Chapter 29: A Walk Through Hell
Simon drew his sword before he began to advance, even though there was no immediate threat. He didn’t need to see the man standing amongst the flames grow horns or brandish claws to know he was bad news. He might not have the red skin that Simon would have expected, but there were no way two ways about it. Every movie he’d ever seen had taught him that that dude was a demon, and after the zombie level, he was taking no chances with getting his soul sucked into hell or whatever it was that the demon had planned.
“Easy,” the man said, holding his arms in a gesture of surrender. “I’m on your side here.”
“My side?” Simon asked skeptically as he studied the demon. He was dressed like what he presumed a noble in this era would dress like, with a white tunic, a dark doublet, and a purple short cape along with an elaborately curled hair-do that. “You don’t have any idea who I am.”
“It’s true,” the demon agreed, “but I know your type. Only one kind of hero shows up in this place anymore. The gods made sure of that.”
“And what kind is that?” Simon asked suspiciously. He stopped when he was still ten feet from the man and didn’t plan to get much closer. From here he could see that the boundary that defined the shattered, flaming unreality that the demon occupied from the normal looking cathedral Simon stood in was a thin layer of runes drawn in white chalk.
Even from here they were difficult to read. In places, they looked like they’d been stretched and tortured beyond recognition. While it looked like it had started out as a circle, something had deformed it.
“The kind that are just as trapped out there as I am in here,” the demon said succinctly. Simon had just started to imagine what kind of force could make the underlying space under the boundary runes warp like some kind of black hole phenomena, when the demon’s words completely halted those thoughts in their tracks.
“Excuse me?” Simon sputtered, not completely sure he’d heard him right. The demon couldn’t possibly know that.
“I said that you’re just as trapped in your pit as I am by this blasted circle,” the demon said, smiling. It could see that it had caught Simon’s interest now.