91 - Hell
“You must be the one who defeated the Fifth Son,” the demon spoke up as the atmosphere pulsed with sheer menace. The orbs in the room began to collect together, particularly Vacu and Calor. “I sense him in your soul. Did you kill him?”
Arielle didn’t respond. It was just hitting her what she had done: that she had trapped herself in here with a demon and members of a demonic sect, all of whom would likely kill her if they had the chance.
So, she refused to give them the chance.
She didn’t regret what she had done, and though the demon standing across from her was likely very powerful, despite shielding his level, she didn't plan on losing to him.
Her eyes remained on the glowing substance in his hand.
“Tell me another thing,” he said. “The one you came here for- he got a high dose of the demon blood, the purest we have. How quick were the changes? When did his TE/MP peak? I’d love to know. For some time now, I've only been working with the diluted doses, and only on test subjects that are not so promising."
Test subjects?
He called Elric a test subject in that careless tone?
Ari’s fury spiked, and she sent a blast of fire at him.
Without a single movement from him, the fire disappeared.
The backlash struck her, nearly sending her through the wall.
The demon tutted. "It's very rude to attack someone when they're trying to have a conversation with you."
Ari glared. She then attacked him again, this time with [Earthen Grasp].
Once again, her attack disappeared, and after a second, the backlash struck her in the gut and bowled her over.
At the same time, a magnetic force held down her hand, fusing it to her side.
“We can’t cause a commotion here," he said. "It'll alert the guards, releasing them from the trance I placed them under. I didn’t want them to interrupt. That scream was just for you, and I'd much rather we discuss in private, much more comfortably."
As Arielle analyzed the orbs he’d used to pin her hands down, he released her.
He also snapped his fingers, and the pulse in the atmosphere intensified.
It became like a raucous heartbeat in Ari’s ears, pounding faster and faster, as her environment morphed.
The air shimmered, the room spiraling, distorting sound.
The color bled out into a greyscale, black lines spliced through, rolling away the remains of reality.
It was like a mirage peeled back to reveal where they really were.
Which was a dark mountain, surrounded by a lake of fire.
The ground beneath her feet became black, wet, sharp rocks, scratching her hand. It shook and gurgled like they were on a volcano, and one shard was sharp enough to prick the end of her finger pretty deeply. An ocean of liquid flames surrounded them, bubbling and rushing past with a distant rumble of thunder.
The distance between Ari and the demon expanded, splitting one mountain into two as he moved farther and farther away, stopping right before the edge of the outer darkness, devoid of life.
It looked like they were in hell.
Was this an illusion? It didn't feel like one.
The cloying stench of sulfur and smoke choked the air, accompanied by the faint tang of blood. A river of red ran down his mountain, bleeding into the lake. An ungodly heat scorched in the air, sweat dripping down her face.
She had to wipe twice to keep it from entering her eyes and saw that her hands were stained with dirt and soot.
Were they in a different world? A different dimension?
One of Unmaker’s books had mentioned that he could create pocket dimensions. Could demons do it too?
"Are you enjoying my home?" the demon asked, but another thing caught her eye. Demonic orbs.
Orbs she had never seen before, blood red, silver, greenish-grey, swimming in the atmosphere, forming different shapes.
So this wasn't an illusion then.
If it was an illusion, she doubted that he would bother adding those details. Besides, she didn't find the obvious signs of an illusion spell, although she couldn't exactly tell what the shapes were doing.
“Let me introduce myself,” he said. “I’m the Leviathan, Fourth Son of Mordius, who is the Lord of Sythos." He said it with a pompous air. "What’s your name?”
Arielle figured there was no point in maintaining her invisibility when he could clearly see her, so she materialized.
She told him, “I am Tamsy Lous.”
"Tamsy Lous. Whimsical.” He narrowed his eyes at her. “That’s not really your name, though, is it?”
“What do you want from me?” Ari figured there had to be something he wanted because he wasn’t moving to attack her, and his expression seemed amused and curious.
Perhaps they could come to some kind of deal, and he would give her the antidote if she gave him what he wanted.
