I teleported to Little Big Town. The acrid smoke filled my nostrils and burned my eyes. All around me were destroyed and burning buildings. Dead demons lined the streets. What a tragedy.

The reason it was called Little Big Town wasn't just because the people who named it were bad at naming things. It had a very weird set of physics to it. If you were traveling to it from afar, it would look tiny and technically it didn't take up much space on a map, but once you entered the city, it got exponentially larger the farther in you went.

It was one of those bigger on the inside places except instead of an enclosed space like a house or a police box, it was an entire city. I teleported right to the location of the devastation, which was only on one side of the city. The damned souls, whoever they were, hadn't gotten very far in.

This situation may seem confusing, and it is. So I will explain. You may be thinking, how can human souls destroy a city when they don't have physical bodies? That is where you would be wrong.

They do have physical bodies. That is something I very much disagree with Lucifer on instituting, because it gives them the ability to cause physical harm to the law-abiding demons who live in this hell, literally and figuratively.

Lucifer, at the time, cared more about punishing wicked humans or just humans in general because he hated them so much that he disregarded safety. Lucifer hated humans because he was jealous of how much more his father loved them than him. Or at least, that was Lucifer's perception of the situation.

Because of this hatred and jealousy, he created the Nine Circles of Hell and instituted various punishments in each of them based on the severity of the sins committed by the damned soul. You see, Hell was initially just meant to be a prison where those who had separated from God's love could exist away from him forever.

That was supposed to be a miserable enough punishment, according to God, but that wasn't good enough for Lucifer. So in order to physically punish the damned souls in Hell he created a system whereupon appearing in Hell, their souls would gain a new physical body.

You can't whip or torture damned souls without destroying or damaging the souls themselves. God did not allow that. He allowed Lucifer a lot of freedom in how he ran Hell, but destroying souls was going too far. God had created human souls to be immortal, so they would exist forever. Destroying them obviously negated that and defied God's will.

So Lucifer did the next best thing. He gave the souls bodies so that he could torture their physical bodies until they died, wait for them to respawn, and then do it all over again.

In the center of the Nine Circles, there is another primordial ooze pit designed for human souls to gain or regain a physical body so that they can then be sent to or back to whatever Circle they belonged in and tortured. It was called the Pit of the Damned. So original, right?

Whenever a damned soul's body is destroyed or killed, the soul is pulled back into the pit and they form a new body. This process takes about as long as it takes for me to reform my body or angels to re-compile theirs. Fourteen to twenty hours.

This is why we were in the predicament we were in. This is why damned souls were destroying Little Big Town—Lucifer and his former pettiness. Not that he wasn't still petty, but he wasn't that petty anymore.

I just never thought to reform our practices when it came to how we took care of the souls of the damned. I thought, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Well, apparently it broke. So now I would have to fix it.

My goal here was to kill all the escaped souls and let them reform in the pit. Then I would shut off the exits to the pit and just keep all the souls in there until I could dismantle the pit and keep the souls in soul form. Without a physical body, they couldn't do any damage even if they did escape.

Something interesting I learned about demons is that you can't possess their bodies. So escaped human souls wouldn't be able to take them over and wreak havoc with them like they could do to other humans.

All this was to say, I needed to find and kill those souls as fast as possible, so they couldn't destroy the entire city. I listened for screams. I didn't have to listen for long. I heard some coming from a street over from where I was.

I rushed to the scene. What I saw was a group of Mongolians surrounding a large group of demons. They all carried the pitchforks that the guards in Hell's Circles were supplied with. They must have stolen them. That was the only conclusion I could come to.

The Mongolians wore the standard black and red jumpsuits that inmates of Hell's Circles were supplied with. The black and red of the jumpsuits were patterned in a way where if they were facing towards you or away from you, it looked like their bodies had a big black "H" on them. Again, no one seemed to have any sort of imagination down here. That said, I'd probably put in minimal effort if I lived for eternity, too.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

The group of demons saw me and yelled in excitement, "It's Dave! He's here to save us! Save us Dave, please!" Well, one of them yelled that. If all of them yelled that at the same time, I'd be impressed by their coordination and groupthink.

Damn it. Now I had to save every single one of them or I'd feel terrible about myself. I already felt terrible that I let any of them die. There is a fact about demons that makes their deaths far more tragic than humans or even angels. I won't go into it now though, since I've already bored you to death enough with facts.

I yelled at the Mongolians, "Ööriinkhöö khemjeegeer khen negniig songo!" Which meant, "Pick on someone your own size!" in Mongolian. They looked at each other and then looked at me.

In Earth time, it had only been three years. Technically, Hell time was the same as Earth time, but the farther down you traveled into the Infernal Archive, the more time compressed in on itself and became longer and more dense. You could spend years down in the archive and only a few hours would pass in Hell proper and on Earth.

