“Save it for the arena you stupid little assholes.”
Right as Venom said the word “assholes,” the buzzer rang. Venom smiled.
“Guess neither of you found a second for your tag team. Looks like I’ll be randomly pairing you up.”
“No I’ll take him.”
Shadow pointed at the still unconscious Leech.
“And you, Nightmare? Would you care to pick some unconscious moron as well?”
Nightmare smiled and grabbed the closest demon at his side. He delivered a hard punch to his face, knocking him out cold.
“Sure. I’ll take this unconscious moron. I’ll tie him to my back and I’ll still beat murder trash wannabe over here.”
Shadow smiled.
“I know you’re the daughter of a decent liar, but that wasn’t very convincing.”
The smile finally left Nightmare’s face. Apparently he didn’t like being called a girl or the way Shadow just referenced his father. He took a step forward but then turned his head to see Venom still standing there. Venom shook his head and Nightmare took a step back.
“Enough bullshit. Let’s see if either one of you can back up what you’ve said. Everyone make your way to the labyrinth entrance.”
Shadow went to Leech, who was finally regaining consciousness. Leech looked up and smiled.
“You kicked his ass, didn’t you? You barely look hurt.”
“I got more punches in but he landed a good shot to my stomach. Still hurts a little.”
“Is he laying face down somewhere?”
“No. Venom stepped in and broke it up.”
“Well that sucks, Shady. You find a good partner for the labyrinth?”
“No. I’m pretty sure the demon I picked is going to be more trouble than he’s worth.”
“Who?”
Shadow smiled.
“It’s you, dumbass. Now help me get my armor on and we’ll see what we can do about getting you some better equipment.”
Leech looked shocked and bowed on one knee.
“I really appreciate it, Shady. I won’t let you down.”
“You can’t. I couldn’t think any less of you than I already do. One punch from Nightmare and you’re out cold?”
“That asshole sucker punched me.”
“Well redeem yourself then. Armor. Now.”
“Sure. Right away.”
Leech opened the bag with Shadow’s armor and polished it with his cloak. He then helped Shadow secure his armor and handed him his sword. Leech saw that there was still some extra gear in the sack.
“Can I just go ahead and um... take what I want?”
“Have at it.”
While Shadow watched Leech put on a belt and attach a pair of daggers to it, he couldn’t stop thinking. Why the hell had Cain given him a scythe when he knew it would be taken away? It couldn’t be just for style points and making enemies.
Shadow decided to look at the sword so he would at least better understand his new replacement weapon. As he looked along the blade, crimson writing started to appear and extend along the surface of the sword.
“Recite the story of the first murder and this weapon will become your salvation.”
The writing disappeared shortly after Shadow read it and he had no idea what it meant.
CHAPTER 3
Twenty minutes flat. It was a new record for the labyrinth. Nightmare must have either run past everything in there or crushed everything in his path. For the first time since he arrived at the trials, Shadow felt a little nervous. He shook off the feeling and tried to replace it with confidence.
Venom smiled and put his hand on Nightmare’s shoulder.
“Well done! That was definitely worthy of the offspring of a major demon. Where’s the demon you went in with?”
“Couldn’t protect him. The most powerful thing in the labyrinth got him shortly after we entered. There was no saving him.”
“Well it is what it is. Don’t get cocky because there’s still two more to go. I wouldn’t enjoy having to hand your dead corpse over to your father because you got overconfident.”
“That will never happen.”
Nightmare was swarmed by the other demons-in-training. Everyone was eager to hear about what he met inside. Nightmare fabricated all sorts of creatures and Shadow was pretty sure he was lying about most of it. Nightmare made his way over to Shadow and Leech and flipped them off.
“There’s the proof that I’m the most powerful demon here.”
Shadow smiled in response.
“So you ran screaming like a little girl from the labyrinth? I’ll bet you’ll get points docked for not killing anything.”
“I killed everything in the maze. I left nothing alive.”
“We’ll see what you left alive when the scores come.”
Shadow started approaching the maze and signaled for Leech to follow. Nightmare crossed his arms and was shortly swarmed once again by the other demons-in-training. Venom waved his hand and two demons came forward to inspect their weapons. After checking Shadow’s sword and Leech’s daggers, they nodded their approval to Venom. Seeing that everything was satisfactory, Venom checked their names off on a scroll.
“Any advice for us before we go in?”
“Keep Shadow alive. He’s more important than you. Shadow... don’t die.”
“I’m not planning on it.”
“Shadow, son of Abaddon, and Leech, son of...,” there was a brief pause while he checked the scroll again, “Malcontent... enter the labyrinth trial of Hell.”
Venom waved his hand down at the demons at the entrance. They each pulled a lever that lowered a drawbridge. As Shadow and Leech approached, they could see the fires burning underneath and the souls screaming in protest to their current state. When they had crossed the drawbridge, Venom motioned for the bridge to be raised.
“The time starts when you’re locked in.”
