by Eric Vall
But that wasn’t even close to the worst part.
No, the worst part was the creatures who dined on their flesh.
Around each Shade were several harpies. Each of them had the face of a different woman, with different colors of hair and varying degrees of beauty. What they all had in common, however, were their bodies. The harpies’ torsos were naked human women, though none of them looked attractive in the least. Where their arms would normally be, they all had large, black, feathered wings nearly three times the size of their bodies and that folded up like a hawk’s when they weren’t in motion. The creatures’ lower halves were equally as avian, as they had a squared-off tail and two long, yellow legs with raptor-like feet and talons at the end.
They tore at the flesh of the Shades with both their spiked teeth and their six-inch talons, and as they did so, they let out the most horrific shrieking noise I’d ever heard.
I didn’t know what was worse, the screaming of the Shades, or the screeching of the harpies. Either way, I wanted to get the fuck out of here.
“Let’s go, guys,” I whispered to the rest of the group, “I don’t think they’ve seen us yet.”
“They can’t see at all,” Eligor explained in a hush, “they navigate based on sound and scent alone. You kinda have to down here in the dark.”
“Even better,” I explained. “There’s no way they can hear us over the screams of their victims, but I don’t wanna take the chance.”
I motioned for my friends to follow me, and then we continued our journey into the second ring.
“I dunno about you guys,” Todd sighed as we approached a large hill, “but this place is like, a total downer for me.”
“I don’t think it’s supposed to be anything else,” I mused as we started up a nearby hill, “this is the place where suicides end up. Of course, it’s gonna be dark as fuck.”
“I’m just wondering why Abaddon is so scared of this place,” Eligor pondered aloud. “Everything we’ve encountered down here so far has either been simple to sneak past, or hasn’t even bothered to look our way. No wonder Gressil and his men got through here so--”
As we came up over the hill, all of us froze in our tracks.
Down in the valley below, there were several small fires that illuminated the landscape more so than anything else we’d seen up to this point.
Bodies of small, goblin-like creatures were scattered all across the valley, many of which appeared to have been torn limb-from-limb. All of them had on scale-mail armor, and the bodies all seemed to have fallen with a weapon in their hands. Another quick glance revealed several small tents, some pots, and holes for a latrine.
This must have been a camp at some point.
“Those are Gressil’s henchmen,” Sia explained. “Or, at least, some of them.”
“They must have had the same idea as Eligor here,” Libidine muttered, “they thought it was safe to camp out in this ring, but something must have come along and really messed up their days.”
“I’ve got a bad feeling that if we stick around, we might find out what it was,” I shuddered, “come on, let’s keep pushing forward before--”
From above, there was a sudden, ear-piercing shriek, and I looked up quickly to see a harpy darting straight toward us with pure rage on its face.
I tossed up a shield of purple Hellfire in front of the monster, and it slammed into it at breakneck speed.
Quite literally. As the harpy struck the barrier, its head twisted at an awkward angle with a loud crack, and then its body fell to the ground, limp.
Then the world went silent. All of the harpies had stopped shrieking, and the pure, alarming quietness of the world made my skin crawl.
“Oh no … ” Eclipse gasped as she stared up at the sky and summoned black Hellfire into her hands. “Guys, you’re gonna want to see this!”
I flipped around to face the direction Eclipse was, and my heart sank down into my chest.
The sound of beating wings filled the air around us, and I saw hundreds, if not thousands, of beady, glowing eyes in the sky.
It was an army of harpies, and we must have just accidentally rang their dinner bell.
Chapter 15
“How the fuck did they know we were here?” I hissed as quietly as I could and summoned purple and green Hellfire into my hands. “I thought they could only navigate by sound and smell?”
“A colony of harpies is like a hive mind,” Sia explained, “you kill one of them, and they’re all going to know about it.”
“Well, brace yourselves,” I announced to all of my friends as I clapped my hands together and combined the two shades of fire in my hands, “because things are about to get a lot more interesting.”
I threw up three walls of green-violet flames around our position just as the harpies began to strike. The air was filled with horrific shrieks as they hit the shield and disappeared through its glow.
However, I wasn’t sending them out the sides or to another part of the battlefield.
No, I made the harpies shoot straight back up through the same spot they entered. Right back into the path of their incoming brethren.
The shrieks turned into painful yelps as the harpies collided and went skittering off in all directions. A few of them struck each other so hard, they went limp and fell out of the sky.
“Good thinking,” Eligor noted, “but even with this shield around us, we’re only at a standstill. The harpies might be of a hive mind, but they aren’t stupid. They’ll figure out what’s happening soon enough, and then we’ll have to think of another move.”
“First things first,” I said as I looked around the dark landscape, “we need to get some more visibility out here, or we’re gonna be fighting blind.”
“Ironic,” Eclipse muttered.
“Could Firecracker over here just give us all a boost?” Todd suggested. “That would make our fire go from little spittle to full on gushing geyser.”
“That’d still only give us a few more feet of visibility,” I explained, “what we need is to light up the whole sky … ”
“I have an idea,” Libidine suggested, “but it’s kinda macabre.”
