Day 70, 04:05 PM
“A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Tackling the devil feels like hitting solid rock. Her muscles are cramped and taut, but her weight is that of a regular human. I lift her into the air, and the creature’s dead expression doesn’t change a bit. However, she fails to react to my speed and while she’s airborne, I spin her and twist her arm behind her back. Bones or tendons crack and pop, breaking under the pressure from her muscles, but her skin remains blessedly intact.
Slamming her into the ground or against the wall would make my job easy. I dearly wish I could do it. It would rattle a human’s brain so hard, the battle would be over. Instead, I lay her down, carefully, trying not to scrape her skin and draw blood. She kicks at me. It’s a hard blow, but through two inches of padding it won’t even leave a bruise.
I grab her other arm and bend it back with a similar series of cracks and pops. She doesn’t make a sound as I tie her arms before binding her legs. Less than ten seconds have passed, but the fire is already flickering in the hallway, staying true to our experiments. The fire burns out after half a minute.
We have fifteen more seconds. “Manny, prepare another one.”
She lights it. The devil lies hog-tied on the ground, and I’m reinforcing the bindings with the wool-padded chains we had prepared. It’s not a permanent solution, but it will ensure the creature can’t follow us. I use a length of chain to gag its gaping mouth, and I’m done as the fire dies down.
Beyond, I see two humanoid shapes.
Maybe three? I strain my eyes, but can’t make out whether the third one is a shadow or an actual devil. There might be more with them, obscured by the ones in the front.
The two frontmost creatures push and shove, but keep two yards away from the dying fire.
I can’t separate them now. No, wait. I can.
“Manny, give me an unlit jug.”
As soon as she hands me the jug, I jump across the dying fire. Manny screams, and I snatch a devil and jump back, dropping the jug onto the fire, rekindling it.
“Pass me the straps and chains.” The creature gnaws at my shoulder, but it feels like an overzealous baby scratching its budding teeth through a thick sweater.
After Manny hands me the leather straps, I try to move the second devil, but the damn thing clings to me, biting the cloth of my protective gear with all its might. The fabric tears, and I get the devil off me. It gnaws at the shred of armor it snatched, and I stare for a moment. The man’s face is maimed, a cheek missing, and through the hole I see the fabric he’s chewing on. I hog-tie the disgusting devil, but the fire is almost out before I even start chaining him.
“Manny, prepare the straps and chains for the next one, and pass me another unlit jug.”
A moment later, she passes me the jug, and I flick it over my shoulder. The ceramic shatters, and the fire bursts into life anew, buying me another thirty-forty seconds to calm down and think.
The protection around my fingers is thinner, but still thick enough to get in the way and turn my hands into unwieldy hams. I grit my teeth and finish tying the chain before glancing sideways.
The spurting fire has another ten seconds left, there are two devils there again, shoving, but maintaining a respectful distance from the sizzling and popping lard.
How many of you are there inside? I understand there should be at least six or seven, but there could be more.
“Manny, please give me another jug.”
She does, and I chuck it into the fire. The lard sizzles louder and a few burning globs fly towards me, burning for several seconds before fizzling into oblivion. The cool stale air turns hot, smelling of roasted pork.
“Sorry I scared you. What’s solsus, by the way?”
“Sheep-sized animal, but longer. Fat like a pig and loves to bask in the sun. Its lard is highly flammable, commonly used for refining lantern oil.”
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Ah, a holy beast combining pork belly and lamb shanks. Sounds delicious.
“Thanks.” I force mythological food out of my head and focus on our surprisingly relaxed situation. In our most pessimistic scenario, with two devils nabbed and packed, we should have eight left. Manny has enough bindings for eighteen more, just in case.
“I’ll grab another one.” I hop back and forth over the flickering fire, tying a total of seven devils before we run out devils to tie.
“All of these have fresh wounds,” Manny says. “There are more devils in the depths.”
Yeah, this is just the entrance, there’s a stairway a couple yards ahead which leads into the depths and the devil holding cells.
The whole setup reminds me of the original Liablo and the continuous descent down its legendary levels.
“You sure this only has three levels and doesn’t lead into hell or something?”
There’s a moment of silence, and she gives me that look.
“I am certain.”
“Good. Let’s go.”
