“In the First Age, in the First Battle, when the shadows first lengthened, one stood.

Burned by the embers of Armageddon, his soul blistered by the fires of Hell and tainted beyond Ascension, he chose the path of perpetual torment.

In his ravenous hatred he found no peace; and with boiling blood he scoured the Umbral Plains seeking vengeance against the dark lords who had wronged him.

He wore the crown of the Night Sentinels, and those that tasted the bite of his sword named him...

The DOOM SLAYER.”

- Excerpt from the Slayer’s Testament

E1M6: The Shores of Hell

The Doom Slayer opened his eyes.

He found himself floating weightlessly in an abstract world of shadowed mountains, suspended in the midst of a sinister sanguine sky. Space and time as existed on Mars had ceased to exist. The light that shone in this world did not illuminate, and the mountains around him were not made of a rock that appeared on any mortal world.

The Slayer could sense the unmistakable nature of the reality he was now present in. It did not operate under the principles of his universe. Or any physical universe, for that matter.

The plane of existence he was present in was inconceivably more arcane.

More primeval.

Chaotic.

Home to powers beyond the comprehension of any mortal soul.

He was in an Immortal Realm.

He was in Hell.

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCKKKKKKK!!!!!!!

A scorching inferno of savage fury ignited in the Slayer’s heart, overpowering his senses and filling his mind with blinding violence.

He willed a command unto the reality around him, and at once the formless world took the shape of a barren landscape at his feet, a dark ragged surface blotched with crimson veins. Feeling the sensation of ground beneath his feet, he blazed off with terrifying speed across the Hellscape searching for something to murder.

He did not care who or what it was.

He had died.

He had failed to stop Olivia Pierce from breaching the Fracture.

And now a Hellgate was fully open on Mars.

Something was going to die.

He sensed a presence some distance ahead, a demonic citadel populated with thousands of wretched beings.

A lot of somethings were going to die.

The Slayer swerved in the direction of the citadel with ravenous bloodlust coursing through his veins, crushing the ground with every step he took. He was rapidly approaching the citadel, located on the other side of a looming mountain that blocked his path.

Gritting his teeth with agonizing force as he sprinted even faster, the Slayer leapt into the air and smashed through the infernal mountain like a bullet through glass, sending great shards of rock and rubble flying like meteors.

The demonic fortress came into view. It was a despicable construct of dark and twisted metal like a mass of colossal sawblades, suspended in the hellish sky above the desolate wasteland.

At once, towering structures positioned around the citadel’s perimeter wailed in echoing alarm.

HE IS HERE.

The citadel’s Hellstorm Pylons, great cycloptic entities bearing ocular cannons and Cyclone Railguns, entered combat mode and set their sights on the charging Slayer as the fortress clearly prepared for emergency evacuation, but the Slayer had chosen his prey.

Great bolts of lightning erupted from the Pylons’ eyes towards the Slayer as their railguns fired enormous crackling slugs the size of fighter ships, but the Slayer was faster still. He dodged and strafed his way through the hail of missiles as he stayed his course for the citadel.

The fortress was rising away from the landscape, and the rippling waves of spacetime indicated its dimensional engines were entering operation. In a few moments the entire fortress would vanish and the Slayer’s opportunity would be gone.

A massive slug of infernal metal soared towards the Slayer, but instead of dodging he slightly shifted his position and dug his hands into the shell as it passed, spinning on his heel and, after taking careful aim, slinging it back at the citadel with monstrous force.

The missile blasted through the fortress’s exterior and tore its way through its structure, destroying one of the whirring dimensional engines. The multitude of Pylons immediately ceased firing their railguns to focus on their ocular cannons, but it was too late. The Slayer grabbed one of the last rail bolts and sent it flying at the remaining dimensional engine, crippling the citadel and leaving it stranded with him and his scorching rage.

With the distance between him and the fortress drawing to a close, the Slayer leapt off from the wasteland with a powerful thrust that shattered the ground before tearing through the eye of a Hellstorm Pylon and smashing his way into the citadel.

The blinded Pylon released a thunderous metallic groan as it crashed through the outer wall of the fortress, falling upon the twisted structures and the many demonic inhabitants within, but the Slayer’s rampage had just begun.

The Slayer crashed through tower after tower, falling through countless levels of complex edifices built up, down, and sideways, brutally crushing every wretched thing he could get his hands on. The residents were short impish creatures that fled in his presence, and before long the Slayer was drenched in purple blood.

He crushed their skulls beneath his feet, thrust his hands into their bodies and pulled out mangled messes of shredded organs, ripped their limbs off and broke their backs on his knee.

His rage knew no limits, and he spared no mercy.

A series of roars in his vicinity drew his attention backwards. A pack of scarlet Blood Knights, with inscribed runes and burning talons, was headed right for him.

They raised their hands and shot blazing streams of Hellfire at the Slayer, but his carnage would not be stopped. He charged through the infernal flames while charging a Blood Punch and released it in the midst of the monsters, feeling cruel satisfaction as their bones cracked beneath his fist. The Blood Knights set great swathes of volume afire and launched exploding fireballs that ate away at his HEALTH, but he didn’t care. He released Blood Punch after Blood Punch directly unto the demons’ faces, sending their brains flying and absorbing their life force to replenish his HEALTH and ARMOR.

HE HATED BLOOD KNIGHTS!!

A howling screech echoed through the gnarled edifices before a lightning-fast shape crashed into the Slayer, picking him up and carrying him as it flew between the structures. It was a Shrike, a biomechanical pterosaur-like demon with smooth black skin and a sleek snout full of needle-like teeth, with which it currently tried to maul the Slayer with. The furious Slayer freed himself by breaking off the creature’s legs and climbed unto its back before savagely punching at the demon’s head. The creature shrieked in anguish and spun in a vain attempt to throw the Slayer off, dispelling a drove of jagged spines from its back and impaling the Slayer, but he punched the Shrike’s head open and ripped out its cerebral unit. He clambered over to the plunging demon’s wing and tore off one of its arm cannons, leaping off and taking aim for the other two Shrikes surreptitiously flanking him. He triggered the arm cannon and shot a howling beam at the nearest Shrike, which exploded in a flaming mess of melted flesh and metal. The remaining Shrike tried to fire its own beams at the Slayer, but even in free-fall he swerved behind an edifice and quickly returned fire, dispatching his last pursuer before the severed cannon ran out of energy.

HE HATED SHRIKES!!

Rapidly approaching the citadel core, the Slayer focused a Blood Punch and released it unto the thick ragged surface in his path, smashing through it and landing in a large spacious chamber filled with a multitude of demons, presumably the citadel court. The crowd swiftly dispersed in a discordant cacophony of screams and howls, but the Slayer turned his gaze towards the citadel ruler, a regal Summoner-class demon lord with flowing gown and an infernal halo suspended behind its disgusting head. It cowered in petrified terror as the Slayer charged with fire in his eyes.

HE HATED DEMONS!!

There was a flash of scarlet lightning and the Slayer went Berserk.

* * *

Bottomless wells of green sludge where unfortunate souls sank for eternity. Living mountains that devoured entire cities whole and turned fortresses to waste. Terrible, ghastly things snaking between the ruins of shattered worlds.

My soul quivered before the horrendous sights flashing before me. I closed my eyes in an effort to shut them out, but I could not shut out the harsh screams of madness.

The dreadful howling morphed into the sound of air rushing past me, and the nightmare was over. To my wary relief, silence washed over me and I landed on solid ground.

Had I eaten recently, I imagined I would have thrown up, but I managed to shakily bring myself to my knees with little trouble.

I must be getting used to these Hell rifts.

“How are you, soldier? Mission-capable?”

“Yeah, I think I’m okay.”

I looked around to survey my surroundings. I was in some sort of tall interior compound, the rough grey surfaces mottled with thin red growths, probably some kind of plant. The environment was surprisingly well-lit thanks to a pale light that descended from ceiling channels, far clearer than the previous locations I’d been in.

But there was a peculiar sensation in my chest. The atmosphere here was worryingly heavy, and I felt a low thrumming reverberate through the world. It wasn’t completely silent, but I couldn’t spot any enemies or other creatures in this enclosed environment. There was virtually no line-of-sight either.

I’m sure I’ll find them later on. That’s how it always goes.

“Just take deep breaths, stay cool. You got this. Keep your fingers on your triggers and…don’t forget to look twice before you cross, understood?”

“Copy that,” I whispered in response, switching to my Skullfire spell and priming my machine guns before taking a single step, stopping when I heard a squelching splash.

I slowly looked down to find myself stepping in a puddle of red liquid with sinews of floating masses. I turned to the grey walls and took a second look at the growths.

“Ohhh, God. It’s not plants.”

* * *

The Doom Slayer lay on his back in the infernal wasteland, the sounds of the collapsing citadel rumbling around him as thunder echoed in the distance. The acts of destroying the fortress and massacring its inhabitants had provided enough catharsis to appease his rage, at least for the moment, and he felt merely upset now.

He stared blankly at the sanguine sky, taking a moment to collect his thoughts and analyze the situation.

He’d landed on The Shores of Hell, the outermost of Hell’s three spheres.

Obviously, since The Abyss was inaccessible from the Mortal Realm i.e. his universe, and Tartarus was…well, Tartarus.

Nothing got in. Nothing got out.

But that didn’t help at all. The Shores was the largest of Hell’s spheres, the one populated by consumed mortal worlds, their corrupted peoples, and most native demonic beings, intelligent or not.

And he didn’t recognize this particular region he’d landed in. Which was strange, considering the AGES he’d spent in Hell prior to being imprisoned. Many things must have changed in his absence. He could be anywhere.

Even more frustrating was that he had no way of returning to Mars…shit, he had no way of returning to his universe on his own!

The Praetor Suit had no interdimensional drive, meaning he’d have to hijack some other Hellgate just to return, and even then it might not drop him in 2149. ‘Time’ was a native quality of the Mortal Realm, it did not exist in higher planes of existence. Travel between the Mortal and Immortal Realms was simply not meant to happen. He could spend another eternity in Hell and arrive in Mars five minutes after he left, or he could take a magically-appearing portal at this very moment and arrive at the beginning of the Solar System…or its end. He could arrive to witness the origin of the universe and exist as a collection of fundamental particles for a couple millennia. Or arrive trillions of years in the future to a universe inhabited only by singularities and black dwarf stars.

Wouldn’t be the first time, either.

Of course, he could take the Fracture portal back to Mars and perhaps even 2149…

…if he only knew where the other side of the Fracture portal was!

The Slayer’s heartbeat spiked with anger once more, and he focused on staying calm.

The Nether Wall separating Hell from the rest of Creation still held. Prevented the exfiltration of even the greatest Infernal powers and, given the circumstances, himself. He might be able to exploit one of his old shortcuts through the Wall, but again, he didn’t know his current whereabouts, and the nearest drop point he knew of to 2149 Mars was…

Ugh…

This was getting him nowhere! He didn’t want to spend another eternity jumping across worlds and realms to get back to some shithole planet he’d failed to keep his ass on just because of some bloody Cyber Paladin! Earth could become victim to a full-blown invasion in the time he was playing interdimensional hopscotch and getting shitcanned by mere Hell Knights! He needed to get back to Mars NOW!!!

He slammed his fist on the ground, paying no attention to the spreading crack that split the landscape in two.

A sudden wave of realization washed over the Slayer.

He might have been able to hijack the demonic citadel to determine his whereabouts and perhaps even use it for transportation, at least for the time being, had he not completely wrecked it.

That had probably been a poor decision.

A new sound appeared on the horizon. A long, harsh, desolate roar. Basilisks.

The Slayer sighed and sat up.

He might as well get a move on. Basilisks were tough and he was not in the mood to fight even one, especially not with 62 HEALTH. He groaned in irritation and picked himself up.

The Slayer headed deeper into the ruins of the demolished fortress. These constructs always had a Hive Nexus to coordinate their position, travel routes, local dangers and whatnot. If he was lucky and the Nexus wasn’t completely wrecked, he could boost his automap with that.

He brought up his automap as he scoured the citadel’s remains. The divination court. A communion hub. A charred sparking mess that had once been a dimensional engine, before a Cyclone rail bolt was thrown through it.

The Slayer cleared his throat and turned back to his map.

There! A map station icon appeared in his display and he raced to where indicated. Taking great leaps, he cleared a mountain of rubble until he reached a spacious chamber carved from polished stone. The Slayer hurried to the structure in the center, a pool of thick viscous fluid above which floated varying orbs of the same substance, growing, shrinking, and orbiting each other. He lightly poked the swirling liquid with one finger, watching waves of runes spread across the orbs as his automap flashed with an extensively detailed diagram of the region.

Blood Keep? That was new.

It seemed the map covered only the local sector of the region, which the Slayer guessed to be far larger than illustrated. And yup, there were the Basilisks. Big, scaly, and cunning beasts, fond of feeding on consumed planets.

The Slayer took a closer look at his automap.

