by Lanie Olson
“She left a little something for me I see,” he said mysteriously.
“What do you mean?” I asked as I stretched my new wings, getting ready to take us up to the Eight Realm again.
“You have our eyes still,” he whispered.
“Is that why this place looks so uninviting suddenly?” I asked with a laugh as I glanced around.
“Now you see what we’ve been dealing with,” he replied dryly.
I laughed and gave him a shove.
“Thank you my little love,” I said rubbing my belling causing her to move with happiness.
“Come on,” I said getting behind Deveraux and gripping him by the sides, “We have to go get everyone and head back to the Western Province. Keilyn showed me who the betrayer is.”
Twenty-Four
The angels were still trying to get used to me having the eyes of the enemy more than the fact that I was swollen with the child of one.
I thought it was amusing.
Maybe it was because they couldn’t see Keilyn and they could see my eyes.
Before we had left the Above I had Deveraux speak to Arissa and Hadrian. I wanted them to know that they weren’t in any danger. Of course he had to do it his own way, to let them know that what he did was for their own good, even if he might have slightly overdone it.
We reached the Western Province in no time. But as Isaiah had said, it looked like a war had been waged in the time that we were all gone. The iron, wrought gates had been knocked down and the small village and even Deveraux’s home looked like they had been leveled by a small Earthquake.
“Hmph,” he said with a smirk.
I knew he didn’t care really for what happened here. I didn’t think him to be a material kind of devil, and as an Elder he’d just have to think it and it would be rebuilt again.
Arissa came over and stood by me protectively.
“Master Deveraux, I don’t want to step out of my place, but we need to remove Lady Lucy. Now,” she said almost in a panic.
“What do you see?” he asked her.
“The Betrayer. He knows we’re here, he knows Lady Lucy is swollen with your child. Master, please! He wants to kill them both. He’s ... he’s killed the Elder of the Eastern Province and means to do the same with you. Let the angels take her away, please! He’s knows we’re here,” she finished frantically.
Dorian put a hand on Arissa’s shoulder, “No harm will come to anyone here. I swear it on my life. I am sworn to protect Lucy and I will do the same for her groom,” he said in his deep voice. “Though you may not ask for my help, I will gladly give you my strength,” he said to Dev.
“Thank you Dorian. We will work together just fine. Are there any here, who do not wish to stay? You will not be disgraced, but I ask you to leave,” he said to the group.
Arissa was crying hysterically and Hadrian had his arms wrapped tightly around her asking her if she wanted to leave, but she shook her head.
“Master Deveraux!” she suddenly shrieked.
“NO!” I shouted knocking Dev out of the way and landing on him.
He grunted as he hit the ground and gently rolled me off. As he stood he brought me up with him and we saw Dorian and a number of the angels had formed a solid circle around us. The devils perched themselves all around the angels. The forces around us were solid and deadly. No one was going to take another cheap shot without having to fight their way through them.
“Ah, the whore angel and the devil return,” an oddly familiar voice said.
I craned my head trying to see past everyone to see who had just spoken.
“There’s no point in your returning with your whore, Deveraux. Braxon is dead and the devils of the Eastern Province now pay homage to me. You’re foolishness will cost you your life,” the voice continued.
Frustrated, I shot up just above Dorian’s head and hovered there. It was Stratus. The devil who had watched me so eerily in the home of Deveraux and the one Arissa had told me reeked of ill intentions. Stratus was the Betrayer. And he was giving me a deadly smile.
“Ahhh, she’s with child. This will be my greatest triumph ever.”
Suddenly he was in the air coming at me in full fury and because I was higher up than everyone else he had such a perfectly clear shot at me. And he would have reached me too if Hadrian and Dorian hadn’t jumped up together and caught him in their grip. The angels and devils parted their protective circle to let Deveraux walk through them and Stratus smiled.
“Such a fool,” he said.
I felt a hand over my mouth and I was struggling against my captor. I had to be careful so that Keilyn wouldn’t be hurt but I could feel her urgency in me escaping whoever had me right now.
“Would you like to know my gift, whore?” A voice whispered in my ear. “It’s to cast illusions of myself. Now hold still, we’re going for a ride,” the real Stratus said as he opened the Earth and we fell fast into the Below.
Twenty-Five
Keilyn saved me from the frost that we first fell through. Shards of ice and a chill worse than the bitter cold was the deadly greeting into the Below. Large icicles came after me like vicious warrior swords, trying desperately to impale me.
Stratus kept a tight grip on me as we fell through another layer; this one made of heavy caverns of mud and sand.
The weight alone would be enough to crush anyone who was unlucky enough to get stuck there.
I closed my eyes, because I didn’t want to see any more of the fall.
Then we landed.
Looking around I saw that we stood in a stalagmite field of stench and death. There was a glowing green river in front of us that forked off in many different directions and a large wooden canoe was sitting, waiting patiently by the shore surrounded by bodies of the damned floating around. Some were dead; others were alive and screaming in pure agony. The dead ones would come to life and gnaw at the ones that still had life as they passed by them.