We reach the stairs and the first problem. Luckily, we had a whole committee plan things out, and Manny’s ancestors had enough foresight to plan the levels in such a way that it’s impossible to have devils attack you from two sides at once.
I wrap three sets of bindings around my torso, and grab two spare jugs, which amount to three with my new molotov torch.
“Be careful,” Manny whispers.
I always found that line stupid, both in the movies and in real life. What do you think I’m going to do? Jump into a zombie’s mouth?
Surprisingly, Blunt remains silent, so I have to say something.
“Don’t worry, I’ll haul them up as I pacify them. So far, they have offered far less resistance than I expected.” I’d kiss her, but it’s impossible with all this gear, we’d just bump heads.
“I’ll be right back,” I say after a slight pause, then turn around and head down a level.
The stairway is just as wide as the hallway above, with enough room for two armed men to walk abreast and cover each other while fighting the seemingly mindless ghouls. Even though I’m neither an architect, nor professional military, I appreciate the amount of thought and planning that went into the creation of this tomb.
I try to keep things quiet. While I can hear every step I make, I reach the lower floor without zombies ambling towards me and attacking me on the staircase. A bolted door stands immediately to my left. In the flickering molotov light, I make out rust and layers of dust and cobwebs confirming nobody had opened it in ages.
The door two yards ahead is the same, but the one at the edge of the light seems to be open. I strain my eyes against the darkness rather than taking a step forward when I hear it.
Leather scrapes against stone in the impenetrable darkness, disturbing the dead quiet. I set my unlit molotovs to the ground. I wince at the ceramic clicks, but the scraping doesn’t intensify, it only grows louder as the zombie shuffles closer.
After loosening a set of straps, I step forward, illuminating the gaping black portal at the edge of the light. For a moment, I really think it’s a gate to an otherworldly dimension, but then I see the play of light and shadow, and my rational mind tells me to calm down. It’s just a poorly lit doorway.
An instant later, the portal spews a dry, dark-skinned husk. The devil is completely different from the zombies above. Its movement is slow, but somehow softer, nimbler. It still drags its feet, but a disturbing oozy fluidness replaces the jerkiness of electric shocks with which the zombies above moved.
It stares at me with pitch-black eyes, and I shudder, finally realizing why people have taken to calling them devils.
The creature isn’t a human. It isn’t even a human corpse, like the fresh ones above. It’s another species, something unholy. There’s no light of reason in those eyes. No light at all, and its mahogany-colored, mummified face doesn’t shift.
The only acknowledgement I get are its arms. They reach towards me, then the creature opens its maw. The gesture is more a silent scream than a threat, revealing a black abyss framed by rotten teeth.
I expect it to charge, but it simply takes another shuffling step forward. It ambles towards me, neither fast nor slow, fourteen feet away. Thirteen, twelve.
Ten feet away, I fling my molotov and pounce at the monster. I grab its wrist, but the taut muscles of rigor mortis aren’t there. My padded hand clamps the creature’s leathery hide, its flesh sinking like a sponge until I feel its radius and ulna beneath my fingers.
The ceramic shatters and the fire erupts into existence. In the flickering surge of light, the devil reveals not a whit of pain as it flails its other lumbering arm at me. I grab the limb, bending both arms in a symphony of creaks and snaps.
It’s weak. Much weaker than the ones above. It’s also much tougher to bind. The straps sink into its squishy flesh and I’m afraid the leather would tear its ancient skin, something the book warned specifically not to do.
I abandon the straps and gently press the devil against the floor near my two molotovs. I pin it with my knees and uncoil the padded chains from my torso. The damn thing squirms, slick like an eel, but I bind it with a wool-covered chain.
The fire is dying, but there are no other devils beyond it. Just in case, I flick another molotov onto it before wrapping the devil. My heart is racing, and I take slow, even breaths to calm it. The slippery devil, while weaker, was more difficult to subdue.
It wriggles beneath my knees as the light dims. I stand, but the creature’s resistance and attempts to free itself don’t change. It keeps blindly bending its body at random, its unnatural moves ignoring its skeleton and going against everything I know of human anatomy.
I tear my eyes away from it, and light my final molotov on the flame just before it spurts out of existence. The light illuminates the open chamber and a pair of mangled corpses on the ground.
That should be all of them. What now? Return upstairs to Manny and refresh my supplies, or advance down the hall, exploring further?