“Answer me first,” he said. “Is my brother dead?”
She debated what answer to give him, feeling completely out of her depth here.
As far as she knew, Vittoria still had the demon alive but unconscious in her basement.
Would there be any downsides to telling him that?
She hedged, saying, "I don’t know. But I know where he is. If you want him back, you will give me the antidote."
He raised an eyebrow. "Did you think it would be that easy?"
"I hoped so." That was the best-case scenario, especially since she didn't understand what kind of spell he'd cast to even bring them here. It was something she had never seen before, and the fact that he could break her spells and make her suffer the backlash was a little terrifying,
However, she was prepared to fight if she had to, despite the odds seeming against her. After all, she might be able to learn quickly if he didn’t kill her in time.
But the quickest way to get to the potion and to save Elric was to convince the demon to give it to her. However, demons didn’t often give things for nothing. Would he ask Ari to bargain with her soul, or do something at odds with her morality?
If so, the answer would be no.
“Demons tend to have strong familial ties,” he said, swilling the vial in his hand. “We care deeply about those we share a lineage with, and it hurts us when they die, even if we may not be very fond of them."
“I don't think he's dead,” Arielle said. “Give me the antidote, and I’ll allow your brother to return.”
Leviathan considered her.
“You really shouldn’t lie to a demon,” he said, and, without warning, lava burst out from underneath her feet, nearly catching her before she could leap into the air. She shot up a few feet with [Levitate], but suddenly she was falling again, luckily catching herself before she hit the now lava-covered piece of earth.
Then it burst up again, singeing her hair as she shoved herself out of the way, landing on clear ground once more.
Okay, she thought as her heart raced. That definitely felt real. This was not an illusion.
She got to her feet and turned to the smiling demon.
With her eyes, she used [Whirlpool] to direct a sea of lava at him.
“Impressive,” he said as he waved a hand and made it vanish before it could reach. Once more, the backlash hit her, and though she could block the external force, the spell caused internal pain that made her nerves feel like they had been sliced by razor blades.
There was a loud crack as bolts of lightning struck at her, which she diverted to him.
He didn’t break them. He merely blocked them, redirecting the lightning back at the sky.
She escaped a second lava attack by a hair's breadth and barely jumped out of the way in time when the earth opened up beneath her feet again.
He was toying with her, Arielle thought, as she put a shield against flame arrows while glancing at his face. He was going to kill her, but he was toying with her first, hurting her for his own enjoyment.
That made her angry.
Her problem was that it was hard to tell where the next attack was coming from. The atmosphere was a constant array of connecting orbs that simply shifted around each other, without her understanding what each portion meant. His attack spells were constantly active, and they were baked into this pocket dimension he had created. Whenever the orbs holding the dimension shifted, something in the environment would happen, but only when he allowed it to. It was like fighting a Phasewalker, but worse.
He had complete control within it, and he needed only a single thought for him to rain fire or cause an explosion.
Worst of all, he could mess with her spells. Every spell she sent at him failed before it could reach him.
And every time she tried to save herself by flying, it was only a matter of time until he interfered with that too.
He was an Overlord commanding the world they found themselves in.
She couldn’t just fight him. She had to take control of his domain first.
But she had no cores for more than half the orbs in the space, and with the others, they were so tightly bonded it would take a significant amount of mental focus and strength to break the linkages.
“I’m disappointed,” he said as he walked forward, bolts of lightning striking around her shield, again and again. Once again, she redirected some of them at him, and when he tried to shield against it, she turned it into a roaring black flame burning through his shield. But, unlike with the others, he didn’t break this spell.
He simply disappeared and appeared somewhere else.
Hmm.
”When I learned of your feat in taking down my brother, I thought you would be a rare, exceptional human. Although I suppose it is exceptional that you moved around here for so long without detection. I don’t imagine that you could have done that by yourself. Nevertheless, I expected something more from you.”
Arielle didn't respond to him, keeping her attacks light and exploratory, perfunctory almost, to reduce how much backlash she received. She was testing a theory.