Strange, he couldn’t find a single planet in the surrounding region. He could see the remains of countless planets – continent-size shards floating in the emptiness, the perfect feeding ground for Basilisks – but not a single complete world in the whole sector. There were a few Parasite Moons in the area but those didn’t count. No Predator Worlds, no Tyrant Stars, no higher powers of any kind.

But there was a Blood Storm nearby. Great.

No permanent forts or signs of intelligent agencies either. There HAD been this citadel, but that was a mobile fortress, and the inhabitants were a scavenger race. Apart from a few wild Hell beasts, the least unconcerning of which were the Basilisks, the region was unusually empty.

Something big had happened here.

A high-pitched roar resonated nearby, and as he switched off the automap, the Slayer spotted a gigantic serpentine shadow slither in the sky behind a floating mountain. A juvenile Basilisk, about a hundred meters long, come to feast on the wrecked citadel.

The Slayer equipped his combat shotgun and turned to the Hellscape, not wanting to get caught in a Blood Storm or between a Basilisk and its prize. The automap indicated a resource stache not too far away, no doubt a temporary shelter from some long-past mortal expedition. He’d salvage what he could from it and figure it out from there.

He pumped his shotgun and raced away into the infernal wastes.

* * *

Ruby stared in horror at the image of the ruptured Tower on the display monitor.

image [https://i.imgur.com/0dyur5K.jpeg]

It was bad enough that the Hellgate was fully open now, allowing into Mars all manner of nightmarish monstrosities, but to make matters worse, the sun had gone down and night had fallen.

Their chances of survival had gone down to practically zero.

“Agent!”

Ruby had already noticed. A ring of teleporter pods throughout the lobby whirred into operation around them.

“MOVE!”

“Wait! Our helmets!”

“LEAVE THEM!”

The group raced down the hallway into the Helix Labs as the possessed soldiers warped into the chamber and released Hellish roars. She provided cover fire with her pulse rifle to let the others hurry away as the demons started shooting.

“GET TO THE HANGAR! IT’S ON THE EAST END!”

Reeves, Rogers, and Romero managed to stay ahead of their pursuers and most of the incoming projectiles at a brisk sprinting speed, but Harrison was lagging behind and before long fell back to Ruby’s position.

“Christopher! You need to hurry!”

“I can’t! Aaah! My legs!”

Ruby looked down at the scientist’s legs. There were glowing runes perforating into his suit’s white plating, and she could see blood dripping through the cracks.

“No! NOOO!”

Ruby charged a power blast and released the crackling orb at the demons. The orb exploded on impact and reduced a half dozen soldiers into steaming fluids smeared on the walls. She pulled the trigger again to fire on the remaining demons but the rifle didn’t respond, the trigger repeatedly clicking with no reaction. Grunting in frustration, she slung the firearm and bent down to hoist Harrison on her shoulder.

“Don’t worry, Christopher. I’m getting you out of here. Romero! Rogers! Help us!”

The two men turned around and hurried to assist the two stragglers but then they raised their weapons at a point behind Ruby.

“Look out!”

Ruby heard the telltale screech of imps behind her.

She pulled out her EMG with her right hand as she carried Harrison with her left, and desperately fired at the loathsome creatures while hurriedly shambling towards safety, trying to avoid the fireballs flying through the corridor at them.

A sudden flash of cold fear pierced through Ruby’s head, and she shut her eyes in an effort to drown out the mocking voices.

“AAAAHH!” Harrison yelled in pain and fell out of Ruby’s grip.

“Christopher!”

Harrison’s left foot was gone, the charred stump smoking where a fireball had pierced through the weakened armor and gone through flesh and bone. Ruby saw the desperate supplication in the elderly scientist’s eyes as he stared up at her with imps gaining on him, fangs dripping and eyes lurid.

“Agent!”

Ruby vaguely moved in the direction of the injured scientist, but in a split-second the pack pounced on him and she could only see blood flying through thrashing demon limbs.

“CHRISTOPHER!”

“Look out, Taylor!” Rogers appeared at her side and pulled her away. Harrison’s arm was visible through the flailing horde, holding a primed frag grenade.

She reflexively fell to the floor.

BOOM!!

The explosion left her ears ringing and she hazily looked up, trying to gather her bearings through the smoke and ashes.

The voices had vanished. Thick black blood ran down the walls and dripped from the ceiling, and scattered across the room were rune-scarred plates of armor, which had once belonged to a UAC security suit.

No…

“-lor! Taylor! We have to go!”

Ruby heavily picked herself up and absent-mindedly followed the Lieutenant. The fog in her head cleared when she read the sign MAIN HANGAR over an upcoming door.

“There…THERE IT IS!”

The gate slid open as they approached, and the team raced towards the lone shuttle parked in the hangar, a dim chamber with a glass ceiling that revealed the Martian night sky. Clambering up the craft’s steel ladders, they rushed through the open entry port and Ruby went straight to the pilot cabin.

“Everyone fasten your seatbelts! We’re taking off now!”

Ruby performed the preflight startup sequence and powered the shuttle up but stopped immediately when she read the message displayed on the dashboard, her blood running cold as ice.

No, God. Please, God. No.

ERROR: SHUTTLE CANNOT BE LAUNCHED

PRIMARY AIR CONTROL NETWORK UNAVAILABLE

FOREIGN SIGNAL INTERFERING WITH NAVIGATION SYSTEMS

TRACING ANOMALY…

ORIGIN: LAZARUS LABS --> LAZARUS REFRACTOR

* * *

I rolled my fingers across the corner of the corridor and cautiously peeked around the corner. Nothing.

I stepped around the corner and carefully walked on the driest surfaces I could spot poking through the surface of the…warm liquid that covered most of the floor.

Thank God I can’t smell anymore.

image [https://i.imgur.com/01ETUwk.jpg]

Small moist masses disgustingly plopped from holes in the walls onto the puddles that had accumulated throughout the place, but I was careful to not make any additional noise in that horrendous place. I didn’t know what might be listening.

“ROOOOAAAAHHHH!”

I instantly froze.

“Don’t talk,” whispered Colonel Johnson into my ears. Or brain, or something. “I’m taking scans of this place. There’s definitely something big moving nearby, but the place is a maze and the readings are all scrambled. Go through that door on your left. NOW.”

I obeyed without hesitation, splashing across the wet floor and ducking under a low doorway that immediately took a sharp left, then a right, as it led into a narrow hallway lit by sickly yellow ceiling fixtures. As soon as I entered the passage, I heard something heavy turn the corner I’d been in not ten seconds earlier and loudly splash across the liquid. There were legs. Many legs.

Something small silently crawled out of a hidden recess in the wall and I stepped on it out of reflex, making a loud splat as I crushed tissue and bone.

OH FU-

“Hurrrr.”

I stood as still as my shivering limbs would allow, hearing whatever was out there stop right outside the tunnel entrance. It softly growled and took several deep sniffs of the doorway, but it didn’t pass through.

Please, let it be too big to pass through the doorway.

Wait. No, WAIT.

After a horrifying amount of time, the thing snapped its jaws and continued roaming outside, its footsteps echoing and fading into silence.

How many legs is that? ... Well, it’s definitely more than four. Probably not greater than ten. Ohhh…

“I think it’s gone now.”

“Please tell me that I can reach a teleporter without having to go back out there.”

“There’s a gate apparatus at the center of the maze, but this tunnel doesn’t go all the way.”

I sighed in desperation.

“What you can do is check out the end of this hallway. It could be a dead end, but you might find something useful.”

I looked down at the creature I had crushed with my foot. It was like an overgrown spider with many spindly legs and a large central body, now splattered across the floor, that almost seemed made up entirely of brain tissue. I couldn’t spot anything that might have been an eye or mouth in the low light.

This one hadn’t been much of a threat, but the sound it made…I had to be careful.

The corridor remained surprisingly linear as it meandered within the maze’s wall, with no branching paths despite the frequent turns, but I kept a watchful eye for anything that might jump out from the shadows. I switched to my flak cannons and brandished the Bronze Spear, ready for anything.

“AAAAHHHH!”

A horrid creature, like a floating snake-like humanoid with short spikes for arms and a gaping lamprey-like maw, suddenly appeared from behind a corner. I immediately opened fire and thrust my spear into the monster, which lowly groaned before being reduced to a splattered mess on the wall.

“God DAMN…,” I whispered while breathing heavily.

I collected myself and continued, taking care not to rush around corners before arriving at a dead end.

At least, the corridor came to a stop and there were no doors or further paths I could take, but I just stood trying to comprehend what lay before me.

On the wall at the very end of the hallway was a pulsating mass of flesh and slime. It was like a giant fleshy starfish, countless vines splitting into further branches which snaked across the adjacent walls, floor, and ceiling. These vines were acting as vessels of some sort, softly throbbing and channeling fluid towards the structure at its center, a collection of small fleshy orbs.

I gagged and turned to leave.

“Hold on, wait! I’ve read about this! This is some sort of parasite nest!”

“What’s…ugh, what’s this got to do with me?”

“Those things in the center are blood-sucking leeches! They adhere to a host and usually feed on their blood, but when Argent energy is applied to them, they can draw blood from other creatures at a distance!”

“Why would I want…”

I thought back to the pale Tree, and how my chassis was restored from the blood sap the Tree had accumulated from its victims.

“Okay, I think I’m getting it.”

“Yeah, if you apply your core energy, you can use one of these suckers to heal your injuries.”

The small orbs gently quivered within their nest, producing wet squelching sounds.

“You said these are parasites?”

“The company ran some tests, and apparently they can survive just fine on siphoned blood.

Use your spear and pry one off. GENTLY. You don’t want to disturb the whole nest.”

I raised my spear and softly poked one of the squirming leeches on the outermost edge of the nest, which promptly released a sharp hiss. I forced down my revulsion and pressed on.

Using the tip of the Bronze Spear, I slowly eased the tiny leech from its nest. It was attached to the wall by thin curling ligaments, which combined with its gelatinous body and underbody mouth, gave it the appearance of a tiny red octopus.

“Disgusting. What do I do with this now?”

“Are you left-handed or right-handed?”

“Right.”

“Place it on the palm of your left hand. With some luck, it’ll bond to it and let you siphon blood from demons if you apply some Argent energy.”

I took another look at the wretched thing on the end of my spear. Its tendrils wiggled slightly in the air as it no doubt searched for something living to stick to. I guessed I would have to do. I would have preferred to keep such a thing as far away as possible or to squish it beneath my foot, but the ability to heal my injuries was too good to pass up.

And it’s not like there were medpacks in Hell.

I brought the end of the Bronze Spear closer and I reached out with my left hand, onto which the leech promptly leaped on and bit into.

It hurt.

“AAAAAAHHHHHH!”

I could feel the leech tearing at my hand with its mouth and digging its tendrils in. There were splatters of blood.

My blood.

My vision began to erode into a field of static as my head fell victim to a mind-splitting migraine. The static melted away to reveal a horrific skeletal arm, lacking skin, tissue, and implanted with metallic implements. Amid the twisted bony fingers, a ravenous leech dug into what remained of flesh in the palm of the hand.

My hand…!

“Huh?”

I found myself clutching at my arm on the floor.

What…what am I doing here? What just happened?

I glanced around at the dim sickly corridor as I gathered my bearings.

God, these lapses feel like they’re getting worse. I hope my head doesn’t glitch in the middle of a fight.

“Soldier? Soldier, come in.”

It was Colonel Johnson’s voice over the radio.

“Colonel! Yes, reporting!”

“Are you okay, soldier? I lost you there for a second.”

“I…I don’t know what happened. My head kind of aches.”

“What’s the last thing you remember?”

“The last thing?”

I turned to the pulsating fleshy mass on the wall. Had I come into contact with it?

“I’m…I’m not sure. I recall just walking along this tunnel. I think there were bugs here. Big ones.

Ugh, my memory’s not getting any better. It might just be getting worse. What happened to me, Colonel?”

“Hell’s messing with your wires, John. Your chassis is tough but it won’t protect you forever, you’ve got to get out of there. Follow what I tell you and you’ll be back home soon, I promise.”

I grabbed my spear and was about to leave when I caught sight of a diagram on the stone wall. A square layout of parallel and perpendicular lines, almost like a maze, roughly sketched onto the wall.

Wait a minute, is that THIS maze?

Perhaps, but the structure was bafflingly complex and didn’t seem to follow any sort of logic or reason. To me it just seemed a mindless mess of lines and crosses, although which occasionally resembled familiar letters or numbers. An “H,” a “2,” the entire northeast corner even resembled a complete “1337,” but that was probably just me trying to make sense of random scribbles.

I sighed and headed back out the narrow winding hallway.

“Soldier?”

“Copy that. One more thing: did…did something happen to my hand? I think I remember you telling me something about…blood? And Argent?”

“I’ve just finished running some diagnostics on your systems. Your left hand’s Hemokinetic Field module is up and running.”

“That sounds important.”

“I should hope so. Spend a little of your core’s Argent energy to siphon enemy blood and repair your injuries? Courtesy of the Union Aerospace Corporation. Doesn’t get much better than that.”

Reaching the end of the corridor which opened back onto the chamber, I slowly peeked around the corner. There was something at the far end of the channel. I briefly caught sight of a huge and pale slug-like shape staring dead at me before rushing away with its many legs.

