Chapter 28: Calamity For The Finite.


    The Face Eater had been the most fearsome monster Nero had ever had the displeasure of crossing paths with in all of Hell. It sunk fear into his gut like the talons of a vulture and merely the thought of it still made his heart drop and his stomach sink.


    He’d let himself think, at least for while, that creature would be the greatest animal that Nero would ever be faced with in Hell.


    He had not even considered the beast that was the absolute banality of travel.


    “Ughhhh.” He groaned and Selvas glared at him from her mount, as if daring him to say something.


    “It’s only been a week, shut up.” She told him, cold, stern.


    “A week is fucking insane.” He explained. They were riding fresteeds, a mount that was unique to hell and quite appropriate for travel. Appropriate enough that their weeks-long journey had become only one. How nice of the former Chieftain to leave two lying around in death then.


    It was shaped like a horse, which allowed Nero to adjust to riding the thing quickly as he’d taken horse riding lessons back on earth. But it was different in its own ways too, its face was long, like that of an anteater, black horns protruded from its head and it had a forked tongue like that of a serpent.


    “My father used to tell me stories of how you rode flying metal contraptions across the oceans.” Selvas said and he could see her try to imagine how being forced to travel by animal would measure in comparison to that.


    She looked at him differently now that his identity as the Light Breather was known and Nero couldn’t decide if it was a good or a bad thing. “Planes, yes, we could get from anywhere on the planet to another within a day.”


    Selvas nodded, intrigued, curiosity certainly piqued. “Yes, I’ve looked into the engineering of that in my spare time, from the way it’s described, my guess is you''d need a constant propellant.” Selvas said.


    Ember looked puzzled as they spoke, like they might as well be using a different language.


    “I was never particularly knowledgeable in aerodynamics but I believe it’s all in the wings.” Nero frowned, trying to recall half remembered books and assimilate them into how he might go about working a plane intuitively. “Air moves faster above the wings than below, that creates pressure which forces it upward.”


    “Why would air do that?” Selvas asked, eyes narrowing as if demanding an answer from the wind itself.


    Nero found himself without many answers as well. He shrugged. “Sadly, not my field.” He really did wish he could help, Selvas had a mind on her, she would have definitely been an engineering phenom were she born on earth and not in damnation.


    “What did you do in the physical world?” Selvas asked, and the question was like a gut punch.


    Lie, steal, deceive, manipulate, kill.


    He couldn’t tell her the truth, but he’d resolved not to lie to Selvas. “ I’d rather not talk about it.” He said, words perhaps sharper than he would have preferred.


    Selvas nodded, looked at Nero as if waiting to see if he might continue with more conversation and nudged her fresteed ahead when he didn’t. It made a soft hissing sound, then obeyed.


    Nero watched her go all while feeling a fool.


    They hadn’t spoken- well, spoken properly- since she kissed him on the cheek..


    Since then it had all been fights to the death, a crazy Demon, and now protecting Stradale from an invasion. It made sense then that her priorities were elsewhere, but for a moment there, she’d actually began to engage him, for a moment there it felt like they were off for just another hunt. And then he’d shut it all down by proving that he had even more secrets to keep.


    “Wow Nero, you’re really bad with girls.” Ember chimed, in, circling his head like an annoying fly.


    “Other people can see you now, can’t you go bother them instead?” Nero rolled his eyes and stifled the grin that threatened to sprout at seeing Ember filled with light again.


    “Well, the only other person I could bother here is Selvas, and I actually like her.” She explained cheerfully.


    He chuckled at that and set his eyes back on the woman. “I guess you and I have that in common.”


    He ran his hand along the fresteed’s neck, the creatures didn’t have hair like horses but scales, pitch black like night and hard like rock. It felt oddly disconcerting to be on one, so similar to something he was familiar too, yet so impossibly different as well.


    Nero looked up into the purple skies above.


    What even was this place? Hell, yes, but no hell that he was familiar with. It was a mirrored reflection of everything he knew about earth, in the place of lakes of sulphur and brimstone was a society, one twisted indescribably by Demons and monsters, but one that felt just real enough for its failings to be all that more crushing.


    Perhaps it was the only Hell for someone like him, what better way to punish someone who trampled on the weak in society like they were dirt, than to make him the dirt itself?


    And yet he was given power in it, power that he did not deserve, power that set him right amid a conflict between man and monster.


    Perhaps that was Hell’s punishment to them.