Now that he had given her some reprieve, she could watch the network of orbs that had created this environment and how it interacted with her spells.
The orbs were constantly moving but were also switching their links with each other, fostering a constantly changing yet permanent connection. In Ari’s view, none of the orbs faded after use, and they were not replaced, unlike with the Phasewalkers. The bonds between each orb were much stronger than in a human-made spell, and that, combined with the amount and positioning of the Calor and Vacu orbs, meant that it would likely be difficult to break the spell all at once.
The most complicated thing for her to overcome was that his dimensional spell was made up of a large amount of demonic orbs that she didn't know with spell forms she didn’t recognize.
However, the constant movement could work in her favor as well.
If enough of the Vacu and Calor orbs gathered in one portion of the spell, she could take that part of the spell down. Seeing as how he avoided rather than shattered the redirected spells, he seemed extremely reluctant to break his own spells, so she imagined that it caused him a lot of pain to do so, just based on how solid the bonds were and how powerful his spell was.
If she could break and hold even one part of this dimensional spell, then the entire thing might fall apart.
Then, she would kill him and take the antidote, and leave.
She ruminated for a second on the notion, but she had no qualms about killing him.
He was a demon who had helped kill people and was part of the reason Elric was in the state he was in. He was also trying to kill her. Perhaps there were other ways to subdue him without death, but she didn't have the time or the inclination to think about them right now.
She was only getting this reprieve because he was underestimating her. She couldn't give him the chance to properly estimate her.
“Then again, I don't know what I was expecting. Humans have been disappointing since I got here.” He attacked her lazily, his finger moving like he was directing an orchestra. “They tell me my mother was human, so I’ve always been curious about your species. But so far, none of my hopes have come to fruition. You lot are weak, arrogant, and your cruelty serves no purpose. I have no idea why Father is so obsessed with you.” He twirled his finger around his goatee and said, as though speaking to himself, “Although you do make perfect experiments, and your weaknesses can be charming sometimes. For example, I learned that humans frequently fall victim to kindness. Like that maid who believed she could steal from me, just because I said nice words to her a few times and healed her wounds. She mistook that to mean that I cared for her."
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Another burst of flames surrounded Arielle, forcing her to quickly [Levitate] and [Blink] out of there, though it scorched the tips of her fingers on her way.
She bit her lip against the pain.
With her next attack, she finally noted how he was breaking her spells. The grey orbs, whenever they met her spell, would quickly invade it, attach to it, and weaken the bonds until they broke.
Fascinating, she thought, though the backlash robbed her of breath again.
Meanwhile, he kept talking. "Your loyalty to each other makes no sense, even for a demon. We are bound to care for those in our lineage but not for others. However, you people risk your lives to save that which is not of your blood? Who may not even share the same cause as you?" He shook his head. "Mindless. Tell me, Human, before I kill you, why would you come here knowing that you might die? Why did you answer the maid’s cry for distress?”
“Because I won’t let you hurt her. And I won’t let Elric become a demon.”
He chuckled. “I feel insulted. What’s so bad about being a demon?”
She didn’t respond, continuing to watch the orbs around him as he strolled.
“Demons have power," he said. “Something humans crave. Yet you are scared of it too. You are scared to become like us when we are the cure to your affliction. You don't want your souls to be as transformed as ours are. You want a cheap facsimile of power, when you could have true power, one that’s never rationed, never dies, never–"
The third word didn't make it out of his mouth.
Finally, enough Vacu and Calor had collected on one side of the dimensional spell. She grabbed onto them, used a significant amount of focus and mental strength to overcome his pull, and ripped a hole in his hellish sanctuary.
The backlash thundered around him, tearing the earth open to reveal the furnace beneath.
He screamed from the agony of it, and it weakened his hold on the domain orbs even more.
She wasn't done.
In true Phasewalker fashion, she turned the pieces of his spell against him, transforming lava into a ribbon of flame that attacked his body. As he made it vanish with a hand up, suffering the backlash, Ari made the earth come alive, injecting as much as Vitae as she could into an area with lots of Vacu and Calor, like Vittoria had taught her a while ago with the sand frogs.