“Of course, results in the field may vary.”

“I can’t stay here for too long, Colonel. Get me to the next portal. I need to keep moving.”

“Copy that.”

* * *

The Doom Slayer soared into the sanguine sky, leaping off from one dark continental shard floating in the emptiness to the next. The sponge-like fragments were riddled with massive holes and tunnels, the work of Basilisks feeding on the remains of countless worlds, and the Slayer kept a sharp lookout for any sudden movement. He could deal with demons slashing or shooting at him, but the experience of being swallowed whole had always been an exceedingly unpleasant one.

He would have preferred to navigate the region with the Praetor Suit’s Thruster Array. That way he wouldn’t need to expend conscious power and focus to manipulate the abstract environment for the mere act of traversal, but he made do with his jump pack.

He disliked flying. Moving without the use of his legs always felt so unnatural. The firm sensation of ground beneath his feet, even the unholy grounds of Hell, was far more preferable.

Looking down from the summit of a yawning precipice, he could see a river of blood snaking through a forest of dark boney trees at the base of the sheer mountainside, where the automap indicated the resource stache. He leapt off the cliff and slid down the surface, coming to a halt at the place marked by his automap.

image [https://i.imgur.com/7OfKKAv.jpg]

The Slayer raised his eyebrows.

He’d been expecting a meager shelter constructed by some unfortunate travelers, maybe some simple sigils to keep local beasts away.

He was not expecting a small fleet of black rune-inscribed dropships stationed beneath the cover of a Hellish forest, and certainly not ships bearing the UAC logo.

He’d never seen these kinds of UAC ships before. There were five small craft, some twenty meters long, positioned in a ring around what was a makeshift camp. There were runes of protection etched on the vessel’s hulls to shield the camp from the infernal elements, as well as runes of concealment to hide them from most unwanted sights.

The Slayer could tell the protection runes weren’t properly implemented, which explained the dead bodies inside the camp and the twisted figures outside of it, but they would have lasted long enough to enable a small expedition. And although long since destroyed, there were the remains of space-time continuum generators to maintain a bubble of reasonably stable space-time.

It was almost impressive.

He grabbed his .45 pistol and casually fired at the once-human atrocities shambling towards him, horrific contortions of flesh and bone. Some retained a vague humanoid shape but wore their thin sinewy skin like a veil over their seared flesh and liquefied factions, multiple extraneous limbs reaching for him. These were merely Damned, those who had lost themselves to Hell’s power and retained no semblance of intelligence, condemned to wander the wastes for all eternity. But there were also Apostates, engorged figures who carried within the capricious souls of those they had condemned.

These groaned at the sight of the Slayer and painfully shuffled towards him, desperate to be freed from their torment. The Damned fell with a single bullet to the head and crumbled into ash on the ground but the Apostates exploded on death and released swarms of Ricti, black Lost Souls that spat fireballs at the Slayer. The Slayer took care to avoid the incoming projectiles as he eliminated the creatures with little heed.

The Slayer expected munitions and other supplies inside the camp, but he left two Damned alive in case he needed to restock with his chainsaw.

Entering the camp’s protected perimeter, the first thing the Slayer did was head for the autocannon mounted on the fallen heavy infantry mech at the edge of the camp. He cautiously studied the weapon’s structure before ripping it from the mech’s hands, watching as his Praetor Suit retrofitted its components into something he could manually fire.

DELTA-12 30 MM CHAINGUN ACQUIRED

AMMO TYPE – BULLETS

PRIMARY MODE – AUTOMATIC FIRE AFTER SPINNING UP TO FULL SPEED

SECONDARY MODE – NONE

NOTE: ROUNDS FIRED ARE PIERCING AND INCENDIARY; EACH ROUND COSTS 2 BULLETS

This. Now this was a weapon, thought the Slayer as he contemplated the weight of the gun in his hands, a wicked grin spreading inside his helmet. His rocket launcher worked just fine, but there were few sensations more satisfying than the recoil of a machine gun and the sound of raining lead. Or tungsten, in this case.

Putting his new tool away into his Suit’s storage matrix for the time being, the Slayer entered the main settlement, noticing the remains of another four mechs. Clearly not enough for this ill-fated expedition. He climbed aboard the nearest of the wrecked ships, curious to see if there was anything he could do with the interdimensional drive.

Well, the Slayer thought as he looked over the defunct apparatus, the drive had certainly once been mid-twenty-second-century state-of-the-art UAC technology, but Hell’s reality had corrupted its components beyond recognition. The drive was covered with a thick layer of blackish rust etched with gnarled symbols and nail scratch marks, and its insides were a fused mess of amalgamated wiring.

His Praetor Suit… It itself may be damaged, but was there anything his Praetor Suit could do?

He kneeled closer to the corroded drive and ran a deep systems scan with the Suit.

RUNNING ANALYSIS…PROCESSING…

ANALYSIS COMPLETE: FAILURE

DRIVE IS TOO CORRUPTED TO REPAIR OR REVERSE ENGINEER

The Slayer briefly hesitated before punching the drive in frustration.

He stepped outside of the ship and contemplated what to do next when he began to hear a low whispering. Nothing unusual, considering his whereabouts, but he could hear faint words and lines of human dialogue. It must have been the impressions of the human travelers, imprinted into the physicopsychic Hellscape. The Slayer widened his senses, focusing on the ghostly images of the UAC workers coming into view.

There were a few dozen figures performing various tasks such as unloading cargo from the ships, mounting equipment for operation, standing guard in various weaponized mechs. The majority of the travelers were workers, their envirosuits etched with personal sigils of protection, but there were also basic exploratory droids, and a number of strange robotic figures.

They looked like Hayden. Their color scheme was black-and-red instead of white-and-blue, they had Hellish sigils blazing on their chests, and a demonic outline with clawed hands and sharp edges, but they bore uncanny resemblance to the Martian Director. What were they? Cyborgs? Robots? Or something else? The Slayer quickly glanced around the camp for any sign of these figures. He found the remains of the scouting droids, but the larger sinister figures were nowhere to be seen.

Putting them out of his mind for the time being, the Slayer focused on the four human guards dressed in red armor among the travelers, keenly watching over the settlement in combat gear and carrying…what the hell were they carrying?

Those weren’t firearms the Slayer was familiar with; they were glossy black rifles with angular faceted surfaces and multi-pronged barrels. Were those some new type of plasma gun? They were branded with the UAC logo and clearly made for human hands, but the Slayer wondered if they too were reverse-engineered from Hellish artifacts.

Extracting infernal Argent energy, cybernetically augmenting demons, intentionally demonizing humans, even creating weaponry from Hell technology. What else was the UAC doing? What was the goal of all this?

Was this the work of the Lazarus Project?

With a furious scowl, he turned his attention to what the travelers were saying.

“Continuum generators online. Camp-wide Hayden Field up and running at ninety-nine point seventy-eight percent capacity.”

“Doctor Hayden won’t accept those parameters.”

“It’s within the margin of error, it’s acceptable.”

Wait, Hayden had accompanied this expedition?

The Slayer turned to the rest of the camp to search for Hayden when he spotted his cybernetic frame standing head, shoulders, and chest above the others, beneath the shadow of a sixth ship that had been parked at the center of the camp. He was taller than the Slayer expected, a full three meters in height from head to toe.

Arrogant asshole.

“Doctor Hayden, all preparations are complete. The camp is secure. Standing by for your orders.”

“Are the field generators fully operational?”

“There is slight variation in the Calabi-Yau manifold output, but it’s within the margin of error.”

“There is no margin of error for this operation. I trust the generators will be operating at maximum capacity by the time I return.”

“Of course, Director.”

“Echo Squad,” Hayden spoke as he turned away from the worker, “get to the command ship and begin Phase Two. We head to the tomb at once.”

Tomb? What tomb?

The faint reflections of Hayden and two of the red guards stepped aboard the sixth ship and vanished, but the Slayer was affixed on the object that had lay hidden behind Hayden’s frame. His focus returned to the present, and the rest of the travelers’ impressions faded into silence.

It was a sword. A white longsword with a thick crossguard, black edge, and cracked blade, embedded into the ground in the center of a vivid blue bonfire. The sapphire flames gently lapped and rolled against the blade and hilt, but these suffered no harm. It was Purefire, a cleansing force whose rival was that which blazed across the Hellscape, but the Slayer was focused on the Argenta longsword, recognizing the campsite as the final resting place of a Night Sentinel warrior.

And he would know, for it was he who’d laid them to rest.

The memories of him holding the broken bodies in his arms as he shouted at the Heavens in anguish flooded his mind, and his endless fury became marred with a long-forgotten sorrow, and a guilt as sharp and piercing as the sword before him.

When Argent D’Nur fell, it was he who tracked down his fallen Sentinel brothers, scattered across Hell by devilish treachery, and laid their bodies to rest.

Every last one. Because the one responsible for their deaths was him.

The Slayer approached the sword, ignoring the Purefire scorching through his armor and searing at his soul. He reached out and hesitated before placing his hand upon the pommel.

To his surprise, the sapphire flames immediately siphoned into the blade and passed into his outstretched hand before being absorbed by his body. His HEALTH rose from 62 to 100 and the bonfire vanished to leave nothing but the faintly glowing sword smoldering in the ground.

Just as he pondered what had happened, a new apparition manifested before him, one even paler and more ethereal than those of the UAC workers he’d witnessed.

It was the spirit of the fallen Night Sentinel. The spirit said nothing, standing calmly before the Slayer.

He recognized the distinct presence of the warrior. Gor had been his name, soldier of the 31st Legion, obstinate and relentless till the end. After breaking his blade on a pack of Hellions, he had slain another two score with his hands before falling.

He remembered them all.

The spirit of Gor then moved, raising an arm to point in a direction far into the distance. The Slayer focused on where the warrior pointed.

His sight fell upon a deceased Black Pyramid hidden away deep within the Blood Keep, a monolithic entity of glass and stone. Devious things which the Slayer vehemently hated, but he spotted the exceedingly powerful seals of containment – now broken – placed over the Pyramid, and the UAC ship docked at a breach in its surface. The sixth ship!

The Pyramid must be the tomb for whatever Hayden had personally come to Hell looking for, and whatever portal mechanism they had established must be how the cyborg returned to the mortal universe. If Hayden had returned, then so could he.

The spatial coordinates must be set to Mars and the temporal coordinates must likewise be sometime recent. He might be wrong, or the portal might no longer be functional, but it was leagues better than nothing.

The Slayer brought his focus back to his location and the spirit of Gor. The fallen warrior placed a fist over his heart in salutation before lightly bowing his head and vanishing. His HUD pinged with an automap notification. He opened the region map to find the Black Pyramid marked at the other end of the sector. His new objective.

With newfound purpose, the Slayer quickly turned around and hurried throughout the camp, picking up serviceable supplies while his Praetor Suit synthesized ammo from any viable resources. Plasma cells, bullet belts, a case of rockets, fresh grenades and mines, and a full stock of batteries for the chainsaw. Most of the workers’ armors were too corrupted to be of use, but one of the infantry mechs had just enough plating to reward the Slayer with 75 ARMOR, and a combination of medical supplies and natural Argent energy deposits boosted his HEALTH to 153.

Restocked, recharged, and with a new heavy weapon in his arsenal, the Slayer turned to the two Damned he’d left wandering outside the camp. He pulled out his new D12 chaingun and spun the barrels up, taking aim at the Damned.

He paused for a moment, focusing on the whirring of the weapon and the vibration of its motor, before changing his mind and taking his finger off the trigger. He put the chaingun away and instead killed the Damned with a Blood Punch.

* * *

“Colonel, where’s that big thing?”

“Eh…your location’s structure is interfering with the readings, I can’t get a clear lock. It doesn’t seem like its following you yet, but it damn certain knows you’re there.”

“Affirmative.”

I took careful steps across the ankle-deep pools of that cursed place, ever wary of invisible pits beneath the murky fluid or of shapes that may suddenly leap out from the many branching tunnels. I focused on not staring for too long into those dark halls or into the ground material slowly oozing out from channels in the walls.

There was the sound of splashing echoing around the corner. I carefully peeked around to find a horrendous thing – like a hunched long-limbed skeleton covered with hanging strips of bloody sinews – violently thrashing across the puddles and snapping at a small spider-like critter desperately hopping away. I leaned myself a bit further for a better view and the larger creature immediately turned and stared in my direction. Its head was devoid of eyes with only two empty sockets piercing through my soul, and I noticed the long sharp beak attached to its bony head. In fact, with its low hunched stature, clawed feet, and long sinewy arms that resembled wings, the thing was not unlike some sort of hellish vulture.

“AAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHH!”

Its harsh shriek brought me to full alert and I jumped out from behind the corner with spinning machine guns and hands ready to throw fireballs. I opened fire on it but it rushed out of the way with surprising speed, clinging to the walls with its long bony limbs and splashing liquid to throw off my aim. It swung its arm and threw the hanging sinews in my direction, the fleshy rinds striking hard as bullets and prompting my overshield to trigger.