    Nero idly thumbed the sheathe by his side, he was still getting used to the weight. Within it was Cain''s sword, she’d given it to him right before they’d left, said something about how it was forged by a runesmith in Miluina and that if he didn’t take care of it do something unholy to his testicles when he returned.


    Nero had no intention of testing the woman, because, frankly, she scared him. She scared him before it was common knowledge that he was the Light Breather, and now it felt like every moment with her was one he had to endure with a noose fastened around his neck.


    She looked at him like she was deciding whether to let him walk off or impale him through the heart right then and there, and she would not hesitate at either action.


    Speaking of Cain.


    A memory exploded into his mind.


    He nudged his fresteed forwards and the creature galloped all the way to Selvas and stopped beside the woman at a gentle nudge on the reins.


    If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    “Why did Cain look concerned when you mentioned Dolore?” Nero asked. He liked to leave most things Cain untouched as the woman probably had secrets she would kill to protect, and Nero had no business finding out which those were. However, this time, he was heading straight for the mystery in question.


    Selvas turned to meet his eyes upon his question. If there was any annoyance lingering from their previous interaction then she didn’t let it show. “Dolore is the capital city of this region-”


    “This Circle of Hell?” Nero asked and Selvas shook her head.


    “No.” She shook her head. “Just this particular region of Tayalnisyan.”


    “Wait, how large is Tayalnisyan?” He asked, he really should have requested a map or something.


    Selvas shrugged. “Size, I can’t say, the maps get less and less detailed the further away from Dolore you get. We’re currently in the Tattered lands, across the sea of supplizio are the Lands of Burden. It gets less and less clear after that, some maps contradict each other, others simply make little sense.”


    Nero nodded. It made sense, he was practically asking a mediaeval human details about details about places that are worlds away.


    This was not the first question about Hell that he’d poked and prodded Selvas about, and it certainly would not be the last. He’d wanted to understand how it was ruled, its politics and the true vastness of it across its various circles.


    He’d gotten answers about many of them, but more answers than he’d have preferred only ended up blooming into new questions.


    All of Hell was ruled by the The Three Faced Monarch Rex Infernus. A Demon King who resided within the ninth circle of Damnation. His instrument of rule was the Circle, a governing body of Demons that maintained the status quo across levels, each village, town, and city was required by law to pay taxes to them. But they were rarely actually present, and much of the ruling affairs were dealt with by the cities in the region.


    Selvas had recalled seeing an agent of the Circle once in her lifetime, and it was in the aftermath of a squashed rebellion.


    The images she described made him sick to recollect.


    Mercury, he knew, would be another agent of the circle.


    He still hadn’t talked about exactly how he got to Stradale with anyone yet. There was the guilt of the decisions he made that left him refusing to visit that memory, and attached to it was the recollection of just how helpless he had been.


    In terms of details about the circles of Hell itself, Nero got very little. Selvas told him she’d never been beyond Limbo, and if anyone had it would be Cain. What she did know was that the defining features of cities were their Hell Gates, portals which could be used to descend from one circle to the next if a person was carrying one of the required summoning items on them.


    A common summoning item to pass through the Hell Gates that bordered Tayalnisyan and Luxuria was the heart of a Hollow. Ember had told him that it was an incredibly resilient and near-unstoppable, utterly terrifying beast that they’d be better off not facing.


    At the revelation Nero suddenly found himself a little upset.


    He didn’t know why, Nero had no intention of venturing that deep, not just because the thought of leaving Stradale when it was the only home he knew here terrified him, but because he’d also been told that the further down one journeys through the circles, the worse things became for them.


    A soft tap on the ribs, where the Face Eater had hit him, reminded Nero that things were in fact bad enough. Still, that meant what he was dealing with was a vast empire with tendrils larger than he could even begin to imagine. He was gaining more and more information, but they’d always have the upperhand, and if Mercury ever got wind of a Light Breather saving a town, then his life was ove-


    “You were asking about Dolore.” Selvas cut in.


    Nero winced. “Ah, yes, sorry, I spaced out.”


    “You do that a lot.” She replied calmly. “At least now I know why.”


    Nero smiled. “So, yes, why was Cain weary?”


    “Like I said, it’s a major city of the Tattered lands, home to thirty thousand people, that’s about sixty times the size of Stradale, which means this is where high profile criminals who break the law are sentenced.” Selvas began. “In order to hold them, they created a prison, we know it as the Seal. No one gets out and no one gets in.” She explained. “That means high surveillance across the city, it also means if we get caught trying to recruit a group of outlaws to help us fight against the Circle then we’re being shoved in a hole and never seeing daylight.”