It rose and transformed into red, flame birds that swarmed both of them, but Arielle was ready for it, putting up her shield that he was too distracted to destroy. The important thing was that the birds, taking on a life of their own, interfering with his dimension, leaving portions of it dark and bare just like the outer darkness.
"What the–" he cried out as he attempted to break the spell, but that only served to puncture more black holes, as with breaking the birds, he was breaking the environment that had formed this domain.
So he stopped, but instead attempted to gain control of the spell that was now a living thing.
Meanwhile, Arielle kept ripping into his world, systematically breaking anywhere that enough Calor and Vacu had arranged. She moved quickly before he could recover, knowing the pain was distracting him, preventing him from being able to overcome her control.
He cried out again as the shards fell, and she imagined the backlash from that had to be torturous.
Good.
However, he was recovering. Quickly.
“You stupid girl!” he snarled, blasting her back with a heated force that had her slamming onto the rocks.
He began to rebuild his world again, much to Arielle’s dismay. Then he started to attack her with it.
His rage made everything turn red. The ground became pure lava, forcing her to continuously create a series of hovering spells that he kept breaking, causing her pain. She also had to create a series of shields against his numerous attacks, replacing them every time he broke them.
The combined backlash began to make her vision hazy.
It felt like endless battering, the demon breaking her shields nearly as fast as she could build them, assailing her with flames and fury, screaming and laughing while he did.
She was tired.
She was breathless.
She was in severe agony at this point and wanted to pass out to avoid feeling it anymore.
But if she did that, he would win.
She felt a presence behind her, perhaps from the sack she carried. Something urging her to dissociate, or have her mind go somewhere else. An escape from the pain.
Block it out. Block it out.
As she continued to fight back, she fought not to close her eyes, biting her lip until it bled. She had to block out the pain.
She had to figure out an escape.
She could not die here. If she died, then Elric was as good as dead too, and she could not let Elric die.
She had to think of something…something….
An idea hit her.
There was no Luxa or Massa in the environment. Lots of Vacu and Calor but no Luxa or Massa.
Did demons not have those orbs in their world? Could they not control them as well?
Ari unleashed most of the orbs in her battery, sending them around her,
She wanted to intersperse them into this shifting environment and make as many demonic orbs link with them as possible.
She first bonded Massa to Calor, and Luxa to Vacu, in orientations that made each complex unstable and highly reactive.
Then she sent them to intersperse with the dimensional spell like Vitae had done.
However, she had to overcome the demon’s bond strength so that while shifting, the demonic orbs would choose to form bonds with her complexes instead of with his–
The thought scorched to ashes as her shield fell and one of the flame arrows pierced through her shoulder.
She screamed.
She put her shield back in place, but pain seared all the way up to her neck, rendering that arm useless. It hurt. It hurt so bad.
She could almost feel it in her eyeballs. The place where the rock had pierced her finger also burned for some reason.
Block it out. Block out it.
Go within.
The last voice wasn’t hers.It was very familiar though.
The Drift?
Go within. It’s what you do best.
Arielle swallowed.
Arielle did what she did best as she withdrew into herself, reaching out with her core.
She spoke to the orbs. Not just the ones she knew, but the demonic ones too.
Hello there. My name is Arielle Blacksoil.
She figured an introduction was in order.
The Vitae, Calor, and Vacu orbs already knew her. The demonic orbs did not.
Arielle enhanced their communication using her deep focus aura-reading to envision the mini-orbs, even just for a moment as she worked to keep herself from dying.
The grey-ish orb had a charge of -3.
The black orb had a charge of -4.
As her shield failed again, allowing another arrow to pierce her foot, she bit out a cry and frantically spoke to the orbs.
I know you don’t know me, she said, testing them with her core. I’m in a lot of pain, and I would appreciate your help. I am a friend. Please, help me.
Then she gave them the right and most tempting orientation of her orbs, holding it there, noting how curious the orbs were about these new reactive complexes, how eager they were to bond with it.
Please help me.