“Ugh! Vulgar piece of-!”

I readied a fireball and threw it at the thing, which hit its mark and set it on fire. The creature howled and thrashed as it splashed across the puddles trying to put itself out, but the sinister flames only spread across its hanging viscera and engulfed it entirely. Grimacing in disgust, I readied another fireball and launched it at the creature again. The fireball hit and the thing burst apart into bony fragments burning throughout the dark puddles, its head bobbing silently on the surface.

“Hissssss…”

A malicious hissing drew my attention above and behind me. There was something fluttering through the air close to the ceiling, but it was concealed in the shadows and I couldn’t spot it.

“AAAHHH!”

A glob of green slime suddenly struck me from in the direction of the hissing. It sizzed on my overshield and hardened into a scaly crust before flaking off, restricting my movement while on my chassis.

“Damn you!”

I switched to my flak cannons and fired blindly into the shadows while throwing fireball after fireball at the ceiling. It wasn’t long before something got hit and dropped lifelessly to the puddles.

“Aoooo…”

The new sound echoed all around and sent shivers up my spine. It was a dozen of those wicked figures I’d seen earlier, snake-like with stubby arms and round gaping mouths, slowly floating out of the hallways as far as I could see. They were scraggy and thin, but their numbers were concerning and the mob was not backing down. The one nearest to me growled menacingly and I could see flames rising through its maw.

“OooOH SHI-!”

I triggered my dash jets to move out of the way of the fireball, but it curved through the air and struck my overshield. It turned red and I realized I couldn’t take many more hits.

“John! Get out of there!”

I switched to machine guns and opened fire on the mob with piercing rounds, backing away rapidly to dodge the slow but tracking projectiles they spat.

“Above you!”

I looked up to find a swarm of small round creatures flutter out from recesses in the ceiling. They had leathery skin, small finger-like protrusions on their undersides, and a long smoking snout filled with wide flat teeth. Their swollen bodies had no other features and they almost resembled disembodied heads.

I recognized them as the creatures like the one that had spat the green slime at me, so I switched to my longer-ranged missile launchers and launched several volleys at the approaching swarm while hurrying away deeper into the maze. Another glob struck me and my overshield burst with a shockwave that knocked the closest creatures back, but the rest kept advancing and I took several hits directly to my body. The slime burned and slowed me down while the fireballs blasted through my chassis.

“AAAHHH!”

“Your Hemokinetic Module! Use it to heal your wounds!”

Of course! That blood-siphoning thing that Colonel Johnson had brought online! I held my left hand out and channeled my mana into it, watching in amazement as crackling scarlet beams burst from my fingers and electrified the nearest floating creature. The thing groaned as blood was ripped from its body and was focused through the beam to me, mending my wounds and repairing my chassis.

“Sweep the beam across them! It’ll stun them that way!”

My mana was running low but I did as the Colonel ordered, sweeping the beam across the horde while sprinting away. All the beasts struck by the beam halted momentarily as scarlet bolts arced across their bodies, giving me time to back away and steal their blood simultaneously.

My mana was out but I was fully restored.

I switched back to my machine guns but this time toggled to explosive rounds and opened fire on the mob. The machine gun configuration had much faster projectiles and firing rate than the missile launchers, thinning the horde out much quicker.

Suddenly my guns stopped shooting.

“Huh? What’s happening?”

Stolen story; please report.

“Your machine guns’ ammo pools are dry! They have to regenerate! But your mana is coming back!”

“Hell yeah! Let’s light these bastards up!”

I primed my hands in preparation for a flame wave and was about to release the spell when a haunting bellow echoed through the halls.

“ROOOOAAAAHHHH!!”

Immediately the multitude dispersed in a dozen different directions, with the flying critters hurrying away to recesses in the ceiling while the floating beasts slowly fled down the many corridors.

“Johh, the big thing’s moving! It’s headed right for you!”

“WHAT THE- WHERE IS IT? WHERE DO I GO?”

“-straight ahead! Turn around! Go back! Go back!”

I stood still for a few moments in utter confusion before I heard the sound of heavy splashing ahead and spotted something large and pale in the distance rushing down the tunnel straight for me.

Failing to even shout in mind-numbing terror, I simply turned around and ran for dear life. Everything became a ceaseless blend of identical corners and hallways, and the sounds of splashing, roaring, and Colonel Johnson’s profane shouting all blended together into a cacophony of madness.

There was a gate! An actual door sealing off a section of the maze! I didn’t know if the gate could be opened but the splashing was getting closer, and the door seemed just low enough to allow me to enter. Beneath the splashing I could hear the panting of whatever was chasing me.

Something landed on the puddles not far behind, then something else to my right. Without warning, something struck my back and brought me to a lurching halt.

“Oof!”

I turned around to find a mass of thick mucus sticking me to the ground and completely preventing my escape. I tore at the mass with my hands but it was almost completely solid.

“ROOOOAAAAHHHH!!”

Desperate, I pulled my knife out and slashed at the ropey tendrils. It worked. I freed myself from my bindings and continued to run like hell.

I was almost there, just a bit further. I used my dash jets to zigzag while running as something kept spitting mucus in my direction. I primed my machine guns ready to blast the gate apart but astoundingly it slid open as I approached.

“Uggghhh AAAAAAHHHHHH!!”

I fired my dash jets and soared through the opening with outstretched arms. I lost my balance in the leap and landed hard on my arms, sliding across the floor a considerable distance but I’d made it.

The gate slid shut behind me.

SLAM!

Something heavy crashed against the door, sending tremors through the floor and rattling my vision, but the gate did not break or open.

“ROOOOAAAAHHHH!”

I looked up in search of an escape route. Nothing. There were intricate sculpted patterns on the walls to contrast from the mostly plain corridors outside but the room was a dead end.

I was trapped.

SLAM SLAM! SLAM!

Whatever was outside was clearly pissed off and trying desperately to break in, but I guessed I was safe for the moment. The thing growled and I heard its heavy footsteps slink away, but I knew better than to go outside and check.

All right, let’s consider our options. Small room, dead end. Big angry thing outside. Probably too big to take down before it eats me…if I can take it down at all, that is. This is Hell, the thing might decide it doesn’t give a shit about bullets.

I sighed and slumped against the wall.

What about spells? Flame wave hits har- no, same thing. Don’t know if I can hurt the thing at all. I could just be throwing spitballs before it catches up to me.

Ugh…I’m screwed.

I half-heartedly slammed the wall in exhaustion, which to my surprise moved under the pressure from my hand.

“What?”

I turned to where my hand had landed. It seemed like an ordinary section of wall with the same repeating rectangular pattern…

No. No, it’s not repeating!

Standing up straight for a better look, I realized that the sculpted patterns were actually thin rectangular structures that made up the surface of the room’s walls, minus the floor, ceiling, and the wall containing the entry gate. Although attached to the walls, the pieces were mobile and could be slid across the surface.

“What is this, some kind of control panel? A lock, maybe?”

I took my hands off the pieces since I didn’t know what would happen if I changed their layout, and turned to the wall opposite the entry door. It looked identical to the other two; square with parallel and perpendicular lines which occasionally resembled-

“My God! It’s the square diagram from the tunnel!”

It was the marked scribbles that I’d seen earlier inside that low tunnel. The wall was almost a perfect recreation, except some of the pieces were off. Some of them were twisted the wrong way or placed on other parts of the maze.

Wow, I can…remember that etching perfectly. Wish I could remember literally anything else too.

Something roared in the tunnel behind me. I sure as hell wasn’t going back out now. But perhaps, I could go further in.

“Are you sure you wanna be messing with that?”

“Got no other choice.”

All right. This piece went the other way, I thought as I twisted one of the components on the wall to resemble the maze back in the tunnel.

This thing…gotta slide it over here. This part resembled an “H” … And these three pieces were interlocked.

“Don’t forget the section in the left middle, the one that looked like a 2.”

“Oh right, right.”

I slid those pieces and stood back. Nothing happened.

“…Hmm.”

“You sure you got the whole thing right?”

“I…it looks exactly the same!

Damn! I really thought I had it.”

“What about the northeast corner?”

I looked up. The northeast corner was fine-

“Ugh. I missed the part that looks like a 1337.”

“‘Exactly the same,’ was it?”

“Shut up.”

I reached up to organize the last corner.

1. 3. 3… 7.

All the components at once sank into the wall as light gleamed between their gaps, and with a deep rumbling the entire wall slid back and slowly rose to reveal a previously hidden space.

“Ohh…OHH.”

The gate opened into a vast chamber that stretched much wider and taller than any other I’d seen within the maze. The chamber was lined with towering statues depicting some race of thin gaunt beings; these had long snake-like abdomens instead of legs, and a peculiar pair of tentacles at their sides that branched into many smaller arms, each with what looked like hands. Their faces were strange but nothing horrific. In fact, all of the statues were sculpted to appear dressed in gowns, these adorned with symbols and other glyphs. But this wasn’t what horrified me.

The whole chamber was littered with the bodies of these beings, each about the size of a person, entire multitudes covering almost every available inch of floor.

“Good Lord in Heaven.”

They were all dead. Even though the statues depicted them as slender creatures, their corpses were dreadfully emaciated and difficult to look at, their eye sockets gaping and their dry skin stretched over their bones. This skin was a nauseating shade of deep purple, although the occasional hues of blue and green hinted they might have been more vivid in life. There were the remains of clothing, tools, and other implements on their bodies and vicinities, and as I looked back at the statues I realized their true nature.

“These…these aren’t demons. They were…”

“Aliens?”

“People. They were a people like us. Maybe not human but, this was a civilization. This was their home. Somehow this whole place, whatever it was, got sucked into Hell whole. With them still in it.”

Colonel Johnson painfully sighed.

“Rest their souls, the poor bastards.”

There were children here too.

I figured they were children, due to their smaller stature and simpler features. In contrast to the grown-ups’ complex branching arms, those of the children were plain with few or no branches, but they still held on to their parents with what few hands they had.

I stopped.

There were three bodies huddled together: two adults and one child. The child cowered against the body of one parent while the other parent held the two within its arms, still trying to shield them with its body and with as many hands it could.

I stared at the sorry sight for a time before I could feel something rising inside me.

I was furious. Furious that I was in Hell. Furious that I was trapped in a maze. Furious that an intelligent species, one of who-knows-how-many, fell to this world and their citizens perished with nothing they could do about it, their people still trying to save their children from oblivion.

I clenched my fists, ignoring the pain and the sparking produced.

“-hn! JOHN!”

I sharply gasped.

”Leave it. There’s nothing you can do for them now.”

I heavily sighed. The Colonel was right.

“ROOOOAAAAHHHH!”

Oh yeah, I’m furious at that thing too. Whatever it is.

“What the hell is that?”

“What?” I turned around but noticed immediately what the Colonel meant.

“THAT.”

image [https://i.imgur.com/cvyl0yW.png]

It was an eyeball. A freakish glowing eyeball in the middle of the chamber floating atop a small pedestal, which I could swear had not been there when I entered the room. It was a strange thing a glassy orb the size of a billiard ball with a bright red outside and an intense blue iris, and a faint red shining through the pupil. The eye had a sort of ghostly nature and was somewhat hard to see.

And it was watching me.

I circled around it and the eye tracked my movement. I stopped and turned in the opposite direction, and the eye followed. Whatever it was, this blurry artifact creeped me the hell out.

“I don’t trust that thing one bit, soldier.”

“Neither do I. But I want to know what it is.”

The eyeball began to shine brighter.

“You’re not actually suggesting you’re going to touch that, are you?!”

“It’s either this or that big thing out there.”

“John! Do you not see all these dead bodies surrounding the VERY OBVIOUS OBJECT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROOM? Take a wild guess what happened to them!”

“These beings likely died from unshielded exposure to Hell’s reality, something that clearly hasn’t happened to me yet. Whatever that thing is, I can handle it.”

“John, listen to me! You are not invincible! You’re not an unstoppable killing machine, you’re a walking bag of technical problems! A highly experimental, highly unstable and virtually untested combat unit that shouldn’t even have been activated, much less still be alive.

Do you even know where you are, soldier? You’re in Hell! The most dangerous and unpredictable place known to mankind! Do you know what the UAC has documented in their expeditions here?

Beasts that suck your brains out through your nostrils, tar pools that trap you and gradually roast you alive, living crystals that envelop you and keep you alive in never-ending agony! One of the workers that trespassed a safety field was witnessed to be constantly dismembered and regenerated by an unseen force over and over again until they finally abandoned him! You seriously can’t expect to pick up every single thing that grabs your attention and acquire a shiny new power every single time!”

“You’re right, sir,” I said while walking over to the orb, electricity crackling on its surface. “The one stuck here in Hell is me. So the one that ultimately calls the shots is me, no?”

“STOP RIGHT THERE, SOLDIER! YOU ARE DEFYING A DIRECT ORDER FROM YOUR SUPERIOR COMMANDING OFFICER!”

The light from the eyeball was almost blinding.

“With all due respect, sir, I don’t give a damn.”

I stretched my hand out and touched the eyeball.

