“That will be all, Raluthi,” came Orcus’s voice from somewhere behind me, and the brute bowed and lumbered away. I couldn’t turn to face Orcus, but the god of oaths stepped in front of me again, then snapped his fingers. Scathiks rushed over, pushing a chair, which Orcus dropped into. Scathiks conjured a rag from thin air, gave Orcus’s shoes a quick shine, and then stepped back, hands clasped before him, head bowed. Orcus snapped his fingers a second time, and a glass of water appeared in his hand. He took a sip and sighed. “Kid, it really pains me to see you here, I need you to understand that. I genuinely hoped that it wouldn’t come to this.”
The ground beneath me rose at an incline, sitting me up so I could face Orcus. “Bullshit,” I rasped. “You knew what that promise was intended as. You could’ve let me off any time.”
The glass of water vanished as Orcus spread his hands. “Now that’s harsh, kid. I treat everyone equally. All gods are subject to the same rules. What would it look like if I started making exceptions? People would think I was playing favorites and that’s simply not the case. You make a promise, you keep a promise. It’s that simple. It’s not my fault if the promise you made was impossible to keep.”
My retort was cut off as Scathiks slapped me across the face. “Don’t be interruptin’ Lord Orcus. It’s not polite.”
Orcus smiled at the little demon. “Thank you, Scathiks. You’ll have to forgive Vincent, being a half-god, he’s grown used to being able to throw his weight around. He’s forgotten what it’s like to be humble. But that’s fine. That is, in part, what we will remind him of during his time here.”
My healing factor popped that rib back into place, and I felt my lung seal shut again. “So what happens now?” I asked Orcus as I winced.
“You’ll need to be officially welcomed here, given a place to stay, but there are some formalities that need to take place first. The good doctor will be along shortly, but right now, the Pit needs to meet you.” He stood and snapped his fingers, and the landscape changed. Instead of the little room we’d been in, we were now atop a tower, hundreds of feet off the ground. Around us, lakes of fire bubbled and the screams and wails of the damned rang in my ears. Orcus held me by the throat in one hand, my Reeboks dangling a foot off the ground. He cupped his other hand to his mouth as he hollered for silence. To my amazement, the shrieks of the tortured stopped. Orcus saw my look of bewilderment and smirked. “The demons tending the damned just severed all their vocal cords,” he said. “They’ll grow back in a few minutes, but this is something everyone needs to see.”
With that, Orcus cleared his throat and addressed the masses in a magically amplified voice. “Denizens of the Pit, I bring before you a fallen god. A god who welched on a promise. A god who has been cast down here to be forgotten, to lament, to languish in agony for eternity.” The demons cheered at this. “Let this serve as an example to all of you, that even the most powerful beings are subject to the law. I will take him to the good doctor soon, and then, there will be combat.” Even louder cheers at this; it was like Orcus had just announced everyone was going to the Super Bowl. “For now, demons, continue with your tasks. And to the damned, know that the suffering you caused others in life is nothing to what you will feel here.”
He snapped his fingers again, and we were back in the little room. “Overly dramatic much?” I asked. “And what did you mean, there will be combat?”
“We’ll get to that, kid,” Orcus said, setting me back on the inclined rock. “You’re going to have plenty of time to learn the lay of the land in this place. Eternity, in fact.”
“Great,” I said. “So who’s this doctor I keep hearing about?”
“The good doctor,” Orcus said, “will be with you shortly. This is his waiting room.”
“And how long do we wait?”
“We? Vinnie, you are sorely mistaken. I am not waiting for the good doctor. I am leaving. You get to sit here in a waiting room with nothing to do, no TV to watch, no magazines to read, no other people to converse with.”
I grimaced. “So in short, it’s the waiting room from hell.”
Orcus pointed a finger at me and grinned. “Now you’re getting it.” And with that, he vanished. Scathiks was gone, too, and it was so quiet in the waiting room that the sound of my breathing seemed deafening. I glanced around. No guards. No restraints. Screw this. I was getting out of here. I stretched out with extradimensional energy, intending to create a portal to anywhere else. As I did, red runes flared to life on the otherwise bare beige walls, and I was enveloped in crackling red energy. It was like being electrocuted, frozen, and set on fire all at once. I lay on the ground twitching for what seemed an eternity, my body convulsing and spasming uncontrollably while the runes pulsed on the walls.