As the drawbridge locked back into its upright position, a loud boom echoed throughout the labyrinth. The first thing Shadow noticed was the demon that went in with Nightmare. His neck was broken and he was lying in a pool of blood. What Nightmare said was deceptive, but not necessarily a lie. The most powerful thing in the labyrinth had killed this demon since Nightmare thought himself to be more powerful than anything he had encountered in the maze. Leech looked at the demon’s corpse and shuddered.
“No time to dwell on it. Let’s get going. We’ll keep the pace at a jog until we run into something.”
“Sounds good, boss.”
The first few turns went by quickly. After a few lefts and rights, a long hallway ended with a large, dark creature. Shadow approached it at a full sprint, ran along the left wall for a few steps, and jumped into the air spinning. The creature lunged to take a bite but Shadow sunk his sword into the left side of its jaw. While the creature thrashed, Shadow was flung up into the air. He grabbed a short blade from the back of his belt and came down hard with a strike in the center of the creature’s head.
At this point, Shadow concentrated all his effort on holding on to his weapon, now embedded in the creature’s skull. As the creature stopped thrashing, perhaps realizing that he couldn’t shake Shadow loose, he heard a loud hiss. The large labyrinth creature was a massive snake. Shadow wondered why the snake had started hissing until he saw Leech jogging up the corridor. The animal thought it had found a meal.
Leech, finally aware of what was happening, stopped dead in his tracks. The snake lunged and Leech did something that surprised everyone. He rolled forward right before the snake’s teeth hit the floor and stabbed upward with his two daggers into the snake’s throat.
While the snake reeled back in pain, Shadow loosened his grip on his blade and slid down briefly until he grabbed onto the daggers Leech had planted. He grabbed onto the left one to keep from sliding off but removed the right dagger and stabbed it repeatedly into the snake’s throat. Both the snake and Shadow came crashing down hard onto the floor of the labyrinth. Leech ran up
to the wounded, writhing snake and removed Shadow’s sword from its jaw. He raised the sword high into the air and then came down repeatedly on the creature’s neck, finally separating the snake’s head from its body. The snake’s body thrashed for a while in seizure-like jerks and then its eyes closed and it finally settled into death.
“Well that was pretty quick for how big it was.”
“Yeah. Not bad at all. You surprised me, Leech. You’ve got some pretty quick reflexes. I can’t believe you got the daggers in his throat like you did.”
“Once I decided not to turn around and run like hell in the other direction, I guess I did alright.”
Leech smiled as he retrieved his daggers and placed them back on his belt. He then removed Shadow’s short blade from the snake’s skull. It took several attempts to pry it loose. Leech looked the blade over and it glowed briefly with white light before Shadow reclaimed it and put it back in its sheath at the back of his belt, hidden underneath his cloak. He kept his sword in his hand.
“So... that’s an angel’s short blade. You hid it when we had our weapons inspected.”
“No it isn’t.”
“It is. I’ve read about them before. No weapon forged in Hell gives off light like that but your short blade does. Want to explain to me how that’s possible?”
“We’re wasting time, Leech. We’ll chat about my short blade later.”
“Fair enough. Lead the way.”
Shadow had no intention of sharing with Leech how he received an angel’s short blade. He hoped that Leech would just forget about it. For a minute, he even considered knocking him out and letting him think that it was all just a dream. He slowed his pace so Leech was walking in front of him and even raised his sword to hit him with the hilt when Leech stopped jogging.
“It’s a sphinx.”
Before them sat a creature with the body of a lion, the wings of an eagle, and the face of a woman. Neither of them had seen a sphinx before but Shadow had never even heard of one. Leech decided to elaborate what he knew.
“A sphinx usually has riddles that we have to answer to let us pass.”
The sphinx stood up on its back haunches and looked the two demons over. She opened her wings and flapped them to bring a powerful gust of wind that knocked the demons back a few paces.
“I am the great sphinx of the labyrinth. I will give you a choice: brains or brawn. Answer my two riddles or face me in combat.”
Shadow weighed the options. A fight with this creature would waste a fair amount of time. He decided to hear its riddles and then attack if he didn’t know the answer.
“Let’s hear it then, sphinx.”
“The first of my two riddles. What walks on four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon, and three legs in the evening?”
Leech looked pensive and thought the riddle over. Shadow, ever impatient and wanting to move on, spun his sword and started to charge. The sphinx stood and prepared to defend itself. Leech put out his arm and stopped his forward assault.
“Man. He crawls on all fours as a baby, walks on two feet as an adult, and walks with a cane in old age.”
“That is correct.”
Shadow looked dumbfounded.
“How the hell did you know that, Leech?”
“My dad. He told me the story of Oedipus a long time ago. I just gave the same answer that Oedipus gave the sphinx.”
Shadow decided that Leech was definitely more worthwhile than he had given him credit for.
“Alright, let’s hear the next one.”
The sphinx sat back down and gave the demons the second riddle.
“There are two sisters: one gives birth to the other and she, in turn, gives birth to the first. Who are the two sisters?”
Shadow looked at Leech and Leech shrugged.
“My dad only told me the first one in the story. Guess we’re fighting the sphinx.”
Shadow was about to tell Leech to give him a minute to figure it out but Leech charged with both daggers at the sphinx’s leg. The sphinx raised its paw and brought it down, catching Leech’s head underneath it. It then began to press down and crush Leech’s skull.