The spell broke as soon as I came into contact with the artifact, washing me in a wave of terror when I realized it had drawn me in without me even knowing. My vision flickered as my being was thrown through different levels of reality, each one more abstract and less real than the last.

I came to a lurching halt and saw a multitude before me, stoic and impassive in their ageless wait and with minds as strange and alien as their bodies.

They were not like me. They did not recognize me.

The third eyes on their foreheads opened. Bright, glaring things with gazes as cold and piercing as steel, and everything went white.

I opened my eyes to find myself on the floor of the chamber, now empty. The eyeball and bodies were nowhere to be seen.

I coughed in exhaustion.

“Soldier? Are you all right?”

“…Wow. Yeah, I think I am.”

My sight was altered, though. I remained in the same chamber but everything appeared dim and ghostly, as if submerged deep underwater.

“My vision’s screwed but I’m all good.”

I put my hand forward to pick myself up.

I couldn’t see my hand.

I blinked in an attempt to clear my eyes. No, I could see my hand, it appeared translucent and almost invisible, as if made of incredibly clear glass. I turned to the rest of my body. It had the same quality.

“Colonel, you’re getting this, right?”

“Amazing. This is way beyond any cloaking tech I’ve ever seen. Your radiant and reflected energy levels are almost zero! Visible light, infrared, UV, radio, Argent, you name it! They’re practically nothing!”

“Wait, so I’m actually invisible? This is not just X-ray vision?”

“Negative, almost all environmental energy really is passing through you! How…why…? What are these readings I’m getting?

…Disassociation. You’ve become partially disassociated from Hell’s physical reality!”

“What do you mean? Like, phase shifting?”

“Yes! Phase shifting!”

“Not even the Elite Guards back at the Base had access to combat-grade phase shift tech.”

“This might not be an intentional design. It might be a side effect of whatever else that thing did to you. I’m going to run some diagnostics and -”

“Wait, wait. I feel it’s wearing off.”

In a sudden flash, I snapped back to reality and my normal vision returned. I checked to make sure I was in one piece. My chest, my legs, my arms. My hands, with the sharp prongs of the Hemokinetic Module on one palm and a red-and-blue eyeball on the other.

“AAAAAAHHHHHH!!”

The eyeball was on my hand! Embedded in my right hand and staring right at me!

“GET OFF GET OFF GET OFF!!”

In my alarm I channeled some of my mana into my hand. The eye shone and I flashed back into partial disassociation.

The eye…the eye is making me phase shift. Wha- How- Why?

I breathed heavily as I waited for the effect to wear off, which occurred again after a few moments. I grimaced before looking at my right hand, still desperately wishing that what I’d seen was just a hallucination from my rattled brain.

“Uhhh?” I cracked one eye open. The eyeball was still there.

“Ohhh....”

“Is it a bad moment to say ‘I told you so’?”

I spun my hand around. The eye was visible from both sides and kept its gaze on me as I moved it around.

“That’s it.” I pulled the bronze dagger from my waist and raised it above my clenched arm. “I’m cutting the whole damn thing off!”

“WOAH WOAH WOAH STOP!”

I forcefully gripped the knife and brought it down towards my other arm, but I stopped before the blade even touched me. Not out of indecision or because of Colonel Johnson’s insistence, but because the artifact was speaking to me.

“Huh?’

…

“Soldier?”

…

“John, what’s wrong?”

“The eyeball, sir. It’s whispering. I can hear it in my head. It’s talking to me.”

“What’s it saying?”

I could feel a distinct presence acting on my mind, nudging me with thoughts and feelings not entirely my own. Fear, sorrow, loneliness, anger. If it spoke with words and definite language, I could not understand them, but I received vague sensations, feelings, and ideas that revealed its intent.

“Those beings that lived here, they died when their world was absorbed into Hell. Their bodies perished but they somehow managed to… preserve their souls within that orb, that…blur artifact.”

They say that the survivors who tried to escape were killed, killed by a monster that hunted them all down.”

A fleeting image of the creature flashed across my mind. Pinkish-grey skin oozing with slime, with sinew and blood vessels throbbing on the surface. I grimaced.

“It’s the monster. The big monster that’s roaming around this place.

They want revenge. Revenge against the creature that trapped them here and killed their people off.

They’ll lend me their strength. They want to help me.”

The Colonel said nothing. I continued to stare at the eye while ignoring the shivers it gave me, returning the same curious gaze with which it studied me. Strange and alien, but curious nonetheless.

“How do we know we can trust it?”

The eye stared at me for a moment before emitting a peculiar glow.

“Uhhh!”

I winced as a piercing sensation suddenly fell upon my head, not excruciating but a nonetheless uncomfortable feeling accompanied by a shrill whistling noise.

As soon as it appeared the sensation vanished, and my mind felt somehow different, a bit more proper. As if a detached wire had been plugged in or a faulty component fixed. I opened my eyes.

Floating in my visual field were a series of bright digital diagrams like those of a heads-up display. There were three vertical bars in my lower left field of view – blue, red, and green – besides the rough outline of a person.

“Wait. Wait, I know that! That’s a physical integrity display like those on the mechs back at Mars!

Ha ha! That’s me, isn’t it?” I asked the alien eyeball. “That’s my physical integrity!”

The eyeball made a sudden bobbing motion, almost as if it were nodding.

“Ha ha! I thought my augmentations would include some type of heads-up display! Didn’t know why it wasn’t working!

That blue bar must be my overshield, and the red one should be my actual chassis. But what’s the green one?”

There was a small icon besides the green bar, what appeared to be a flaming skull.

“That’s my…that’s my Skullfire spell! That’s my current spell!”

I switched to Flame Wave and the icon changed to a wall of fire. I released the spell into the room and the green bar went down as my Argent energy reserves were used.

“That’s my mana reserves! Sick!”

I was ecstatic that I could finally track my resources instead of gauging them blindly. I turned to the display on my lower right, a set of five orange horizontal bars besides the icon of a machine gun. Curiously, the last two bars appeared darker than the other three.

“That’s my current weapon and ammo pools, but why are the last two bars darker…

The empty weapon modules! I can still add two more weapon systems to my platforms, that’s why!

And what’s this thing?”

The last display was on my upper left field, a circle with a bright center point that produced spreading waves. It reminded me of-

“Radar! That’s my radar device! Or…what is it, Colonel? A motion tracker?”

“Your chassis does include a short-range radar system that tracks nearby movement and maps the local environmental structure, yes.”

“Ha ha! Now we’re cooking with gas!

What do you think, Colonel? Should we keep this thing or not?”

Colonel Johnson remained silent for a moment before finally sighing.

“Your call, soldier.”

I clenched my fists, and the eye gleamed with anticipation.

“Let’s do this.”

* * *

“Taylor, why the hell aren’t we moving?!”

Rogers’ harsh shouting snapped Ruby back to her senses.

“We’ve got a problem here! Our navigation systems are being jammed! We can’t launch!”

“WHAT?”

The Lieutenant loudly trampled over to the shuttle cabin.

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN WE CAN’T LAUNCH?”

Rogers’ gaze drifted to the error message on the dashboard, standing in stunned silence for several seconds before he managed to respond.

“WHAT THE HELL’S THE MEANING OF THIS?”

“The air control network’s offline and the shuttle’s nav computer is down-”

“ARE YOU SAYING WE’RE STUCK HERE, IS THAT IT?”

Romero stepped into the cabin.

“What’s going on here?”

“WE CAN’T LAUNCH! WE’RE GROUNDED! WE’RE STUCK HERE WITH THOSE THINGS HUNTING US DOWN AND OUR THUMBS UP OUR ASSES!”

An anxious Reeves was drawn in by the commotion.

“Is it true?! We can’t fly?!”

Ruby sighed in exasperation and brought her face down to her hands as her racing thoughts drowned out the raucous sounds of discussion.

If the Base-wide flight network was down there was nothing they could do about it. They might be able to get the shuttle’s computer back online for manual control but only if they removed the source of interference, the foreign signal which jammed its navigation systems.

Which originated in the Lazarus Labs. The source of this entire disaster and without a doubt the most infested sector in the entire planet. They’d be dead long before they even set foot in the Labs.

They’d even left their helmets back at the lab entrance, only Ruby still wore her own. ‘Leave them,’ she said when the demons arrived as they prepared to stretch their legs. It wouldn’t have been a problem had they taken off for the Spaceport, docked with an escape ship and taken off, but that was no longer possible. Their only hope of escape was to head into the heart of enemy territory. Without helmets.

Harrison was dead. She’d seen their dark magic on his legs before he perished; it had passed through his armor and crippled his ability to run.

They exploited his arthritis. Induced it, amplified it. They used it to kill him.

She recalled how her pulse rifle had failed to fire right before his death. She’d dismissed the incident as the clip running empty and there being no time to reload, but curious she brought her firearm over for closer examination.

Ruby’s heart sank when she discovered the clip was not only half full, but that the pulse rifle’s shell was already engraved with several fiery symbols. There were only a few but the corruption would surely spread and get worse. If that incident had simply been a misfire, before long the rifle would become useless, or worse, a hazard to Ruby herself.

No. No, this can’t be happening.

All of them were potential points of failure. Reeves had rust lung, Romero had heart problems, Rogers was a walking powder keg, and Ruby’s entire capacity depended on a flimsy piece of metal and plastic embedded in her brain that was just short of expired. She could feel her focus waning by the second, her mind filling with static like a glass with boiling water.

The team’s equipment was failing. Their bodies were failing, and judging by the deranged shouts behind her, their minds were starting to as well. If they didn’t figure something out, it wouldn’t matter if the demons found them or not, because they’d already be dead regardless.

She had no idea what to do.

“Agent! Agent!”

It was Romero.

“You need to get a word out. Send a message to your command and get immediate evac on our position. Say what you have to, anything it takes! It’s the only way we make it out in time.”

Ruby sighed in defeat as she rested her face on her hand.

“There is no evac,” she quietly muttered.

Romero opened his mouth to respond but abruptly stopped.

“T-there…,” Reeves struggled to enunciate. “T-there is no-”

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN THERE IS NO EVAC?”

Ruby had had enough of Rogers’ attitude. She slammed her hand on the dashboard and stormed up from her chair to reply with a tone as cold and sharp as ice.

“I MEAN THERE IS NO ONE COMING TO GET US BECAUSE THERE IS NO ONE OUT THERE. EVERY HUMAN BEING THAT COULD HAVE HELPED US IS EITHER ONE OF THOSE THINGS OR DEAD.

THE ONLY ONES LEFT ARE VEGA AND THAT BASTARD HAYDEN, WHO WILL UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES ALLOW US TO LEAVE THIS PLANET.

WE ARE, IN EVERY POSSIBLE SENSE, ON OUR OWN.”

* * *

HERE LIES THE FINAL RESTING PLACE OF THE HELLWALKER, THE WARRIOR KHAN, THE SCOURGE OF HELL

KILLER OF GODS, SLAYER OF TITANS

THE ONE KNOWN AS THE DOOM SLAYER

HE LIES IN THE HEART OF THE BLACK PYRAMID BEYOND, VICTIM TO THE BLACK SACRIFICE THAT SUNDERED COUNTLESS KINGDOMS AND UNTOLD LEGIONS TO CONTAIN HIS INSATIABLE RAGE

MAY THE COST OF SUCH TERRIBLE SACRIFICE BE NOT IN VAIN

MAY SUCH FEARSOME POWER NEVER BE RELEASED

MAY THE DOOM SLAYER NEVER WAKE AGAIN

The Slayer keenly whistled.

That explained a few things.

He stood on a massive artificial construct floating among the dark mountains, its smooth black metallic surface etched with bright green symbols and fissures. Most obvious on the structure was the Slayer’s very own Mark, occupying the greater part of its face and veritably pulsating with the accumulated fear and dread of countless demons.

He frowned and lowered himself to the surface, placing his hand on the glowing Mark with curiosity. The manipulation of psychic energies wasn’t his specialty, but fear was a powerful tool and one that he knew better than to disregard.

He drew the psychic energies accumulated on the construct into his hand, focusing them into a single coherent nexus. The energies congealed and solidified, taking the form of a smooth black totem in the Slayer’s hand, engraved with his own blazing Mark.

NEW POWER-UP SYNTHESIZED – SLAYER IDOL

FILL MINDS AND HEARTS OF DEMONS WITH BLINDING TERROR

EFFECTS EXPIRE AFTER ONE MINUTE

FABRICATION COST – 4 CALIBRATION CYCLES

The physical manifestation of demons’ fear given form.

Besides the palpable terror imprinted on the marker, the Slayer could again make out the faint whispers of human conversation. He put the totem away into his Suit’s storage and widened his senses once more to make out the impressions of the human travelers.

It was Hayden and the two red guards, who’d landed on the great construct. The cyborg was closely inspecting the inscribed metallic surface while one of the guards tended to their companion, kneeled over in apparent pain. Suddenly, the healthy guard looked up and raced towards Hayden.

“Dr. Hayden! The continuum generators have failed and the camp’s metaphysical integrity has been lost! It’s gone, sir!”

