DIRE : HELL (The Dire Saga Book 6)

by Andrew Seiple

  “Azrak. My ranger. He’d be dead if Juno hadn’t cast a fiery hands spell at that ooze, and Cassius had pushed him to safety while he was paralyzed.”

  I blinked. This... bore thought. Later. Much later.

  I looked toward Khalid, but his eyes were shut. “ALL RIGHT. WE’RE DONE HERE.”

  After we’d departed I activated the vox. “Think it’ll work?”

  “For a time, as First Manifesto said.” Khalid responded. “Time will reveal the truth of it. If the plan works, we shall not be around to see how it fares in the long-term.”

  “You sound somewhat melancholy,” I observed. “What’s wrong?”

  “It is nothing I wish to discuss. Worry not for me, I shall play my part. Worry more for yourself: succubi have been the ruin of many a mortal, and First Whisper has you, as they say, squarely in her sights.”

  “Dire’s not even interested in women,” I protested.

  “That is not a woman. That is a demon who looks like a woman. And she can be flexible in the gender department, if she is at all utilizing their usual abilities.”

  My imagination immediately went to bad places. “Dire didn’t really need to know that.”

  “Yes, actually, you do. These are not humans, and they are dangerous!” Khalid shouted, and I winced as I upped the filters. “We have done well because we are in the back-end of Hell, fighting over land that nobody else wants, but now that they know what you can do, it is only a short matter of time before they come for you. And with you, us.” He sighed. “You have not seen the carnage that I have. The damage they can wreak upon the unprepared.”

  “Well. We can avoid being that last part, at least.” I felt my lips fold into a thin line. Something was eating him. I’d have to hunt him down later and figure it out. In the meantime... “So, tell Dire about succubi.”

  “Many human accounts and much of the lore focuses on their fornication.” His tone lightened a bit, as he turned to academic matters. “While this is a significant part of their portfolio, and one that many modern human cultures are regretfully vulnerable to, it is neither the whole nor even the most dangerous of their assets. Indeed, their physical seduction is often an accidental side-effect. They act flirtatious and provocative as a force of habit, responding to the desires of those around them.”

  “Wait, so she doesn’t stretch and move like that on purpose?” Vector broke in.

  “Yes. The speculation is that they were engineered to be playthings and companions of certain lustful high-ranking demons, hence the nearness to the human form. Pets, in a sense.”

  “That’s fairly disturbing.” I didn’t have any urges towards women for her to react to. At least I thought I didn’t. But from what he’d said earlier, genders were flexible for them... no, that way lay stupidity. I shoved the thought away.

  “Their worst weapon is also their biggest weakness,” Khalid continued. “They are drawn to and fascinated by people. The stronger the personality, the more the attraction. It is usually an obsession, one that ends poorly. All the more so for being sincere. Succubi desire intimacy above all else.”

  “So, sex,” Vector said. “We’re back to the fornication again.”

  “You can get a room for that,” I told him. “And no, intimacy doesn’t always equate to sex.”

  “If that’s how the subject equates intimacy, succubi are happy to oblige,” Khalid said. “But the problem is that it’s never enough. Eventually the drive for intimacy turns into obsession. The sort of obsession that can leave them carving their target’s bones into... sexual implements, in the end.”

  We considered that in silence for a full seventeen seconds.

  “Please tell Dire you’re joking,” I finally managed.

  “I’ve run into it twice.”

  “Well fuck.”

  “No, that’s exactly the wrong thing to do,” Vector snarked.

  “Which is why their other main talent is so troublesome. They have an empathic sense, one that targets the soul rather than the mind. They know what you want, how you want it, and how they can give it to you.” Khalid sighed. “You are in for a challenge ahead of you, I fear.”

  “Then why did you recommend that we take her along?” I frowned. “This is only going to exacerbate the situation.”

  “Because she has already fixated upon you. If you left her behind, she would only try to return to you, and knowing your luck, she would return at precisely the wrong time. If a wasp is in your house, it is better to know where it is than to be ignorant.”

  “Better inside the tent pissing out, than outside pissing in,” Vector summed up, somewhat less poetically.

  “She can probably do that, can’t she?” I mused. “No, don’t answer that question. Although... Dire is surprised you didn’t recommend just killing her.”