“Again with the Macaws,” Todd interjected, “you guys keep talking about ‘em, but I’ve yet to see one down here.”
“I’m open to anything at this point,” I growled as I tried to hold onto my spell.
“You know those horrific trees?” Liby suggested. “The ones with all the people on them?”
“Those are basically giant sticks of dry wood!” Eligor gasped.
“Exactly,” the Sister of Lust continued, “all we have to do is light them on fire, and they’ll act as giant torches. Of course, that also means the Shades are gonna get burned, too.”
“Jesus, that is macabre,” I agreed, “but it just might work. Get ready to move!”
I looked around at all of my friends and gave them the signal, and then we all took off running back down the hill with my shields still activated.
The harpies must have caught on to what was happening with my spell, because they stopped their assault immediately. The grisly creatures floated in the air as they stared down at us with their glowing, human eyes, and they followed us as we ran back toward the giant tree.
When we finally arrived back at the trunk of the suicide tree, I decast the green from my hand and replaced it with a ball of red Hellfire. Then I slammed my glowing fist into the violet shield and watched as the incendiary flames slowly crawled around its borders. Once my barrier was completely covered with the deadly fire, I scooted over, pressed the left side against the tree, and then observed as the bark caught fire.
The red flames danced up the tree gracefully and, within seconds, the entire thing was on fire.
The sound of the Shades screaming in agony was nearly unbearable, but I could find solace in the fact that they would be fine when all was said and done. All that mattered was the battlefield was illuminated, and that was exactly what had happened.
<
br /> “There’s another one over there!” Libidine called out and pointed across the landscape.
We ran over to the second tree, set it on fire, and then moved on to the next one we could find. When all was said and done, we had set fire to ten trees, all of which were lined up in a giant circle.
More importantly, we could finally see everything around us.
“There are a looot more of those hags than I thought, bro.” Todd shuddered as he looked up at the harpies in the sky. “Normally, being surrounded by a bunch of topless women would be a dream come true for the Toddster. Like, literally I had this dream the other night. Totally ruined my sheets and everything. But, like, do these things have human parts down there, or bird? I’m all for free demon-on-demon love, but fucking a literal duck is no bueno, bro. And the mouth is outta the question. With those teeth, one wrong move, and your banana is split!”
“We can talk about harpy anatomy later, bro,” I reminded the imp, “right now, we need to kill these fucking things.”
“There’s way too many of them to outright kill,” Sia observed, “they’ll overwhelm us in minutes.”
“Not if we find the Borg Queen, Strawberry Shortcake,” Todd corrected.
“The what?”
“The Borg Queen,” Todd reiterated with a deep sigh, “am I the only one who watches Star Trek around here? You said these saggy-titted monstrosities were like a hive, right? Where they all follow one leader?”
“I think I know where he’s going with this,” I agreed. “We need to find the head harpy and kill her. That’s the only way we’re going to make it out of this alive. How do we know which one is the leader?”
“Oh, you’ll know the Harpy Queen when you see her,” Eligor explained, “she’s quite distinctive.”
“So, now what?” Gula protested. “Do we just sit here playing ‘I Spy’ until we find her?”
“Not a chance,” I announced. “You know me, Gula. I’m never one to just sit around and wait. We take out as many of them as we possibly can, and maybe that will draw the queen out. Once she sees we’re killing so many of her precious subjects, she’ll probably want to deal with us herself.”
“Bold strategy, cotton,” Todd giggled, “let’s see how it plays out.”
“Be ready to go on the offensive as soon as I give the signal,” I announced. “Three … two … ”
Before I could finish, emerald flames lit up the sky. Two of the harpies nearest to our shield were engulfed by green Hellfire and then tossed directly into the flaming tree.
They squawked and screamed as their flesh melted from their bones, and their feathers were turned to little more than ash until finally, both of them fell to the ground, dead.
The other harpies looked down at their fallen comrades in horror, but then their eyes turned back to us as they let out an inhuman hiss of rage.
“Oopsie,” Libidine giggled, “I guess I jumped the gun.”
“Go!” I commanded, and then I decast my protective spell and drew the Unhallowed Sword from its sheath.
The harpies didn’t waste a moment. They swooped down on us the second the shield was removed, and the area around me was lit up by flashes of different colored Hellfire.
I spun around and lopped off the head of my first attacker with the sword. Without halting my momentum, I tossed a handful of yellow shuriken into the crowd of monsters and then ducked down as their bodies tumbled past my position. As I came up, I tossed out a quick shield of purple to deflect the incoming talons of a harpy, and then I stabbed it through the gut with my blade. It writhed in agony as its blood splashed out onto my breastplate, and then I finished it off by evaporating its head with a shot of red flames.
Before I could reorient myself, I had to knock away another blow with a cast of purple. Then I summoned silver Hellfire into my hand, threw it around the metal ball on my belt, and ordered it to liquify. I transformed the liquified metal into a large, pointed javelin and then launched its tip forward. The weapon skewered at least six harpies, which I then finished off with a cast of yellow fire.