    “That would not be very nice.” Ember noted.


    “No, no it would not.” The woman replied.


    Nero felt himself gripping the reigns of his mount tighter, his stomach churned and he suddenly felt queasy.


    “That means you should find a way to hide yourself.” He said, pointedly looking at Ember. They’d tried to see if she could hide from other people and only show herself to him, but that didn’t work. It would have been too convenient and Hell probably had a policy against that or something.


    “An Imp won’t attract too much attention, they’re often seen soul forged to a magic user, Ember could probably pass as a Fire Imp but it’s better to be safe than sorry.” Selvas said.


    Nero considered asking her to elaborate on that but decided that they had more important things to focus on. “You’ll hide in my clothes.” He told Ember.


    “But it’s smelly and stuffy down there.” Ember whined.


    Nero frowned. “Can you even smell or feel heat?”


    “I can pretend to!” She shot back and zipped away as a streak of golden light in a tantrum.


    Nero sighed and Selvas snorted.


    “You’re terrible with children.” She noted.


    “Thankfully it’s just children.” He sighed


    The rest of the trek continued with few events in-between. Like always they ate what they hunted, and Nero noted that he had gotten so used to Hell cuisine that he was barely tasting the pungent sulphur that lurked within its fauna.


    Soon enough they could see Dolore, its tallest peaks emerged from the landscape like a great beast, reaching angrily for the purple skies and sister moons.


    As they ventured closer, they saw more and more of the city, it was surrounded by a wall that practically drank light, so black in colour that it seemed to to be made of ink solidified.


    Very few buildings rose above those walls, very few save from one tower, it too was wreathed in the same darkness that the walls were.


    Selvas identified that as the Seal and Nero made a mental note not to even so much as breathe near anything that might send him there.


    And then he remembered that the entire purpose of his meeting here was to employ incredibly famous outlaws to help him stage a rebellion against the ruling class of this world.


    Well, fuck me.


    At the base of the city was a long line of men, a thousand and a half maybe. some on fresteeds, most on foot. They all spilled out in a long line, like a colony of ants in search of food.


    As they got closer, Nero’s blood grew colder and colder. White armour. Not all of them wore it, but many did, perhaps forty to sixty, most were not, but many, far too many, looked like the bastards who’d slaughtered the inquisition.


    And then there were the ones in red armor, five in number, and all sat atop pitch black fresteeds. Crimsons. Hand-picked, hand-trained human Mighty whose title was synonymous with the Demons’s authority.


    Nero’s mind was moving out of step with his heart. Every single fibre of him wanted to flee, wanted to grab onto the reins and dash into the trees.


    But I have to know.


    Nero urged his steed forwards and raced through the cursed lands of Damnation. The hot wind blew on his face, roaring behind his ears like a wailing beast, and yet… and yet it was not even half as loud as the beating of his heart.


    Selvas shouted after him, then so did Ember, he ignored them both.


    He stopped once he was in front of the army, at a distance where he could now see the hue in the eyes of what were once tiny men.


    The unarmored soldiers-because that was who he approached, not the men in plate- were immediately on high alert at the sudden appearance of a stranger.


    They probably thought him an enemy, or a danger of sorts. Nero was all those things, but above all else, he was a liar.


    “Don’t tell me there’s another war.” He wore his panic out in the open and let his words obscure the source


    The men eased at his words, no more twitchy fingers on sheathed weapons. Nero noticed that their weapons lacked the runes that had become rather characteristic of Hell’s Mighty. In fact they carried shabby quilts and rusted armor.


    Perhaps they were not Mighty, but common serfs levied into battle. It made sense, an average Mighty was as fit as a human could be in all things a human could possibly be fit at, and yet if you throw even just twenty regular men at them they’d be swarmed and killed.


    One snorted. “Don’t worry about it friend, we’re all coming back home after this is done.”


    Nero half chuckled. “What do you mean?”


    “Some idiot town.” The first man said laughing. “Decided to stage a rebellion, always a quick battle when that happens.”


    Well, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shitty, shit, shit.


    Nero smiled pleasantly.


    “Well good luck then.” He said, and rode away.


    It was then that Selvas caught up with him, purple eyes burning with a cocktail of confusion, rage and concern. “What the fuck was that?” She demanded.


    “Nothing good,” Nero replied, voice sounding as hollow as a rotten tree. “Nothing good at all.”