Something in them listened.
Finally, the orbs acknowledged her, and upon shifting, they bonded with her complexes instead of his.
That was all she needed.
Ari instantly gathered all her strength in that moment, and she broke the dimension.
Everything shattered. The demon screamed. He tried to keep it together, but Arielle’s hold overpowered his now.
The world fell apart like shards of glass shattering around them and leaving nothing but black.
For a second, she feared she had made a mistake.
That, in breaking it, she would be lost in the darkness.
However, the pain became too much for the demon; the dimension fell apart completely, until they were back in the infirmary with the demon bowled over, coughing out black blood.
Ari didn't hesitate then.
She had held onto the birds, bringing them to reality and turning him into a sword of void, cutting him open, eviscerating him just like she did the behemoth, and using [Bound Mute] to cover his screams.
His body wasn't as tough as the Behemoths', so it was much like slicing meat. It disgusted her to watch skin flaying, the bones snapping, him falling to literal pieces on the ground, black blood oozing steadily out of his body, staining Inara's robes.
He looked too human for the image not to haunt her.
She didn’t dwell on it.
Arielle was exhausted. She was in pain. She tried to heal her arm and foot, but it still hurt. Her finger hurt too. It had taken everything out of her to destroy that place, and she wanted to take a nap for a long time.
But she didn’t have time.
She knew that demons came back to life quickly, but she left a void dagger plugged through his heart before she grabbed the antidote in his hand and a still dazed Inara and cloaked them in Vittoria’s invisibility spell.
Then she swept out of the room, looking to escape before the guards awoke from their trance.
She planned on flying out of here as far and fast as she could.
But a thought occurred to her, nagging at the back of her mind.
The demon had said something about full and partial doses.
What if this antidote she held would only heal one with a partial dose of contamination? If Elric received a full dose, then a weak antidote would not work for him.
Not to mention, Vittoria had been sure that Yseult would not give their antidote to the demons.
Should she trust Vittoria’s judgment? Was the true antidote somewhere in the treasure room?
Ari had a moment of tight-lipped hesitation before she veered off course, heading back there. She just hoped she didn't run out of orbs or faint when she got there.
As she did, Inara stirred in her arms.
When Ari glanced down, the girl was blinking woozily, finally waking from her trance.
“Are you okay?" Ari asked.
Inara blinked up at Arielle, her gaze still too dazed to be surprised. “What happened?”
“I'll explain later. But we have to leave."
She shook her head. "I can't leave."
"You don't have a choice." If she left Inara here, she would get blamed, and they would hurt her.
But Inara continued to protest until someone yelled out, "Intruder! There's an intruder in the West Wing!"
A horn blared, and Ari cursed under her breath, using one of the words she had just learned from Vittoria.
Damn it. They found the demon's dead body.
She had just reached the front door of the treasure chamber and was about to sweep through, hoping that her soul would be enough to give access to Inara as well.
Then something surprised her.
Once they were in front of the door, the spell form moved.
The orbs shifted in a different arrangement, introducing a new compartment, a signature that had not been there before.
It began to glow, and the treasure room door opened for them.
Luckily, the guards who should have been there had run to the West Wing. So Ari just entered with Inara, and the door closed behind them, sealing again.
It took a second for Arielle to realize what had happened as she focused on a scratch on Inara’s hand.
It took another second for her mind to make sense of it.
“Are you a Draco?” she asked.
Inara dropped her gaze, shame filling her face. “Only in name.”
So many things rushed through Ari's mind. Inara had Draco blood.
Which meant that she could probably access the treasures.
Of course, it wasn't that easy. The treasures remained hidden even with Inara here. However, Arielle noted the covenant circle in the center of the room and traced the orbs around it.
There was likely a spell involved here, but Inara probably didn't know it.
However, they might not need to. Ari had an idea.
“I’ll need some of your blood,” she told Inara.
"Okay," Inara said, without asking any further questions. She held her hand out for Ari, who used a tiny air needle to cut her finger, drawing out droplets of blood and floating it over the covenant circle.