I saw a man with a large white scraggly beard and dead white eyes standing waiting patiently for us to board the canoe. Stratus dragged me toward him and I fought with everything that I had inside of me to stay away from the boat. I knew who that was even though Stratus couldn’t see him for what he was.
I knew that was Death.
Picking me up he threw me into the canoe and Death in the form of this old Ferryman looked down at me with his dead, accusing eyes. Stratus boarded the canoe and told the Ferryman to take us to the Ninth Passage and threw coins on the deck.
Death looked down at the fare, and then began to turn the canoe in the direction of the forks, when suddenly I heard a loud trumpet blare on the Earth and just like that, he disappeared.
I wasn’t sure at first what happened.
I knew that in the Below, time moved faster than it did in the Above. From what was explained to me it was to increase the punishments to their highest potential.
Stratus was desperate to get us to the forks, so he grabbed Death’s oar and began to paddle through the green river, careful to keep his body away from the boat edges, so that he wouldn’t be snatched in. I lay on the bottom of the canoe, my hand on my stomach, my mind desperately screaming out for Deveraux.
Oh please, Dev! Please be able to hear me! He’s taking us down the third fork to the left!
I closed my eyes and shook at the sounds of torment and anguish as he paddled us slowly down the dark tunnel.
I could feel the heat emanating off the walls and my curiosity took over.
The walls were covered in rubies and yellow diamonds that would melt into molten lava every time one of the damned would try to touch one.
“Greedy, bastards,” Stratus mumbled, as he paddled through.
This must have been the torment for the Greedy; putting such precious jewels in front of them that are priceless to see if they can curb their Greed.
Obviously those that were in this tunnel were not passing the test and kept being recycled in the glowing green river after they melted. Seeing one
of these many torments was doing something odd to me. Half of me felt almost like I was enjoying the suffering while the other half of me wanted to jump into the river and save as many of them as I could.
Inside my belly, I could feel Keilyn shaking in fear. She’d never seen the Below before from what I could tell. Because she was half me and half Deveraux, she was having my feelings as well, only it seemed that she was more frightened than I was.
Don’t be afraid, Keilyn. I won’t let anything happen to you. Your father will be here soon, I whispered to her internally as I rubbed my belly again to comfort her.
The bright sparkle of the rubies and diamonds dimmed as Stratus took us around another bend. Oh God; the unspeakable sounds of despair and anguish were physically killing the angelic part of me. I wasn’t born to feel such anguish and endure such sounds and I could feel myself dying because of it.
I knew now that the only thing that was keeping me alive in the Below was Keilyn. I was desperate for Deveraux to find us, because she was still only a child and wouldn’t be able to sustain us both for much longer. I could feel it.
“Lucy?” came the very, very faint echo of someone entering the Below. It was so faint, that I couldn’t tell who it was or even it fit was devil or angel.
Stratus swore under his breath and began to paddle faster toward the sounds that were killing me.
”Wait … please … don’t go that way,” I managed to say with bated breath.
“Quite whore,” he spat back.
“You don’t … under … stand,” I struggled.
He looked down at me exasperated and saw that I was drenched in sweat and that I looked weak.
“Can’t have that,” he mumbled to himself, “I need you alive.”
With one swift motion, he managed to turn the canoe to the right and continue down a different tunnel.
The agonized sounds soon drifted away and I was able to regain some form of strength.
“Lucy, where are you?!” came another distant shout.
“Deep breath; you’re not going to like this smell,” Stratus said to me with a smirk.
The right tunnel opened into a long room.
As we glided by on the green glowing river, the stench of rotted flesh started to invade my nose.
Covering my mouth, I sat up a bit to look around and saw more of the damned intertwined in each other. They were together like I had been with Deveraux but they were being fused together as they lay together. The stench was the smell of their flesh as it fell off with each thrust or movement.
I could hear their bones grinding together and watched as one pair exploded into dust. An unseen force seemed to blow the dust into the river and another pair who looked terrified took over their place on the table they had been on and began to fornicate.
This had to be the punishment of the Lustful.
This is what’s going to happen to me, I thought with tears in my eyes.
Michael said that I didn’t belong in the Above any longer because I was defiled and this would be my punishment, I just knew it.
As the boat started to drift toward another tunnel, I saw actual demons which were something I had never seen before. They came in on their evil and tattered wings, their tails dragging below them, and using the hooves of their feet to land on the platform to gather the pounds of flesh and bone.
One looked at me and grinned evilly as it shot out of the room into the next tunnel.
“I hate this damn room,” Stratus grumbled as we lazily made our way down the river into a room that looked like it was being lit only by the glow of the river.
Keilyn started to shake terribly deep within me. I rubbed my swollen belly to soothe her and was soon distracted by the sounds of choking and gagging. I looked up at Stratus and saw that he had put a cloth of some sort over his mouth and nose and kept his eyes straight ahead.