It only stopped when a door I hadn’t noticed before opened and a demon in a lab coat stepped out. He was about my height, and would have looked completely human if not for the pair of ram’s horns winding out from the sides of his head. He had a fringe of neatly trimmed white hair, with a matching goatee, and wore a pair of gold spectacles. Beneath the lab coat, he wore a white dress shirt and a pair of khakis. He shook his head and gave a casual wave toward the runes, which vanished. The pain ceased, and I took a ragged breath. “Vincent Corinthos,” he said, and his voice oozed refinement. “Can you enter under your own power, or shall I call for an orderly to assist you?”
“I’ll manage,” I said and struggled to my feet. Despite the pain I’d been going through, my body had been able to heal most of the wounds I’d sustained when I’d landed here. Those runes on the walls had been designed to cause pain, not injury. “You’re the good doctor, I presume?”
“I am, indeed,” he said, flashing a smile full of crooked yellow teeth. “Right this way, if you please.” He beckoned for me to follow, and I caught a glimpse of the claws tipping each of his fingers. They were trimmed to neat points, clean, and practically looked manicured.
I followed him into an exam room not that different from the ones we had back in Medical. Everything was steel and bright lights, and, to my surprise, clean. I’d been expecting the place to look like the aftermath of a slasher movie, but the room was spotless, gleaming, even. I even caught a whiff of Lysol in the air. The good doctor saw my expression and smiled. “Not the barbarous scene you expected, eh?” He motioned for me to take a seat in a chair.
“No,” I said, sitting down. “Definitely not what I expected.”
The good doctor smiled again. “Well, be patient. The barbarous-ness will start soon enough.” With that, leather restraints erupted from the arms and legs of the chair and pinned me in place. On reflex, I Opened them and jumped to my feet. This was the first time I’d been able to move under my own power since splatting down here, and I wasn’t going to just let Orcus’s little pals do whatever they wanted to me. My switchblade was gone, but I was far from helpless. Kobold fire shot from my hand and into the good doctor’s face, sending him staggering back. I snapped Open a portal to Boston and stepped through —
— And found myself standing in the good doctor’s exam room. I portaled again, same result. “What the hell?” I demanded, focusing all the extradimensional energy I could gather, willing a portal to Open out of this place. But every time, I came back into the exam room. In the meantime, the good doctor had gotten back to his feet and was examining his reflection in a mirror hanging over the sink.
“Oh, do stop that,” he said as he brushed some ash from his eyebrows. My flames hadn’t even scorched his hair. Demons are immune to fire, after all. “Extradimensional energy can’t create portals out of my office unless I allow it. You, Vincent Corinthos, are quite trapped here.”
“I’m leaving,” I said, pointing at him. “I don’t want to hurt you, but I’m not going to just stand here.”
“My dear boy, that is exactly what you’re going to do.” The good doctor’s eyes fla
red orange, and I felt a wave of something crash against the surface of my mind. It was so strong that it nearly staggered me, but I ground my teeth and resisted. Only one being had ever successfully compelled me, and this guy was not in Aphrodite’s weight class.
The good doctor nodded as he regarded me. “Of course, a veil child.”
“Caulborn,” I said.
He waved a hand. “Semantics.” He drew in a breath. “I would have appreciated it if Orcus had informed me of this, we could have gotten down to business much sooner. Now then, Gaston.” He snapped his fingers, and another demon who looked like the brute that had brought me here, save that he was also dressed in a white lab coat, appeared in a puff of black smoke. “Kindly hold Mr. Corinthos so that I might make an accurate diagnosis.”