“…The protective runes weren’t properly applied. Our time is running out.”

“What do we do now, sir?”

“Complete the mission. We abandon the camp, head to the tomb. We’ll set up the portal device there.

And leave him,” Hayden gestured towards the dying soldier as he climbed back onto the ship. “He’s useless now.”

“Sir.”

The images faded as the Slayer returned his focus to the now and to the remains of the deceased guard resting on the black metal, now little more than a charcoal-like mass melted onto the marker.

He squinted. There was a small scarlet halo spinning above the chest of the fallen guard. Walking over to it, he discovered it to be a protective sigil surrounding some sort of data chip which had been mounted within the guard’s chestplate. The chip was intact. The Slayer kneeled down and pulled the chip out from what remained of the guard, which trailed ash and a thick viscous substance.

So the red UAC guards had been to Hell, the Slayer mused as he dusted off the chip. They existed in low numbers, supervised a Hell expedition, carried unidentified weaponry, and even answered directly to Hayden, so presumably they were significant figures in Mars’ chain of command.

Sixty-one thousand people dead. A company didn’t get sixty-one thousand workers on a freezing poisonous death planet if they knew they could die at the hands of demons. And sure enough, there hadn’t been indications that the workers knew the true nature of what was happening on Mars, even if they were aware of strange occurrences. He was sure an excuse of “unexplained crossdimensional phenomena” must have placated most inquisitive minds. Shit, he himself had heard that excuse since before Phobos! Back when the UAC first claimed jurisdictional authority over Mars and its moons.

Hayden said the Mars Base provided energy for Earth, which he’d seen via the Argent Tower. The “Altar” to their “Faith.”

Opening the gates of Hell with the key to the future!

Hmmm. The Argent Tower was clearly a critical resource in the UAC’s energy process regardless, which wouldn’t be operated by average workers but special personnel. The “faithful advocates.” Advocates…who were taught about the demons? Recruited for classified experiments? Brought to Hell on manned expeditions? Whatever this faith was, few must have known it existed, with fewer still a part of it.

This Lazarus Project must have been the primary hub for the UAC’s Hell-related research on Mars. Directed by Olivia Pierce, overseen by Samuel Hayden. Without a doubt a highly classified and confidential division into which very few would be granted access, and the red guards were clearly a crucial part of it. The Slayer turned to the data chip in his hand. It resembled a key.

He casually raised an eyebrow and moved the chip into the Praetor Suit’s storage.

All things considered, the Slayer thought as he stood up, it was tremendously astounding that falling into the Martian Fracture had dropped him so close to the precise location in Hell he’d been entombed in. It was even more impressive that the UAC managed to find him, let alone successfully extract him. And Hayden even survived the trip! They could have never carried out this operation with twenty-second century man-made technology alone. The UAC must have come into possession of certainly powerful artifacts.

Someone must be watching over him.

The Slayer coolly dismissed the naive thought to bring up his automap. The display showed the great shadow of a Blood Storm with its eye over the Pyramid, and the Parasite Moons mindlessly drifting through their feeding grounds.

He aloofly scoffed. Blood Storm, Blood Knights, Blood Keep, blood this, blood that. No thanks to Abaddon, the most aggressive Elder God and the dominant power across the Shores of Hell. Devoted to war, senseless slaughter, and the spillage of blood. It was his warriors who most frequently breached into the mortal universe, and he was one of the few beings the Slayer had a personal animosity with.

Not that the other four were much better. He despised the filth which Beelzebub produced and his spawn spread everywhere, and just thinking about Mæphisto gave him a headache. Thankfully, the Slayer could tolerate the much more restrained reaches of the last three.

Except for her.

His pulse surged as he recalled her. Penetrating eyes, ensnaring black claws, pearly white fangs, and tender red lacerated flesh. Throbbing with desire, dripping with sin.

The Slayer scowled in disgust.

One day…one day he’d crush the hearts of the Elder Gods and watch the light fade from their eyes.

He turned his attention to the red icons situated around his position as displayed on the automap. A pack of dark and pyroimps would soon pass by the marker as they fled the Blood Storm. A non-concern. A nest of Hellions were also emerging from their nests in the sector’s planetary shards, long and savage demons that reminded him of centipedes.

If centipedes could reach upwards of four meters in length. Ugh.

Bugs were revolting but nothing he couldn’t deal with. Three mancubi slowly but surely closing in.

The Slayer raised an eyebrow.

Mancubi were big but he’d fought bigger. Nevertheless, he began calculating an optimal route he could use to cross the unstable environment.

And a swarm of adult Basilisks headed straight for him.

…Now that might be a problem.

The Slayer switched off the automap and equipped his assault rifle. He’d much rather take a long hot shower in the corrosive rain of a Blood Storm than have to deal with Basilisks, particularly in his currently weakened state. If he moved quickly, perhaps he could lose them in the storm.

But how would he cross it? The Praetor Suit and even his body could resist most of Hell’s destructive metaphysics but Blood Storms were immensely powerful. He’d never make it through unprotected before it killed him, and with a horde hot on his heels he wasn’t going to wait for it to pass. The only reasonable solution he could think of was…ugh. Not going to be pleasant.

He leapt off the marker and soared towards the next dark mountain floating in the sanguine sky, with harsh shrieks echoing behind him. Landing on the shattered landmass, the Slayer broke into a full-blown sprint as the imps arrived at his position. BANG! BANG! BANG! He opened fire but rushed past them without stopping, cleaving a path through their ranks and swerving around their fireballs as he headed for the next edge.

Something was about to emerge from the ground right as his feet. The Slayer charged a Blood Punch and swerved at the last possible second, dodging the leaping attack of viciously clawed Hellion as it emerged from the rocky soil and eviscerating it with the focused blow. POWW! He raced towards the edge of the mountain while strafing to avoid the leaping attacks of a dozen more Hellions and jumped off.

“ROAH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH!”

The Slayer spun around to find the serrated shape of an adult Basilisk, six hundred meters of scale and teeth, slithering through the sky towards him at full speed, its semi-physical body segments appearing and disappearing in sequential fashion as it warped across Hell’s reality. Its great maw, lined with row after row of black spiked teeth and flanked by massive mandibles, was wide open and reaching for him. Crimson bolts of arcane lightning crackled within its throat as fiery projectiles thundered from apertures in its body segments.

Suspended immobile by the Basilisk's cursed gaze

, The Slayer equipped his rocket launcher as fast as he could and shot a rocket into the Basilisk’s open mouth before remotely detonating it. BOOM!! The rocket exploded against its jaw, too weak to do any real damage but the Basilisk faltered and broke off its attack, changing trajectory away from the Slayer. He sped away from the veering monster but one of its launched fireballs struck him as it swerved, throwing him into the next continental shard and bringing his ARMOR down to 27.

Furious, the Slayer landed on the next landmass and continued running as soon as he hit the ground. The Basilisks would circle around, try to catch him by surprise around the edge or perhaps even tunnel through the mountain right beneath him, swimming through the solid rock as easily as a shark through water. He needed to keep moving if he wanted to avoid-

“ROOARR-WAAHH!”

A Mancubus.

The Slayer swerved at breakneck speed before he entered the festering territory of the hulking demon, a grotesque seven-meter-tall monstrosity and the greater Hellspawn of Beelzebub which aimed its arm cannons at him and unleashed a wave of flaming bile, filling the skies with noxious gas and reducing the chasing packs of imps to dark sludge on the Hellscape. He equipped his plasma rifle and opened fire at the giant beast as he ran to put distance between him and it. ZAP ZAP ZAP ZAP ZAP ZAP ZAP! The few plasmoids that hit did little damage to the demon’s thick armor. Only its small cycloptic head and grotesquely engorged, scarred stomach were left exposed. The Slayer leapt off towards the next mountain and glanced at the Mancubus as it opened a summoning circle from which two cacodemons drifted out. At once these turned towards the Slayer and began barraging his position with lightning strikes as the Mancubus launched flaming orbs, fast as missiles, which exploded in his wake and ate away at the very mountain with caustic bile.

Leaping into the open air, he switched to his new D12 chaingun and aimed the barrel. He put his hand on the handle, feeling the whirr of the motor for the briefest moment before pulling the trigger.

RATATATATATATAT!!

The sound was a cacophony of thunder, each round a fiery bolt of lightning that roared across the landscape and brought down the Slayer’s vengeance onto the vile creatures of Hell.

Thirty-millimeter, tungsten-forged, uranium-coated vengeance.

In another person’s hands, such rounds could take down an aircraft or puncture an armored vehicle.

In the Slayer hands, these rounds passed through the hides of Cacodemons and the thick armor of the Mancubus, shredding their internal organs and eviscerating the Cacos into moist blue meat as the Mancubus raised its arm cannons in a futile attempt to shield itself.

“ROOARR-WAAHH!”

He got distracted.

He neglected his surroundings and failed to notice the second Mancubus taking aim at him until it was too late. Its repugnant rockets soared through the sanguine sky and exploded against the Slayer.

0 ARMOR, 143 HEALTH.

FILTHY BAG OF FESTERING SHIT!!

The Slayer switched to his rocket launcher in fury and blasted round after round at the culprit demon, jumping off the mountain and towards the Mancubus to improve his aim. BOOM!! BOOM!! BOOM!!

He was just wasting ammo. Rockets were too slow for such a distance and even their blasts missed the monster.

“ROAH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH!”

Another Basilisk charged at the Slayer and he moved out of the way of its mandibles and paralyzing gaze, switching to and firing the chaingun to force the beast off its attack while taking care to avoid the fireballs launched from its body.

“ROOARR-WAAHH!”

He’d entered the putrid Hellscape surrounding the third and final Mancubus. He quickly equipped the autoshotgun and opened fire as the bile ate through his HEALTH, only narrowly avoided a stream of short-range but viciously caustic vomit from the demon as he sped away. A series of flame bursts from the corner of his eyes indicated the two new Mancubi had just summoned Cacos of their own.

A dark blot in the distance drew his attention. The snaking trickles of black rivers seeping into the Sanctum sky, like capillary tubes in tissue, as the Blood Storm encroached upon the region, lightning flashing across its deathly rains.

The situation was not faring well for the Slayer. He was unequipped to confront three mancubi on top of a Basilisk pack and the fractured environment was difficult to simply navigate.

Only one thing left to do.

He changed direction towards the nearest Mancubus while keeping an eye on an approaching Basilisk.

If there was a dirty trick the Slayer learned in the countless eons spent in Hell, it was that if he was outgunned, outnumbered, and outmatched…

The Mancubus aimed its arm cannons at the charging Slayer as the Basilisk opened its colossal maw.

…HE COULD ALWAYS MAKE THE DEMONS KILL EACH OTHER INSTEAD!

Taking care to avoid the bubbling pools of caustic offal in the demon’s vicinity, the Slayer raised his hand and launched a stun bomb at the monster, which struck and forced the creature into spasms of electrified agony. He jumped and clambered onto the demon’s shoulders before the stun wore off and forced his hand between the armored plates at the back of its neck, grabbing hold of the creature’s thick spinal cord. With simple but focused psionic commands, he forced the Mancubus to ignore him and raise its cannons to the charging Basilisk. The gargantuan beast obeyed and launched a wave of burning bile directly into the Basilisk’s open mouth. The serpentine monster broke off with a pained roar, its mouth and sides blazing with sickly yellow flames as the Mancubus’s filth ate through its shell.

Determined to get as much use as possible out of the Mancubus before it broke free of his psychic command, the Slayer turned it towards the rest of the demonic multitude. Another swell of flaming bile melted away imps and Cacodemons as even the mountain rotted away with putrescent decay. In his last moments of command, the Slayer forced the Mancubus to launch its missiles at its brethren. He caught the brief glimpse of the fireballs striking their two targets and the furious roar of the Mancubi before he leapt off his mount and rushed away through a bog of bile.

127 HEALTH.

Mancubi could resist the corrosive bile from their kin or themselves, but they were not invulnerable to damage in general and the three Mancubi were now inescapably infighting, and the injured Basilisk would coordinate with its pack to attack them as well. This diversion would give the Slayer enough time to complete his other reluctant goal: get the Basilisks to fight each other.

He turned his gaze to the nearest Basilisk, a monstrous beast snaking through the sky with its pack trying to get close to the Mancubi which rained all sorts of corrosive attacks on them. Their very bodies snaked through invisible planes of Hell’s reality, segments phasing and unphasing in sequential manner and leaving the caustic bile behind. This allowed them to control the limits of their injuries but also meant the Slayer couldn’t keep his grip if he aimed for the body.

If he wanted to grab a hold of a Basilisk, he thought as he eyed a trajectory and leapt off the Hellscape, he needed to go for the head!

He landed on his mark and dug his hands into one of the massive horns fringing the beast’s head. The bewildered beast violently shook and spun into the sky trying to shake him off, but the Slayer’s grip was like iron, and in its craze the Basilisk inadvertently struck a packmate with a mandible.

“ROAH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH!”