I heard the splat of something dropping onto a pile and the hollow echo of bones dropping. I glanced to my left and immediately wished I had done like Stratus and kept my eyes forward. Sitting on the riverbanks were more of the damned. Only these were bloated and venous. They looked like they were ready to explode and I felt myself becoming ill as I realized that the demons from the prior tunnel were forcing them to consume the pounds of flesh and bones from the room of the Lustful.
The punishment of the Gluttonous caused me to start gagging. I could feel myself ready to throw up again and one of the demons sensing this, perched on the edge of the canoe with a wooden bowl underneath me, ready to catch whatever came out of me.
“Get out of here!” Stratus yelled smacking it with the oar.
The demon squawked angrily as he flew back to the ledge and began to force more bile into the mouths of the damned.
“We better hurry, this one is ready to explode,” Stratus stated to himself more than me, as he dug into the river and paddled harder.
I did happen to notice that the further into the Below that we went, the tunnels became longer and looked more like rooms than anything else.
As Stratus paddled us into the next room, I laid flat down on the bottom of the canoe and closed my eyes. I didn’t want to see or know anymore.
Twenty-Six
Deveraux
“I feel like I’m going to be sick,” Zahara grumbled as we started walking through the green river.
“Now you know how we felt up there,” Lorian rebutted as he held onto her tightly, laughing.
I led the pack through the river and used my bind to Lucy to figure out which way Stratus had taken her to. Once I found them I was going to throw him to the demons and let them tear him to pieces so that they could dispense him to the Seven Rooms of Punishment.
“You’re walking too fast, Master Deveraux! The angels are having a hard time keeping up,” Arissa called out behind me.
“Then put them on your backs and carry them,” I commanded. “Lucy and Keilyn are being dragged through the Below without protection from the evil here. I don’t have time to wait or slow down.”
As we reached the fork, I closed my eyes and lifted my head. I would have to use the evil inside me to be able to follow her scent only because there was so much in these rooms, it would be the only way to find her without distraction.
When I opened my eyes, I turned and looked at my family who nodded, and in turn called up the evil inside of them as well. I knew they would do well with the angels; they had survived the Above without the evil and they would need it to keep our new friends safe until we found my Lucy.
“To the left,” I commanded in duality as I lead them to the third tunnel.
“Deveraux,” Hadrian hissed behind me.
I turned and looked at the lot of them sharply when I realized they hadn’t moved.
“Deveraux, the demons will try to kill the angels, how do you want us to proceed when they attack?” he asked in his dual deadly tones.
“We don’t fear the demons,” Micah said loudly from where he sat on Arissa’s back.
“I know you don’t,” I replied, “But they will attack you all. And they will try to tear you apart, or at the very least, take your wings. If you feel yourselves threatened by them, let go of your devil and fall into the river. No harm will come to you if you submerse yourself completely and we will take care of the demons,” I told them as I began to lead the way into the tunnel.
Behind me I heard the shuffling waves of the river as they began to follow me. The first room was going to be the easiest for us to pass through. The angels didn’t know of being greedy so the only thing they would suffer is the urge to save the damned. My devils had strict orders to hold onto them no matter how hard they tried to get away from them to help. Those that were being melted by the fires of Greed deserved it and nothing less.
As we walked through and I heard the angels marveling at the jewels, a small smile crossed my face. They found something in the Below beautiful. That was something to be proud of, but I would have to lose those feelings of pride before we entered that room o
r it would consume me.
“Oh God,” Isaiah yelled as the first wave of the Greedy caught fire and began to melt into the river below us.
“Don’t pity them,” Lorian instructed him as the devils tightened their grips.
“Keep your eyes forward. No matter how badly you want to save them, do not get off your devil’s back,” I directed them.
“But they need our help!” Micah yelled as he began to struggle against Arissa.
I turned and saw the angels fighting my devils and became angry.
“Understand this. If you fall off their backs or attempt to save the damned in anyway, you will be lost forever. I cannot nor will not, bring you back to your former selves. My sole purpose right now is Lucy and I will not stop to save any of you. Stop struggling and hold on tightly because the tunnels will get worse from here.”
“Don’t you care about Keilyn too?” Dorian asked.
I noticed that he seemed to be the most level headed angel so far. He looked straight ahead, refusing to see the damned being punished so they weren’t afflicting him. I also think it was because since he and Lorian were twins and united at one point in the Above that he was able to resist them with his brother’s help.
“I have a theory about her,” I mused as we wandered through the next tunnel.
Lust.
“Close your eyes and cover your ears, my friends. These aren’t things creatures as pure as you should have to see,” I warned them softly as I trudged through the river.
I heard the sounds of their wings as they simultaneously brought them up to shield themselves from the horror of Lust. As I and my devils, waded through the river as quickly as we could to spare the angels, I wondered if this would be the fate that my Lucy would face if I couldn’t save her.
They will have to kill me if they think I would let her suffer like this, I thought in grim silence.
We made our way through Lust quickly and I heard the angels start to gag as we walked into the dimly lit room of Gluttony.