I apologize for all this explaining, but there is so much you may not know, and I don't want to assume you know it and confuse you. I have spent centuries down in the Infernal Archive studying languages. It's very important to be able to communicate with damned souls.

So yes, I knew Mongolian. Luckily, all the books had English translations as well as language courses set up on computers and tablets down there. The technology in Hell was more than modern. It was advanced.

I sat down there for years, just goofing around with all the known and unknown languages on a tablet. The annoying part is that demonic didn't have an English translation. Demons were taught demonic in elementary school as their first language.

It was so complex and demons were so long lived that it took twenty years to teach. And I didn't have twenty Earth years to learn Demonic and still be able to perform all my other duties.

I suggested they teach me in the Infernal Archive where time was condensed, but the demonic scholars said it was forbidden to teach in the Infernal Archive. Something about it being sacred or some such rubbish. If it was so sacred, why did they have tablets and computers down there?

So, I knew every Earth language. Just not Demonic. Sigh. Well, back to the action. The lead Mongolian responded to my question with, "Chi khen yum be, bidend yuu khiikh yostoi ve?" (Who are you to tell us what to do?)

I would have responded, but I knew it would get me nowhere. So instead, I just attacked them as fast as I could, hoping to take them all down before they killed any more innocent demons.

I teleported behind the lead Mongolian, drawing my sword Steve, and plunging him through the Mongolian's back. I did the same to all twenty-three Mongolians present, and they dropped to the floor, dead. Their bodies turned into an amber goo. Brimstone, also known as sulfur. The bodies created for damned souls were made of the stuff.

I watched as their souls floated away, back to the pit where they would form new bodies in several hours from now. This would give me time to fix the issue before they came back.

After confirming that all the demons were alright, I sent them back the way I came to make sure they got out safe while I hunted down more Mongolians, and their leader. If Mongolians were attacking Little Big Town, Genghis Khan was sure to be nearby.

If you don't know who Genghis Khan is, then I can't help you. If you don't know who one of the most prolific killers and generals in human history is then I don't know how you've gotten this far in life.

I wasn't too surprised to find out that he was the one who escaped the Circles of Hell. If anyone could do it he could. Now I just needed to find his men and him and eliminate them before they could cause any further harm.

I continued to follow the screams and trail of bodies until I came upon another small army of Mongols. This one was led by none other than Genghis Khan himself.

This was going to be harder than the last time. Genghis Khan was an expert fighter and general. Anything I tried, they would quickly counter. So I had to make my move suddenly and fast.

They all turned to face me. Genghis Khan, who was at the far end of the group, yelled, "Chötgör shüü dee!" (It's the Devil!). Tölövlögöö A! (Plan A!)."

The Mongolians started to surround me while crouching low with their pitchforks held in attack position. Another group of Mongols came in behind them, partially crouched, holding their pitchforks at waist height, aiming them over the first line's heads.

Then a third line came behind them, standing up straight, holding their pitchforks at chest height. It seemed they knew how the pitchforks worked. The tips of the pitchforks lit up briefly before thin beams of yellow light shot forth. Three lines of pitchfork beams shot at me at incredible speeds.

Luckily for me, I expected this and had already teleported away as soon as the tips began to light up. I teleported behind them. They immediately switched height positions so the line in front of me was crouched and the farthest line was standing.

Their tips began to light up again, and I teleported out of the way. This time, I teleported to the side of their line formation, hoping to gain a small amount of time to retaliate.

"Steve! Let's give them a light show of our own!" I yelled.

"Yes, sir, boss man, sir!" Steve the sword yelled.

I swung the sword horizontally as a thick white beam of light short forward from the tip. The beam cut across the knees of the first line of men, cutting their legs off. They landed on the stumps of their legs. Instead of falling over or howling in pain like I expected them to, they shot me full of yellow lasers from their pitchforks.

I teleported away before they had the chance to cut me to shreds, and I reappeared behind them with a dozen holes in my chest. The line of men that I had removed the legs of finally passed out from blood loss and shock.

I struggled to breathe with perforated lungs. The remaining lines of Mongolians repositioned and fired at me again. I kept teleporting around the field, aiming my sword at a single target and shooting them with a beam of light. If I didn't have time to swing my sword, I at least had time to take out single targets.

I teleported around the battlefield taking out single targets until there were none left other than Genghis Khan. I turned to face him, when multiple spherical devices landed around my feet.

"Oh, shit!" I said.

I tried to teleport away, but the spherical devices shot beams into my body. These didn't punch holes in me. They wrapped around me, holding me in place. Searing pain shot through my body, distracting me.

Genghis Khan walked up to me. "Dakhij zugtaj chadakhgüi." (Can't run away anymore).

I sneered at Genghis Khan as he pulled out a pitchfork and pressed it against my neck.