The offended beast reared around and slashed at his Basilisk with its great jaw, sending great chunks of shell and bloody tissue flying. The Slayer took the chance to jump off amidst the rain of organic debris before he got caught in the Basilisks’ brawl. He was headed straight for the Mancubi but noticed all three were heavily injured from their altercation, their exterior armor almost entirely eroded and their entrails festering in great steaming pools.

He grabbed one of the pieces of shell closest to him – a thick scale as large as him with viciously sharp edges – and flung it at the nearest Mancubi like a Hellish frisbee before equipping his chaingun. The scale struck the Mancubus on the shoulder and passed through shell and bone with no resistance, slicing the entire arm clean off. The monster roared in fury before the Slayer brought down a hail of incendiary armor-piercing rounds upon it. RATATATATATAT!! In a matter of moments the Mancubus exploded in a swell of shell, blood, and fire, its volatile entrails catching fire and blanketing the area in flaming fluids.

One down but the Slayer had twelve bullets left and there were still two Mancubi standing, now keenly tracking him with raised arms and fuming eyes. Best make them count!

Sticking the landing on the landmass, he switched to the HAR and stared down the tactical scope, charging a precision bolt and aiming for the armored plate on the second Mancubus’s chest. He did his best to avoid the blazing pools of bile from the first Mancubus, but his vision was limited as he lined up his shot and his HEALTH ticked down to 94. He locked his target and pulled the trigger. POW! The Mancubus unleashed a fresh wave of bile and he swerved hard to dodge it, and the shot strayed far into the nothing.

DAMN IT!

“ROOARR-WAAHH!”

The Slayer was drawing close to the Mancubus. He had six bullets left, enough for one more precision bolt. He raised the rifle again, aimed for the chest plate, and fired. POW! The shot hit and the Mancubus recoiled from the impact, its chest plate shattering to reveal a revolting beating heart covered with cysts and pustules.

His objective completed, the Slayer leapt at the Mancubus to close the distance as he brandished his chainsaw, swinging the blade across its scarred flabby stomach and setting loose a wave of blood, guts, and other unpleasant viscera upon himself. The Slayer grimaced in bitter revulsion, but the Praetor Suit turned the deluge of entrails into a deluge of munitions. Full bullets, plasma, and rockets.

The act of mutilation had cost only one of the chainsaw’s three batteries, clearly not enough to kill the Mancubus as it roared in deafening agony, but the Slayer had not intended it to in order to save the chainsaw. As the demon buckled in pain, the Slayer climbed onto it to reach into its gaping chest cavity, rip out its heart and shove it down its open mouth. The Mancubus groaned in tormented bewilderment before bursting in a blast of organs. 15 ARMOR, 113 HEALTH. The Slayer was covered in a fresh wave of steaming entrails but not before he grabbed one of the Mancubus’s arm cannons.

He promptly aimed the severed cannon towards the last remaining Mancubus and manually triggered it, blasting a swelling wave of flaming bile onto the demon. The Mancubus groaned as the bile ate through armor and flesh, melting them into thick blubbery sludge, but attacks of its own nature wouldn’t be as effective against it as they would be against other demons. The Slayer launched a fireball, and one after another, but Mancubi were tough and the Slayer’s stolen cannon was out of juice. He tossed the useless arm away as he glanced at the thundering black clouds rolling across the sky. The Blood Storm was almost on him. He was running out of time.

He turned to the Basilisk pack tearing themselves apart in the sanguine sky and grimaced as he raised a middle finger in their direction.

The nearest Basilisk roared in aggravation and broke off from the frenzy towards the Slayer. He eyed the beast as he strafed around the fireballs from the Mancubus. He only had one shot. He turned and Rampaged straight for the hulking demon.

The Basilisk opened its maw in a charging attack and the Mancubus shot a missile right at the Slayer.

Wait…wait…NOW!

The Slayer raised his Bracer at the last possible moment and cleanly caught the missile in his hand, immediately throwing it at the Basilisk. The fireball struck its side and the Basilisk roared as it switched target, turning away from the Slayer and towards the Mancubus which it thought had attacked. The Mancubus gazed upwards in briefest confusion before the Basilisk crashed into the mountain and swallowed the demon whole, with the Slayer firmly clenched to its mandible.

The Slayer clung to the back of the horn as the Basilisk burrowed through the landmass before crashing through the other surface. Half the sky was now beneath the black shadow and crimson lightning of the Blood Storm, which thundered and rained heavily against the Slayer’s body and senses, the flashes piercing through his eyes and the rain wearing down his ARMOR.

Even though a Basilisk’s shell had limited resistance against Blood Storms, they couldn’t navigate them. But the Slayer could with his automap. If he stole a bit of this Basilisk’s shell now, he could leap off it and lose it in the Storm. He forced his hands beneath one of the massive scales, positioned himself to get a stable footing, and pried it off with a rough heave.

“ROAH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH!”

With both hands gripping the scale the Slayer was thrown off as the beast threshed in fury. He firmly clenched the scale and raised it to shield himself from the deadly rain.

“ROAH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH!”

The Slayer turned to find a colossal and very indignant Basilisk charging for him, its mandibles open and crackling with malevolent hunger as it immobilized him in its cursed gaze.

Oh shit.

“ROAH AH AH-”

“ROOOOOOAAAAAAHHHHHH!”

Another Basilisk charged through the darkness and bit clean through the first one, striking at the base of the neck and severing its head from the rest of the body. The body segments sputtered in and out of physical being before finally solidifying and detaching in death, and the arcane energy in the Basilisk’s maw faded away until it was as dark as the Storm surrounding it. The second Basilisk let out one last echoing howl before slithering away into the distance.

The Slayer let out the sigh he hadn’t even realized he was holding in.

He brought up his automap one last time to check for enemies. All clear, and he studied the Blood Storm’s density between him and the Black Pyramid. There were a few pockets of lower density he could traverse to limit his exposure.

107 HEALTH. He would need every last bit of it.

All of Hell probably knew already of the Slayer’s presence and whereabouts. He’d be lucky if he didn’t find a welcome party at the Pyramid. Or worse, if the UAC’s portal device at the tomb was sabotaged before he arrived. He had to hurry while the Storm was still in the sector.

He kept the automap display up, for his normal vision was useless in the Storm and he didn’t want to draw attention with his Clearsight. He manipulated the nearby disjointed landmasses into a more traversable landscape and, after adjusting his grip on the Basilisk scale to better shield himself from the Storm, set off towards the Pyramid.

* * *

I stepped before the gate that led from the hidden chambers and out into the rest of the maze. I focused some of my mana into the strange eyeball embedded in my hand and phase shifted just as the door slid open.

My vision immediately became dim and blurry as the effect turned active, but I could still perceive the rough surfaces of the walls and corners. I checked my new radar display for any sign of movement. Nothing.

“Coast is clear.”

I hurried along at a brisk pace, anxious to get out of this godforsaken place but careful not to make too much noise. I imagined the many masses dropping from the walls onto the puddles could hide the sound of my footsteps, but I still felt uncertain to wager my life on it. Not that I could hear them.

My hearing. It gets muted too.

I could still hear some sounds but these too became greatly muffled while the phase shift was active, so I looked down to make sure I didn’t walk across the puddles. I was very clearly stepping on the shallow pools that stretched across the hallways, but I wasn’t making any splashes or ripples.

Huh. Must be phasing through the liquid.

I picked up the pace to exploit the few seconds I had of my newfound power before the effect wore off.

“Uh,” I grunted as I phased back to normal reality and loudly splashed on a puddle.

“You’re almost there, keep going.”

“Should I keep phasing till I get there?”

“Well, this effect does consume a bit of your Argent energy reserves each time you use it. Your energy regenerates but…I’d suggest you save it for your spells.”

“If we get there sooner, I won’t need them,” I replied while triggering the phase shift again and rushing down the hall.

“Okay, here. Turn left.”

I followed the Colonel’s direction and turned into a corridor indistinguishable from any other. I followed that hallway before skidding to a halt before one of the adjacent walls.

It was transparent.

”Colonel, why is this wall transparent?”

Even with my senses greatly dulled with the phase shift, I could tell that I was effectively seeing through the wall in front of me, very clearly able to see the shape and outline of the room behind it. There was a stack of short cylindrical barrels on one side of the room, filled with some dark oily fluid that seemed to shimmer in my phased state.

What the hell is that?

“Err…transparent? Seriously?

I’m taking some scans here…it’s a rock wall, same composition and density as all the others around you. It’s relatively thin but nothing special besides that.”

Something harrowingly bellowed in the distance. It was the monster, howling in the direction of the chamber I’d come out of.

“Get a move on, soldier,” the Colonel urged quietly. I did as instructed.

“Keep going. Make a right after the next two junctions.”

I ran along as I followed the Colonel’s escape route, taking note of more clear walls in my phased state to contrast from the other dark and opaque surfaces.

Some of the walls appear clear but not others…they appear clear when I’m phasing…Why? What does that mean? Thin walls, thin walls. Is that somehow relevant?

“John, your phase shift is about to give out.”

“I’ll just hit it again!”

I focused mana into the blur artifact once more before the effect wore off, and the surge of power from the artifact signaled that the phase shift was restarted. Just as I contemplated that I could retrigger the effect while it was still active, I turned the indicated corner and beheld a group of bright ethereal shapes scattered throughout the corridor. I opened fire with my machine guns out of reflex and to my surprise the rounds exploded against the nearest of the creatures and ripped it to shreds. The group turned in my direction and moved on the offensive.

I can even attack while in phase shift!

I pulled and activated my spear to preserve the last of my mana and charged.

I dashed through the group; shooting, slashing, and stabbing at the ghostly figures while avoiding the slime globs and fireballs they spat, although it was evident that they were shooting blindly. They couldn’t see me while my phase shift was active.

Wait a moment…these are the same creatures from earlier! This is how they appear while I’m in phase shift!

I thrust my spear into the heart of one beast and forced it up to split its head, dashed to the side to avoid an incoming slime ball while slashing at another creature and cutting its head off, before leaping into the air and bringing the spear down on another to slice it in half, all while keenly shooting down the many flying critters swarming around me.

“ROOOOAAAAHHHH!”

I immediately faltered as my blood ran cold. Glancing at my radar, I could see a large white dot moving fast in my direction. The other creatures I’d been fighting scampered off towards the shadows as they heard the monster approaching.

“GET OUT OF THERE! RUN!”

I collapsed my spear and hung it on my side as I bolted through the hall at full speed, listening to the thunderous splashes echo in the distance.

I had enough mana remaining for one more phase shift. I needed to save it in case bad turned to worse.

“Straight! Keep going straight!”

Will the invisibility work on the big critter? Oh God, I don’t know, I don’t know…

“ROOOOAAAAHHHH!”

Something entered the corridor directly behind me and roared. I turned to spot something huge and pale in the distance.

“OH SHIT.”

“ROOOOAAAAHHHH!”

I raced down the hall as fast as I could.

“FASTER! MOVE FASTER, SOLDIER!”

The thing continued to give chase. I could hear the echoing splashes its footsteps get closer as I pushed my body to its limit. It was too fast, far faster than me.

“JOHN! THAT THING’S RIGHT ON YOUR ASS!”

Something struck me again, a glob of mucus that stuck me to the ground just as I heard something leap.

“JOOOHN!”

I immediately triggered the phase shift and dropped to the ground at the last possible moment, freeing myself as I phased through my restraints.

The thing was barely visible through the visual distortions of the phase shift but I could still behold its size, as long and wide as a bus. It had a multitude of gangly limbs with no clear symmetry or reason all over its body, and many soft fleshy masses hanging everywhere throughout its skin.

It was then that I realized the implications of the pinkish slimy skin I had previously glimpsed.

Oh God…it’s inside-out…the whole thing is inside-out!

The beast landed in front of me as it completed its leaping trajectory, faintly growling as it passed through the space it thought I would be in. I switched to my missile launchers and opened fire on where I presumed its head was, hearing its muffled agonized roars and seeing splatters of bright red blood before scrambling to my feet and racing down the corridor.

“WAIT WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”

“I AM GETTING THE HELL OUT!”

“THE EXIT IS IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION!”

I ignored the Colonel’s orders and kept running, desperate to put as much space between me and the monster while my phase shift was still active. I heard a faint snarling behind me before the creature continued its chase. Though its chase sounded much slower, as though it couldn’t quite track my movements.

It can’t see me…it can’t fully see me while I’m phasing…

“Turn right! Turn here to get back on the right route!”

The wall, the clear wall in front of me.

I passed by the turn the Colonel told me to take.

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING!”

The eyeball was whispering to me. The wall, behind the wall.

“It’s a leap of faith!”

“IT’S A DEAD END!”

There were no other junctions in the hallway I was running down. Nothing but a solid rock wall in front of me and a monstrous beast behind me. The wall appeared clear in my phase shift, revealing a small room with dark barrels behind it. I had seconds left on my phase shift.

Jump. I had to jump.

“JOHN!”

“AAAHHH!!”

I jumped and phased through the solid rock wall in the blink of an eye just as the phase shift wore off. Something large crashed heavily against the other side of the rock wall, shaking the ground and stirring up dust from the wall.