  “I would be lying if I had not thought about it,” Khalid said. “But I know that is not how you operate. We just killed the Maestro, who did operate in that fashion.”

  “Ah, good memories,” Vector sighed. “He’s right. You’re too soft-hearted to just up and whack someone who hadn’t done anything yet.”

  “Soft-hearted? What?” Please. I’d killed demons by the thousands since I’d gotten here. After they tried to kill me. Or were killing others. Or intended to eat my face. Or held my friends hostage. Or...

  Well, seen in a certain light, it was a little soft-hearted. I could have justified going full genocide on these fuckers. But...

  “...it wouldn’t have worked,” I finally answered. “Killing every demon she ran into would just become one more atrocity, in Hell’s long, long list of atrocities. And this realm would grind on without any change.”

  “You still want to change Hell.” Khalid sighed. “I do not see this succeeding, but I cannot stop you from trying.”

  “Well. Before we make the big changes, we’ll have to complete quite a few small ones,” I toggled the Chorus into the vox discussion. “Starting with a good old fashioned massacre of demons who do deserve it. Epsilon, are the blasting charges set?”

  “Alpha and I took five days out of the city and saw to it ourselves.”

  “Good. Time to introduce the bastards down-cliff to some of Johnny Cash’s classics.”

  Three days later, ensconced in Beaky’s command center, I examined the army below us.

  It was pretty fucking metal, to tell the truth. On either side of the banks of the now-dried channel, demons were packed elbow to asshole, armed with nasty looking polearms and bows that no human could ever dream of drawing. Unlike the armies of Caym, they also had great war-beasts in their vanguard, bearlike demons with scaly hide, curling ram’s horns, and glowing red eyes. Each of them was about the size of two elephants.

  They also had fliers mixed in among them. Less of those now, after a couple of sorties against Beaky, Sneaky, and Squeaky. The Tesla arc generators we’d installed in the smaller Striges had done a number on their flying fiends.

  They were the lucky ones. They’d died quickly.

  As for the rest...

  “It’s about time,” Epsilon whispered in my ear. “We risk Caym’s destruction if we wait any longer.”

  I turned my head to look at the scaffolding they’d erected at the base of the cliffs. As soon as the Striges had dropped down above them, the army had packed every foot of the scaffolds with shield-bearing demons. They knew that we’d try to knock it all down.

  But they had gravely misunderstood the scope of the weapon that I was bringing to this battle.

  “SPIN UP THE MIX AND FIRE THE CHARGES,” I commanded, and Gamma pushed the big red button we’d set aside for that purpose.

  Speakers on Beaky’s underside crackled with static, then the first skirling notes of “The Man Comes Around” rolled out over the darkling plains. The army below us shifted uneasily, fired a few futile arrows upward. Right about the point Johnny Cash got around to singing about a sound of thunder, the rumble from the explosions at the top of the cliffs reached us, thundering down and e
choing across the basin.

  What they didn’t, couldn’t see, was the top of the cliffs. They were in no position to see the clouds of dust as the charges we’d planted cut new channels into the old riverbed up top. The old channel, the one that used to run through Caym, was severed by strategically placed detonations, while two new ones forked and ran around my conquered city, deep and wide.

  The cliffs rumbled and the ground shook, a bit of rubble and stone and trash falling from above. But it was merely the precursor to the horror that would come shortly.

  For a month we’d dammed up the river upstream with Vector’s coagulating reagents. We’d used the geography to make a vast lake of blood, flooding an entire valley, choking the river up nice and fat.

  The charges we’d detonated ten minutes ago had changed that. And the charges we’d detonated ten seconds ago had spared my city from the crimson tide about to come.

  Johnny Cash’s dry, deep voice sang on, and the army below us screamed as one as great tides of blood fell down upon the plain, weeks’ worth of flow dammed up and unleashed against an army that was packed way too tightly.

  The fliers managed to flee. We let them escape. Not enough ammunition to be able to kill them all at this range, and besides, I wanted some survivors from this. Wanted them to carry word of how Caym had slain their army without a single soldier dying on their side.