The brute moved faster than a creature its size had any right to, and mere moments later, it was holding me with my arms out to either side so that I was facing the good doctor. Gaston’s hands were so big they swallowed my own and went halfway up my forearms. Struggling against his grip was like struggling against concrete. “Now then,” the good doctor said, “if you resist, if you try to run, if you attempt any foolishness or chicanery, I will have Gaston tear your arms off and then beat you about the head with them. Are we clear, Mr. Corinthos?”
I wasn’t about to give up, but I needed more time to figure a way out of this. Gaston was grinding the chronometer the Tempus had given me into my wrist, and I couldn’t manipulate tachyon hands-free while I was wearing it. No portals, fire doesn’t help, invisibility won’t work. Hey, wait a second.
I tapped my followers’ faith and radiated purple holy light, hoping to scald Gaston so I could get away. Instead, the good doctor just slapped me across the face. “None of that,” he said sternly. “It seems the first thing you need to learn, Vincent Corinthos, is that there’s only one kind of holy light that matters to the Pit, and you aren’t the one capable of radiating it.” Without taking his eyes off me, he raised his head and said, “Now then, Scathiks, are you still loitering around here somewhere?”
“Yes, sir,” the little demon said, appearing with a pop.
“Excellent. With Gaston’s hands occupied, I require someone else to transcribe my observations of Vincent Corinthos.” He raised an eyebrow at the little demon. “You can read and write, I presume?”
“Sure’n I can, in five languages as a matter of fact,” Scathiks said, puffing out his chest.
“Infernal will be sufficient,” the good doctor said.
“Course, sir, course.” Scathiks conjured a pad of paper and a pencil from thin air, licked the tip of the pencil with his forked tongue, and looked expectantly at the good doctor.
“Very well then. Examination of patient Vincent Corinthos. Half-human, half-deity, five-foot-nine, approximately ten stones.”
“Stones? Seriously, you guys measure weight in stones?” For some reason, the thought of using this archaic form of measurement struck me as hilarious. The good doctor looked nonplussed at my amusement. “No, really. I expected you to use kilograms. Didn’t Grandpa Simpson say that metric was the left hand of the devil?”
“Gaston, silence the patient.”
A tentacle-like appendage swung into my field of vision and clamped down across my mouth. Evidently, Gaston could star as an extra in a bad hentai movie. Lovely. The tentacle was slimy and covered in some sort of mucus that burned my skin. Imagine having a giant gummy worm made of blood and snot pressed against your face, and that’s pretty close to what this felt like.
The good doctor tapped his spectacles, and the lenses changed from clear to blue. “Now then, let’s see what we have.” He pursed his lips. “My, my, a half-god who actually gains powers from his followers. I haven’t seen anyone like this in millennia. Several innate traits as well. Healing. Apertus energy. We’ll have to do something about that. And… hmm… temporal manipulation. You are quite the interesting specimen, Vincent Corinthos. Scathiks, note that we’ll need to remove the faith-based abilities from him and craft appropriate runic brands to dampen or negate his innate talents. Would you be a good man and tell Carthos to be on standby? I daresay he’s going to have quite a bit of fun marking your skin up, Vincent.”
Scathiks vanished in a puff of black smoke and reappeared just a moment later. “He’s preparing what he needs now, sir,” the little demon chirped. “Says you just need to say the word.” With that, Scathiks resummoned his pencil, licked the tip again, and raised his eyebrows at the good doctor.
“Wonderful. Now then, Scathiks, I shall describe what I am removing from the patient. Do make sure that you capture my dictation accurately.”
And with that, he plunged his claws into my chest.
Chapter 3
The burning agony that ripped through me as the good doctor rummaged around in my insides was a thousand times worse than what had happened with Carmilla. When Carmilla had done it, she was just slicing up my intestines. The good doctor was somehow shredding parts of my very soul. I tried to scream, but almost no sound came out against Gaston’s tentacle. I tried to thrash, to fight, but Gaston held me in place as if I were a toddler. The good doctor merely glared at me. Jesus, why was I calling him the “good doctor”? That moniker put this asshole in the same league as Doc Ryan. No, this demon was the bad doctor, the asshat doctor, the douche canoe doctor.