There were different symbols in the circle, and when she hovered the blood over one of them, she watched how that affected the spells in the rest of the room.
The spell forms moved, but they became imbalanced. Ari stabilized them by adding in some orbs to fill out the spell, and that made some of the compartments appear, opening to reveal their wares.
Inara gasped.
However, it didn't reveal all of them, and when Ari moved Inara's blood to another symbol, the compartments disappeared again, and everything moved back in place.
Hmm.
So it was like a puzzle. She had to move the blood on each symbol and add in orbs (they probably used a spell she didn't know) to unlock the compartments in a particular order.
She did just that, working quickly, going from symbol to symbol, unlocking the compartments in waves.
Except for one.
One remained hidden even after she was done.
This one had even more spells around it, and it was undoubtedly Yseult's signature from how uselessly complicated and delicate it was.
That, of course, made it easy for her to bypass it, and she took the antidote right out of it.
The walls of the room began to shake. The orbs shifted around, and Arielle realized that she had triggered some kind of destructive mechanism.
She prepared herself, but then it stopped.
The ritual circle glowed, telling her that it was what stopped the destruction.
But now the door to the chamber opened again, revealing the lady who had beaten Inara, with the boy whom Ari had thrown over the carriage in Khor, along with an older man wearing Elder robes.
The girls' eyes widened. "Someone is in here!"
Right. She had soul sight. Time to escape.
"They're there!" she pointed, and the boy cast a spell which Arielle easily broke, the backlash sending him flying. The Elder held out his hand and cast a portal, but Ari did the same to him and sent the lady flying as well.
All three hit the wall hard.
As Ari rushed out, she felt the same pulsing in her ears, but this time, it was more powerful. More threatening.
“Who are you?” The voice was like the earth itself, and it was spoken directly into her head. Ari’s heart raced. Another demon was awakening, someone even worse than the one she had faced.
Someone that she wasn’t sure she could survive. She tried to outrace it, but the hallways in front of her began to transform, expand, stretching to eternity as it had done before.
Oh no.
She wasn't sure she had anything left in her to fight this other demon. Nevertheless, she prepared herself for what was coming.
Then suddenly, without warning, it retreated, as though it had been snatched away.
Ari had barely drawn a breath even after the presence was gone. She found she wasn’t moving at all, merely standing in the entrance of the chamber where the three mages were recovering on the floor from her attack.
What just happened? Why did it leave?
An explosion struck somewhere on the compound that distracted everyone, while Arielle swept over their heads with Inara.
"No! Don't let her escape!
A crowd was rushing over to them from either side, but they stopped right as another explosion hit the compound. Ari avoided them by moving through the walls, voices drifting in and out of her ears, catching conversations in the middle.
"An intruder–"
"–you think it's–"
"–someone is–"
"–terrible timing–"
Finally, Arielle made it outside in time for a third explosion and to see a large white bird circling the sky.
Vittoria?
It finally spotted Arielle and plunged, extending its leg and lashing around her wrist.
"Brat," it said, before it swallowed them both up, with Arielle closing her eyes instinctively.
The scent of bamboo and the warmth in the room told her where she was before she even opened her eyes. The blessed silence too, even though Arielle’s heart was still racing, her hands shaking from the energy of her escape.
It took a second for Vittoria to appear, with black and red blood splattered on her shirt and body, and sweat on her face.
She stormed over to her, glaring, and said, "What on Earth were you thinking, Arielle? You could have died!”
Ari simply blinked at her and said, "I have the antidotes. All of them.” She had taken every glowing liquid potion she had found in the chamber, and a whole host of other things she had gotten from Yseult’s domain.
Vittoria's face also looked exhausted and angry, but Ari wasn't concerned. Even as her heart raced, energy whipping through her, she knew that she had succeeded. They could save Elric.
That was all that mattered.
"Why is she here?" Vittoria asked, gesturing to Inara, who was still clinging to Arielle as she put her down.
The girl opened her mouth, perhaps to say something, but she didn’t manage to get it out.
Instead, she bowled over and vomited all over Vittoria's boots.