“Wait!”
The sphinx stopped pressing down and looked at Shadow.
“Do you have an answer? Do not attempt to stall me.”
Shadow thought for another second. This was his only chance to keep Leech alive since he didn’t have time to land a blow before the sphinx crushed Leech’s head like a grape.
“The sisters are... day and night. Day comes before night but each night brings a new day.”
The sphinx continued to press down on Leech’s head. After a few seconds, it raised its paw and let Leech go. Leech continued to lie on the ground.
“That is correct. You may now slay me and move on.”
The sphinx bowed its head. Shadow ran up to it and drove his sword down in to its neck. It didn’t make any noise, but blood gushed out from around the blade until it eventually fell over and died. Shadow removed his sword and went over to see how Leech was doing. His face looked only mildly crushed and blood was only flowing from a couple of small wounds. He was still completely unconscious though.
Shadow picked up Leech from the ground and threw him over his shoulders. His pace was much slower since he was forced to carry Leech and he considered leaving him there, but something inside him overrode that instinct. Was this what loyalty felt like? He knew he didn’t think of Leech as a friend, but he knew that Leech had risked his life to save him several times and would continue to do so. Even if no one else saw it, Shadow saw in Leech a powerful, underrated ally. The temptation to leave him returned several times as he kept moving but Shadow ignored it and kept walking.
As he came to the end of the hall, it opened up into a large room. As the full room came into vision, he saw thousands of corpses stacked up in large piles. Some of the piles reached all the way to the ceiling and the smell was even fouler than he had expected. Rotting flesh. Shadow had smelled it before since he was born in Hell but the stench in this room was overwhelming. Other than the smell, however, Shadow sensed no real threat. He adjusted Leech’s position on his shoulders and continued to walk toward the exit at the other side of the room when he heard a noise.
Shadow’s first instinct was to ignore the sound and move on. This was Hell and that noise could have been anything. After a few more steps, the sound came again – louder this time. As Shadow looked around, he saw one of the corpses near the door that he was approaching push itself up on its elbows from the top of the pile. It let out a horrible moan, crawled down the pile of corpses, and started its way towards Shadow. Shadow grinned. This reanimated corpse moved too slowly to be any real threat. He put Leech down on the floor and pulled out his short blade. Instead of running the distance between them, Shadow took careful aim and threw his short blade. It spun through the air, illuminating the room with light, and came to rest in between the corpse’s eyes. Satisfied with his aim, Shadow went to retrieve his blade but as soon as he placed it back on his belt, the piles of corpses all around the room started to move. The noise he had heard before was repeated several times amplified, the hellish harmonies echoing off the walls over and over.
Shadow ran to meet them with his sword but there were too many. He cut them down by dozens and then by hundreds but more kept coming. As he sliced off heads and severed limbs, he tried to think of a way out. Leech was still out cold. It was unfortunate, because even an inept, unskilled warrior would have been able to at least divert some portion of the wave of approaching corpses. When all seemed lost, he remembered the inscription that he had seen on the blade earlier. He needed to recite the story of the first murder...
“And Cain talked with Abel his brother: and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him.”
He returned to slicing corpses and nothing changed. The corpses came closer and closer, no matter how many he cut down. Right when he was about to give
up, the sword vanished from his hands in a puff of black smoke. Shadow started to hallucinate and he thought his time had come to an end...
CHAPTER 4
“Dad, you can’t go!”
Shadow looked up at his father, his vision blurred by tears. Abaddon looked down at him with an expression that conveyed his sympathy, but he was unsure what he should say. After a long pause, Abaddon crouched down on one knee and put his hand on Shadow’s shoulder. Shadow shook his father’s hand off of his shoulder.
“We can fight this! They can’t take you! I’ll go get my knife...”
Shadow ran to his closet and sifted through his belongings until he pulled out an obsidian colored demon knife. His father frowned as he took the weapon out of Shadow’s hand and put it back in his closet.
“Cain is going to look after you and your mother. The Dark One promised your uncle that you would be left alone if I turn myself in. I have to go, Shadow.”
Shadow hung his head and stifled his sobbing. When he slowly brought his face back to meet his father’s, it was filled with rage and anger.
“Dad, I’m going to kill the demons that come for you. I’m going to kill them and we’re going to run. Don’t put my knife back in the closet again.”
“Shadow, you won’t. You’re not going to get yourself in trouble in a fight that we can’t win.”
“But...”
“No, Shadow. No more. We don’t have a lot of time.”
Abaddon reached behind his cloak and pulled out a glowing short blade. Shadow raised his hand to shade his eyes – he wasn’t used to seeing the light of Heaven in the middle of Hell. Abaddon took the blade and put it in Shadow’s hand.
“You’re going to hear a lot of people tell you that I’m a traitor and that I sided with the angels. It’s not true.”
“Then why do you have an angel’s blade?”
As Shadow gripped the handle, he suddenly felt his rage and anger start to subside. A warm, calming sense of peace took over.
“What the...? Dad?”
Minor Demons Page 3