“Fighting makes this take much longer, Vincent Corinthos, and only prolongs your suffering. I am a professional, and do not indulge in the sadistic tendencies of my brethren, but if you wish to torment yourself, by all means, keep struggling.”
My body convulsed as the shitweasel doctor ripped something free of my chest. He was holding a writhing outline of a man, almost a silhouette, made entirely of flames. “Scathiks, note that the first faith-based gift removed was an elemental fire imbuement.” The dickhead doctor tossed this fiery specter over his shoulder like a discarded candy wrapper. It dissipated into nothingness as he plunged his hand back into my chest. This time, when his hand came away, I couldn’t see anything, though I’d felt him pull something else out of me. “Second faith-based gift was an invisibility imbuement.” This was also thrown over his shoulder. The third time, whatever he was drawing from me was putting up a fight. When he finally wrenched his hand free of my chest, he was holding a spectral dragon by the throat. The dragon filled the room, thrashing, its mouth open in a silent roar. I got the impression it would be belching forth columns of hellfire if it could. I felt Gaston draw back a little, but the dumbass doctor just looked interested. “Ah, now here’s something we don’t see that often. Gift three is draco-transmutus, and a rather potent one at that.” With his free hand he adjusted his spectacles. “It also looks as if this form bequeaths night vision and the ability to heal others. Convenient. What manner of creatures gave you these powers, Vincent Corinthos?”
Even if Gaston’s tentacle hadn’t been wrapped around my face, I couldn’t have answered the question. A cold hole had opened in my chest, ten thousand times emptier than what had happened when I’d lost the Urisk. I’d voluntarily given them up as followers, transferred their faith and powers to Lotholio. This was a theft, a shredding of a part of my soul. It felt as if my spirit was curling in on itself, trying to vanish. The shitgibbon doctor merely shrugged when I didn’t reply and let go of the spectral dragon, which faded from view a moment later. “Now then,” he continued, “those were your faith imbuements. They have been irrevocably taken from you, and you cannot get them back. Next, any innate gifts you possess will be repressed. We will begin on that as soon as Carthos — ah, here he is now.”
Another demon, this one about a foot taller than me with blue skin and a pair of broken horns sticking out from the sides of his head appeared in a puff of gray smoke. “Afternoon, Doctor,” he said, giving the other demon a nod.
“As always, Carthos, your timing is impeccable.” He gestured to me a
nd said, “This is the new resident who needs your craft.”
I slumped back against Gaston’s bulk as Carthos approached. The tentacle that had been gagging me slid away as the blue demon took my chin in his hand and turned my head back and forth. The pain from earlier made it hard to focus on Carthos’s face, despite that it was only inches from my own. His skin was pocked with acne scars, which surprised me on a couple of levels. One, that demons could get acne, and two, that it seemed Clearasil wasn’t available down here. Carthos’s eyes had black sclerae and white pupils, giving the impression that I was looking into a photographic negative as I tried to make eye contact with him.
“Mmm. Apertus energy,” he said. “That’s always a bear to suppress. And” — he turned to the douchenozzle doctor — “is that temporal manipulation?” The evil doctor nodded, and Carthos licked his lips. “Well then, it’ll be a pleasure to put this one out of commission,” he said, gesturing at me. “Okay, apertus energy first.” Carthos conjured a branding iron from thin air and held its tip inches from my nose. Its head began changing, twisting itself into a shape that sort of looked like a keyhole with a letter X drawn through it. When he was satisfied with its shape, the iron glowed painfully bright, and I tried to pull away, but Gaston’s tentacle stretched around my head again, preventing me from moving at all. Carthos’s free hand tore open my shirt and then grabbed me by the throat as he jammed the iron against my chest.
I lost count of the number of times Carthos branded me. When he was done, the iron’s head transformed into something like an hourglass, again with the X drawn through it. This branding went on even longer, over and over again, until my nose had become so accustomed to the scent of my own burning flesh that I couldn’t smell it anymore. Finally, Carthos stepped back, iron resting on his shoulder, a look of confusion on his face. “Doctor, I’m sure I’ve burned him enough to suppress his time powers, but I can still see them.”
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