  Finally, after perhaps two hours, the worst of it was over. The great carcasses of the bear demons floated in the sodden lake and the blood had receded somewhat. The bulk of it had fled down the old channel it used to occupy and rushed downstream to wreak havoc on the lands beyond. As I surveyed the destruction, the cameras caught movement to the southeast. “THERE. SEVENTH QUADRANT. FOCUS AND ZOOM.”

  The viewscreen brought up the image of a tower of corpses and standing atop them was something that looked all the world like the Balrog out of the Lord of the Rings. Less fire, more scales, and half a dozen attendant demons were helping him buckle on armor that shimmered with hazy afterimages.

  “That is the Lord of Smoke and Sinew himself!” First Whisper breathed.

  “WELL, THAT SAVES TIME. CHECKMATE IN ONE.” I looked across at my crew, my friends, and the two bound demons, with their collar lights blinking softly red in the dimness of the command center. “HOLD DOWN THE FORT. DIRE’S GONNA GO END THIS FARCE.”

  I flew through the corridors of Beaky’s lungs, emerging through one of the hatches we’d built in his sides. There I looked down upon the Lord of Smoke and Sinew, scanning him with my sensor suite, taking note of the energy signatures that danced around him. Or more specifically, his armor.

  “Wow,” I muttered into the vox link.

  “What is it?” Alpha replied.

  “He’s armoring up against the electricity we used to fry his minions. Not sure what the stuff down there is made of, but it’d shield him nicely. Which means particle beams won’t work.”

  “So what now? Are you gonna go down there, do a monologue or two, have a knock-down fight over a huge lake of blood as drowning demons wail and flail below you? Something epic where you take huge amounts of damage only to rip his wings off, and cast him down into the crimson lake?”

  I considered. “Nah. No point in racking up repair time.” I popped my railgun attachment out, sighted carefully, and put a tungsten tent spike through the Lord of Smoke and Sinew’s skull. He toppled into the blood and sunk.

  I watched as his attendants went nuts, leaping after him, trying to drag his corpse free, unable to tell just how wounded he was given the vast amounts of blood everywhere. Then I went back inside Beaky and returned to my command throne.

  “ALL RIGHT, LET’S GET THIS SHOW ON THE ROAD. TAKE US TO WROTH. WE’LL SEE WHAT’S LEFT OF IT.”

  Wroth, according to the Mappa Infernum that I’d retrieved from Midboss’ lair, was one of the great trading hubs of the Wrathlands. It was my next target.

  We followed the newly-filled, vastly-flooded river south to where it joined up with several of the other rivers of blood and became the River Styx. The ashen clouds got thicker here, as the nearby volcanoes coughed them out like veteran smokers, and the blood started its slow boil as it went, heated by volcanic activity under the river.

  “Normally the banks are packed with patrolling demons,” Khalid pointed out. “And Damned trapped inside the river, fighting to escape it or sinking to the bottom and cooking, giving in to their fate.”

  “What happens to the ones who escape?” Vector asked, staring down at the engorged river.

  “The patrolling demons catch them and throw them back in. Over and over again.”

  I tapped my fingers on my mask. “WHAT PURPOSE DOES THAT SERVE?”

  “Purpose?” Khalid frowned. “This is Hell. It is their torment.”

  “THE BLOOD ABOVE WAS RENDERED INTO IRON FOR CAYM.”

  “And it serves to provide oxygen, water, and nutrients for the surrounding area,” Vector hastened to add.

  Khalid bit his lip.

  “I have heard,” First Whisper began, then shot Khalid a nervous glance.

  “GO ON.”

  “I have heard that among the patrols, they have demons whose job it is to skim the rendered fat from the surface of the River Styx. This fat is traded among the cities of the Wrathlands and beyond.”

  Khalid stood and left the control chamber without another word.

  “What’s eating him?” Vector squinted through his glasses.

  “I’ll go and check,” Beta said, following the Last Janissary.

  “DRAMA.” I shook my head... then froze, as the monitor showed me something I’d never expected to see.

  The walls of Wroth, yes, just as we’d expected. They’d weathered the great flood intact, which was disappointing but entirely within the realm of discussed possibilities.

  But across these walls, great letters had been carved, forming English words.