I liquified my weapon again and called it back to my belt as I tumbled forward out of the way of another incoming harpy. When I sprang up, I saw I was now standing next to Eclipse.
The armored succubus was fending off harpies with both ends of her naginata. She lopped off body parts of her attackers before she spun around and struck them with the blunt end of her weapon.
“Why don’t you just suck the light from their eyes?” I asked in a huff as I sliced down another creature.
“They’re already blind!” Eclipse retorted. “There’s not much more I can do on that front. But there is something I can do. Gula! Can you boost me?”
“On it!” I heard the Sister of Gluttony call out from somewhere in the chaos.
Suddenly, the biggest fireball I’d ever seen came rocketing through the crowd, incinerating every single harpy that found itself in its path. Immediately after came a beam of brown Hellfire that surrounded Eclipse in its glow and took her power levels up a notch.
The tattooed succubus called forth her black Hellfire, spun around, and then launched a massive, floating ball of black flames into the air.
“You might wanna hold yourself down!” she exclaimed as she summoned forth her wings.
I blasted a few harpies with red Hellfire before I switched to silver. I liquified the ball on my belt, turned it into two small metal straps, and then tossed them down around my feet and into the ground.
Eclipse’s flames began to swirl, and then they turned into a miniature black hole in the sky.
The harpies flapped their wings frantically as they tried to escape its gravitational pull, but it was no use. The monsters were yanked out of the sky and sucked into the abyss with a squawk and a puff of black Hellfire.
Eclipse beat her wings heavily in a backward motion as she held her position, and I felt myself being pulled toward the black hole, too.
Thankfully, the metal spikes around my feet were enough to keep me from moving.
Finally, after about fifty harpies had been taken out, Eclipse decast her spell and let out a sigh.
“How’s that for crowd control?” she mused with a giggle.
Suddenly, a handful of yellow daggers zipped past our position and took down a bunch more harpies in the sky.
“Not bad,” Libidine purred as she threw down a few scatter shots of yellow daggers into the ground, “but watch the master do her work.”
Liby zipped past the two of us, shot up into the sky, and unleashed a slew of yellow daggers into the crowd of harpies. The enchanted spears seemed to miss their mark as they entered the crowd of harpies and flew past them harmlessly.
Or at least, that was what Libidine wanted them to think.
Then the Sister of Lust snapped her fingers, and the yellow daggers exploded like grenades. The resulting shockwave knocked the harpies out of the sky, where they were promptly impaled by the glowing skewers on the ground.
Suddenly, the ground underneath the shish kabobbed harpies began to glow with light green Hellfire, and then giant tendrils of brimstone rose out of the ground, with spikes still attached. The tendrils violently lashed out at the harpies in the air, and there were several splashes of dark red blood as the foul monsters were stabbed and bludgeoned to death.
Eligor flipped over in front of us as she stabbed a harpy through the forehead and then tossed it to the side like it was nothing. She then twirled around, sliced off another creature’s wing, and kicked it out of her way with her boot. All the while, she continued to hold her elemental spell.
“Holy fuck, Jakey,” Todd called out as he flew past me and blasted a few more harpies, “what are the chances you decided to roll with all the crowd-control ladies today?”
“Pretty high,” I chuckled as I shot another attacker down, “it’s almost like I thought we might encounter large groups of enemies!”
I brought down my sword directly into the head of an incoming harpy and split
her skull directly in half. Her tongue flopped out of her mouth as I watched her twitch and writhe, but then I pushed her off my weapon with my foot.
“Has anyone seen Sister Superbia?” Eclipse asked as she sliced a harpy in half. “I hope she’s doing okay.”
“Oh, I think she’s doing fine,” Gula cackled as she rolled over to our position, got up on her knees, and took out an opponent with an uppercut swing of her axe. “But you can totally ask her yourself.”
A beam of black Hellfire struck a small group of harpies in front of us, and they shrieked as they tried to escape the magic prison. However, it was no use. Their already old faces began to wither away as the skin sagged off their faces, and their feathers began to fall out in massive clumps.
Within a few seconds, they were nothing but dried up corpses.
“You were asking about me?” Sia mused.
“I was just worried,” I grunted as I gave another harpy a third hole in her head, “that’s all. Has anyone found the queen yet?”
“That’s a negatory, Jakey,” Todd announced from behind me, “but it’s not for lack of trying. All these things look the same to me, bro.”
“Then you haven’t found the queen yet,” Eligor confirmed. “She’s probably … Aha! Jacob, we’ve got some company!”
I knocked away the talons of a harpy and then turned my attention to the sky.
Above us fluttered a harpy at least double the size of the regular ones. This thing had similar features, but had a robust, round face and a neck whose skin drooped down inches below where it should be held. The monster’s exposed breasts were wrinkly and lopsided, yet somehow still completely shriveled up, and the beating of her wings nearly knocked me off my feet as she slowly descended.
This was definitely the Harpy Queen.
The queen let out a gurgled screech and then lashed out at us with her giant talons.
I parried the attack with the Unhallowed Sword, spun around, and then lodged the tip of my blade firmly into her side.