellian instead of Estian, clicks and chirps, because Estian words bothered their vision. Strange anatomy.
A puzzle for David, and for later.
Vin snarled, and the sound of rocks hitting rocks echoed in the cavern. He turned and sank his claws into rock and ground before gravity again pulled him down. That was almost a tumble, and with how big Vin was, tumbling wasn’t a minor inconvenience.
Another slope to go down. They followed.
“We go any deeper,” Adron said, “we’ll start running into lava streams.”
“You’re right,” Mia said. “I can… feel them, beneath us.” Lava, like the veins of Hell. Runes in her mind aligned and pointed at other runes. Hellfire was connected to the lava, like they were sisters, Hell’s blood and the pure destructive force of hellfire. An ecosystem that absorbed essence and resonance, and… and did what with it? Turned into the flesh of Hell? Lava, and rock and stone, and swamps and fire skies?
The walls rumbled. Bass poured through the ground. The pillars shook, and dislodged pebbles rained down around them.
“What was that?” Faust whispered.
Vin and Julisa crouched low and pressed on. Slowly, like she might wake the dead, Julisa drew her four swords. Everyone did the same.
“Now,” Kas whispered, “might be a good time to–”
“Yeah.” She climbed off and fell to the back of the group with the incubi.
She could fight, right? She could summon the batlam rune, wear it, and protect her body with angelic armor. Maybe not exactly angelic, but sorta. She could summon a weapon, and with it, she had an easier time focusing on the strings to play the music. She could rip down the walls around them, break the pillars, or maybe something less suicidal, like summon spikes of blackstone up from the ground. Maybe. Possibly. Hopefully.
The egg in her sling stirred, and she stroked it. If she had to do that, fine, but for now, let the demons handle it.
They pressed on, and again a bassy rumble vibrated the cavern. It hadn’t been there before, but thirty seconds later it happened again, almost like the cavern had breathed upon noticing them.
She breathed deep and scrunched up her nose. Iron? Her sense of smell had been overwhelmed by the scent of metal when she’d first arrived in Hell because of all the blood, but she’d adapted fast. Now, as the rumbling summoned a gentle, warm, moist breeze that slipped past the darkness and the pillars of stone, the smell tickled her sinuses, and she wiped her nose.
The smell of blood, so strong it stood out from the rest of Hell.
More pillars decorated the tunnel, and the group stepped around them, silent hunters prowling the black. Mia walked on the balls of her toes and made sure each step was careful. If she had to ditch her sandals to be quieter, she would, but for now she risked it and followed the pack toward the rumbling noise ahead.
Quiet chanting joined the heavy rumbling. A few voices, then more, until the sound of what could only be humans humming and mumbling a ritualistic chant joined the rumbling cavern. Not a hellquake, but vibration flowed up Mia’s feet into her skull regardless, and she gulped down the rising panic in her guts. The demons pressed on, and Mia followed.
On the list of bad ideas, this was at the top, but what the fuck else were they going to do?
Past a maze of pillars, light opened up. Not amber, but fire. A burning bush. A dozen burning bushes, spread out in an enormous circle, and a pile of skulls in the center. A towering pile, hundreds of thousands of skulls of all shapes and sizes, piled on top of each other, with a host of naked humans wandering around and carefully setting them.
The souls stopped and looked at the demons, each with 666 etched into their foreheads. Skinny, stomachs sunken, ribs exposed, and empty eyes.
“They’ve come,” a soul said, and she adjusted a skull that’d rolled down the pile. Another skull rolled down, and she put it back on the pile. Another rolled, and she put that one back, too. No matter how many times she put the skulls back, more skulls rolled down, and the group of Sisyphus wannabes did their best and tried again. Their best wasn’t very good, slow, lethargic movements, complete with the occasional stumbling. They were starving to death.
“Who’s come?” Julisa asked.
The soul shook her head. “The unmarked.”
“Of course.” Growling, the tetrad looked back at Mia.
Mia was well and good staying in the back of the group with the incubi, where she didn’t have to come close and see what the fuck was going on. But the demons stepped aside for her, and she walked forward, one hand resting on her egg in its sling. Of course, something like this would happen, and of course she was the reason, directly or indirectly.
The burning bushes burned, and she covered her eyes as best she could while still looking around. The souls weren’t a threat. They wandered the colossal pile of skulls, continued their work, and only a few bothered looking Mia’s way.
“You knew I was coming?” Mia asked.
The woman nodded. “Follow the light. The master is waiting. He summoned you.”
“Master?”
The woman didn’t respond. She picked up a skull, and with shaking fingers, put it back on the pile.
Growling, Vinicius walked around the pile and pushed on through the pit of shadows. With burning bushes lighting up pillars, the place had erupted with a million shadows, and Mia shivered. They danced with the flickering flame, pretending to be monsters hiding around corners and rocks.