  “We have Roy Carver. Parley or lose him forever!” Vector read the pronouncement aloud, turning it into a question. “That makes no sense—”

  But it did, and the realization crashed down upon me a thousand times heavier than the wave of blood I’d unleashed upon my foes.

  CHAPTER 10: HONOR THE DEAD

  “Remember; the characters always have choices. This is the truth of the lie, and the draw that brings more and more to it every year. They have choices, and their choices matter.”

  --Excerpt from the sixth chapter of the first book of the Chronicles of the Shared Lie

  Roy Carver. Roy goddamned Carver.

  The closest thing to a father I ever had. The first man I encountered after my ‘birth’ who wasn’t trying to shoot me. Who in fact had my back, all through that risky first week, where we’d almost died over and over again.

  Until he finally had died. Shot, bleeding out while everyone who could have saved him lay stunned mere meters away.

  The worst part of it, though? He’d died because of me. It had been my enemies who came after us in the end. I hadn’t even been there when he died; they’d hauled me off for some impromptu surgery.

  And now he was here.

  “HOW?” I whispered, forgetting to mute my mask. I felt my hands shaking inside my gauntlets and turned off all the various weapon triggers before I activated something that nuked Beaky by accident. “HOW IS THIS EVEN FAIR?” I stood from the throne, gripping it for support I didn’t need, as fury and despair mixed and roiled up inside me. “HE WAS A SAINT! HE WAS A FUCKING SAINT!”

  Vector’s eyes went wide, as he backed up, waving his hands. “Okay, let’s not fly off the handle here—”

  Gamma spoke. “What do we lose by negotiating?” I turned to answer her, but Gamma was looking at First Whisper. I don’t think the succubus heard; she was staring at me with fascination. And more than a little arousal, judging by the nipple bumps poking through her little excuse for a brassiere.

  I tried to rein it in a bit.

  “SHE ASKED YOU A QUESTION, WHISPER.”

&nbs
p; “Hmmm? Ah. Oh, yes, let me think.” First Whisper shook her head. “It would not be taken as a sign of weakness. The demons of the Wrathlands value clear heads and restrained tempers. Such things are for the mortals, who were weak and ended up—” she bit her tongue. “At any rate, it would not compromise your reputation if you honored their request to parley.”

  I gnawed my lip, tasted blood, and deliberately unclenched my jaw. I wanted to rain fire and fury on that city below and sort out the remains.

  I resisted the urge.

  “Um.”

  Everyone turned to look at Vector, who flushed. He had his hand up in the air like a recalcitrant student. “Sorry, but who is Roy Carver?”

  “A FIGURE FROM DIRE’S PAST. A GOOD MAN AND A FRIEND, WHO DESERVED FAR, FAR MORE THAN THIS SUFFERING. DESERVED TO BE MORE THAN A MEAT TOY FOR SOULLESS DEMONS FOR ALL ETERNITY.”

  “Okay. Okay. Are we sure this isn’t a trick?”

  I wasn’t mad at Vector and explaining matters to him helped a bit with my fury. Cold logic seeped in as I turned from the raw pain to consider the angles with the distance that super-genius provided me. “IT COULD BE A TRICK. IT WOULD TAKE KNOWLEDGE OF DIRE’S PAST... KNOWLEDGE WHICH IS MOSTLY PUBLIC RECORD, THANKS TO THAT DAMNED TELEVISION DOCUMENTARY.”

  It hadn’t painted me in the most flattering light. But several of the homeless who provided the accounts had gotten some money out of it, gotten enough to get back on their feet, so I didn’t mind it so much. “FOR NOW, WE DO NOTHING. GOING TO GO CONSULT WITH THE JANISSARY. HE KNEW ROY AS WELL.”

  There was another reason I wanted to check on him. Something was eating him, and it had caused him to leave the bridge during a mission into the unknown. True, we had things mostly in hand, but in my experience that was when heroes showed up or things started going wrong. It was bad form to leave the rest of us hanging, and Khalid was usually far better than that.

  I made my way back into Beaky, through the lungs, into one of the environmentally-enhanced chambers we reserved for our Damned recruits. Not so many on Beaky, just a few trusted Damned who had earned it through time and temperament.