“ROOOOAAAAHHHH!”

I panted heavily as my heart felt like beating out of my chest.

“Incredible…I thought the walls were too dense for you to phase through!

They’re thin, that’s why! The clear walls are thin enough to let you quantum tunnel through with the phase shift!”

At that moment I couldn’t give half a rat’s ass for the physical mechanics of phase shifting. I had just brushed with certain death again after God-knows-how-many-times and was struggling to retain my composure. Both my mind and body were exhausted beyond belief and I was almost at my breaking point.

“I’m never going to get out of here with that thing out there,” I frustratedly blurted out while staring at the stack of dark barrels in the corner.

“We’ll figure something out. Maybe lead it to the other side of the maze and phase through the walls while running like hell?”

“My energy doesn’t recharge quickly enough to get me through this whole place in one run!”

“Of course, of course…”

“All right!” I shouted while angrily standing up. “What the hell is in these barrels?!”

I walked over to the corner and the stack of barrels, worn and rusted containers marked with dents and splotches of some black fluid. I rubbed my fingers across one of the stains on top of a barrel, carrying away a thick tar-like substance that sheened like oil.

“What is that.”

The alien eye on my hand whispered the answer.

“Fuel. Fuel for the original inhabitants’ machines.”

“Fuel? What kind of fuel?”

“…Explosive fuel.”

“ROOOOAAAAHHHH!”

The thing roared from the other side of the wall, and an idea formed in my head.

“You thinking what I’m thinking?”

“You’re crazy.”

“Haha! Maybe I am!” I hysterically replied while lifting one of the barrels to assess its weight. It was lighter than I expected.

“I’m stuck in Hell in a cyborg body, shooting magic shit at actual demons while trying not to get eaten by a huge monster wearing its guts like Christmas decorations! YOU BET YOUR ASS I’M CRAZY!”

I stooped down and lifted a second barrel onto my shoulder.

“And you know what? That’s okay! We’re gonna have some fun! BARRELS O’ FUN!

Come on, Colonel! Let’s blow this thing SKY HIGH, BABY! WOO!”

“John, you can’t be serious! You don’t even know if this’ll kill it!”

“If it bleeds…I can kill it.”

* * *

The Slayer braced himself against the fury of the Blood Storm, straining to keep his footing under the raging tempest and the sky-splitting flashes of crimson lightning.

He had yet to reach the Black Pyramid and was focused on lessening his exposure to the thundering Storm, his HEALTH already reduced from 107 to 62 even with the Basilisk scale shield.

Though the Storm seemed to be passing over. The heavy rains on the Slayer’s shield waned as the thundering rains slowly ceased. He’d entered a low-density pocket in the Blood Storm, and he lowered his shield to survey the situation.

The sky was changing from midnight black to a deep bloodshot color, with the wall of pure darkness that was the Storm receding behind him. The ground was marked with ember scars from the rain, and even the once-smooth Basilisk scale he held was likewise cracked and heavily eroded. It might not last all the way to the Pyramid.

The Slayer raised his gaze to the dark stone structures on the distance, a landmark he’d noticed on his route to the Pyramid. They were stout rectangular temples and angular towers, their surfaces inscribed with ancient runes and crackling with crimson energy. Clearly long desolated and heavily weathered by the Sanctum’s instability, no doubt one of the many victims of the hellish Sacrifice to imprison the Slayer. He headed in that direction.

image [https://i.imgur.com/MESxRsp.jpg]

“Ooooooohhh!”

A low and almost imperceptible roaring echoed from the distance. A Parasite Moon loomed in the sky above him, and he took a few moments to regard it.

It was a colossal entity measuring well into the hundreds of kilometers in diameter, its segmented rocky shell open to reveal the soft flesh interior. Massive tentacles, eye stalks, and other organs extended for many kilometers as it reached for nearby landmasses from countless shattered planets, which it would drag and feed on with the many teeth and mouths that adorned its grotesque red body.

As he was, the Slayer had nowhere near the adequate equipment or strength to take on a Parasite Moon, but he knew they’d rather feast on the remains from other demonic powers than confront him as well, and he had recovered enough power to resist its remote effects. The Parasite Moon continued to passively feed on the continent-sized world shards, and the Slayer lowered his gaze as he entered the threshold of the abandoned temple.

He brought up his automap to search for any viable resources within the towers, even though he knew they were probably barren. Anything of value would have been lost or stolen long ago. There were a few natural deposits of raw Argent energy, which the Slayer absorbed to raise his HEALTH to 82.

There was something though, a curious signal originating from the exterior of a nearby edifice.

The Slayer arrived at the signal location to find the corpse of an ancient human warrior, dressed in an enchanted set of wicked black armor, lying dead against the wall of the Hellish temple. There was a sword of similar make still clenched within the warrior’s hands, and a single pale arrow lodged in the warrior’s knee. A Dragonbone arrow and a complete set of Daedric armor.

The sword was completely useless to the Slayer, but Daedric armor was tough enough to reinforce the worn Basilisk scale with for the remaining trip to the Black Pyramid. He bent down and got to work.

“So, the rumors were true. The Doom Slayer has indeed returned.”

That voice. The Slayer lifted his gaze from the Basilisk shield and turned to the figure behind him.

On the short exterior wall circling the temple sat a person, a young Caucasian man with sharp angled features, short black hair, and strange tattoos covering his body from the neck down. He wore dress clothes with a black tie and an unbuttoned black jacket, and in his hand he carried a half-smoked cigarette.

The Exorcist.

The Slayer turned away and resumed reinforcing his Basilisk shield. He had his differences with the man but he was little more than a nuisance. He separated a piece of Daedric plating from the deceased warrior and, with some basic spell-weaving, forged it onto the shield.

“Those in my profession hear a great many things, from a great many voices, but when I heard the news, I just had to come and see for myself.

The great Doom Slayer himself. In the flesh.

The Bane of the Fallen Hosts.

Vanquisher of the Heresiarchs, Deposer of the Nameless One.”

The Slayer ignored the Exorcist’s hollow praise. Despite the man’s somewhat youthful appearance, his face betrayed a great weariness, and his hushed voice had the rough edge of a heavy smoker.

The man took a long draw from his cigarette, held it for a moment, and blew it out.

“Then again, you never were one for subtlety. You arrive here and the first thing you do is demolish a scavenger fortress? Let all of Hell know precisely where you are. Heh. What were you thinking?”

The Exorcist quietly laughed, and the Slayer stopped his work to give the man a reproachful glare. Just because the Slayer wouldn’t kill him didn’t mean he wouldn’t break both his legs.

The man’s laughter quickly turned to sharp gasping coughing, and he brought his hand up to cover his mouth. It came away covered in blood. The Slayer briefly stared at it before turning to break another piece off the Daedric armor.

“Don’t mind me, I’m hardly one to talk. People like us, we’re addicted to our self-destruction.” The Exorcist pulled out a white handkerchief to clean himself. “I suppose that’s the one thing you and I have in common. We stand on the ashes we make and throw more fuel for the fires. Like moths to a flame, headed to our own annihilation.

Indifferent. Oblivious. Passive. A perfect circle.”

The Exorcist said nothing for a moment. He slowly brought the cigarette up to his mouth and drew from it before blowing the smoke out, his face full of disgust. The Slayer continued reinforcing his shield.

“Why do you think so many hunters that come here end up turning? You can kill every demon that crosses your path, tell the Elder Gods to fuck off, outrun the devil himself, but the only demons you can’t…rip and tear, are your own.”

The Basilisk shield was halfway finished. On top of the corroded brown scale sat sharp black plates of Daedric plating. Shoddy work but it’d be enough to get the Slayer to the Black Pyramid.

A new sound of low rumbling suddenly echoed from the sky. The Slayer turned to the source of the noise to find a red ship arriving through a Hell-rift above the towers. Three hundred meters in length, with an hourglass shape, an array of steel tentacles, and a ridged metal surface.

A Drow ship. What were these boot-licking butchers doing in the Blood Keep?

“Relax,” said the Exorcist as he noticed the Slayer’s tense posture while lowering himself beside the low perimeter wall. “They’re not here for you. They’ve been running a number of search expeditions throughout the Shores some time before you showed up. I think they’re looking for a missing shipment. Maybe one of their specimens that got away.”

Hmm.

The ship hovered near the mountainside, projecting a translucent cyan search-beam through the towers as its many tentacles passed over the temples.

A single scout vessel, with limited battle capacity, deep in an abandoned region of Hell. The Exorcist was right, it was likely just a search mission, mandated by whatever masters the Drow served now. Besides, the low-density pocket on his position wouldn’t last forever. He had to finish the shield before the Blood Storm returned.

The ship held its position but moved its search-beam through the towers. The Exorcist remained silent while cupping a hand over his cigarette, no doubt concealing his presence to keep out of the vessel’s sights. The Slayer separated another piece of Daedric plating and forged it onto the shield.

“EEEOOOHHH?”

The search-beam landed and froze on the Slayer, instantly changing from cyan to red as its tentacles froze in place. He stopped his work and keenly looked over his shoulder at the vessel.

“EEE EEE EEE EEE!!”

The ship turned off its search-beam and immediately began rising into the Hellish sky as its tentacles fearfully writhed, emanating a shrill alarm while its dimensional engines prepared to open another rift.

Just as he thought.

Something fell from the bottom of the vessel, a strobing point of golden light that slowly floated down to the ground beside the temple. Curious, the Slayer put the Basilisk shield down and walked over to where the object landed.

It was a cube, roughly a meter in length, made of a brass-like metal and with the relief of a human skull on each of its sides. Peering over the cube’s unfolding top, he reached in and pulled out the largest of the three objects inside.

In his hand, the Slayer held a large golden revolver, stranger than any other he’d ever seen. It seemed made from solid gold, with smooth edges, purple hieroglyphs along the grip, and six glowing green chambers circling the cylinder. He turned to the rising Drow ship, almost entirely obscured in a rippling Hell-rift. He stared at it a while longer before it disappeared with a sharp clap of thunder, and ingressed the strange revolver into his weapon matrix.

BLAZING SPIRIT ACQUIRED

AMMO TYPE – SOULS

PRIMARY MODE – SHOOTS HITSCAN CONCUSSIVE BLAST

SECONDARY MODE – SHOOTS SIX BARRELS FOR LARGER BLAST

NOTE: BLASTS ARE SOUL-BASED; PASS THROUGH ARMOR BUT POSE RISK OF SELF-DAMAGE AT CLOSE RANGE

A soul weapon. Powerful, though it operated solely with mortal souls, which tended to be capricious. That and such weapons were largely useless against anything other than true demons, but that was hardly a concern.

Lowering the revolver and moving it into the Praetor Suit’s storage, the Slayer turned to the next of the two objects in the cube, a runestone made from black gnarled claws.

RUNE ACQUIRED – DARK CLAW

BERSERK CURSES BLOOD, CASTING TORTURED ESSENCE FROM DEMONIC FLESH

Dark Claw. A deplorable spell that did horrible things to the bodies of demons. Speaking of which, if he fought mindfully he could go Berserk for the inevitable confrontation at the Black Pyramid. Focusing on his applied runes, the Slayer disengaged Lethal Force and equipped Dark Claw, feeling their respective symbols fade and flash in his mind.

There was one more object inside the Drow cube. The Slayer reached in and pulled out a dull metallic sphere the size of his hand. It was forged from fellsteel in the shape of an eye, and behind the razorlike iris shone a malicious red glare.

NEW POWER-UP SYNTHESIZED – IRON SIGHT

VASTLY AMPLIFIES TACTICAL ACUMEN

ALL SHOTS AND PROJECTILES WILL FIND THEIR MARK

FABRICATION COST – 5 CALIBRATION CYCLES

The Slayer moved the final offering into the Suit’s storage and made his way back to the abandoned tower. He knelt down beside the Basilisk shield and continued reinforcing it.

“You’ve been gone a long time, Slayer. Too long. Much has changed in your absence.

Gods are born and die, races created and sacrificed. Entire planes of existence and laws of reality, rewritten like…words on paper.

The Fallen Hosts now venture beyond the edge of the Abyss. The Heresiarchs direct their servants across the Mortal and Immortal Realms, waging war against Creation and among themselves. The Nether Wall holds but it won’t last forever.

And of course, our old friend.

No rest for the wicked, I suppose.”

No rest for the wicked.

The Slayer thought back to the mysterious Cyber Paladin he’d encountered at the top of the Argent Tower. There was no chance that demon was from the UAC, something from this side had sent it to make sure Olivia Pierce breached the Martian Fracture. But who? What god or demon lord commanded the invasion of a worthless dustball in some remote region of the Mortal Realm?

It didn’t matter. There was nothing the Slayer could do at the moment about the powers that swayed the course of reality, or sought to prey on minuscule planets as inconsequential as specks of dust on the winds of the Aether. All he could do now was finish his shield, get to the Black Pyramid, and get the hell back to Mars.

Thunder echoed across the horizon. The Blood Storm was coming back.

No, it was too soon. He wasn’t done yet!

The Slayer sped up his forging as the Exorcist slyly grinned.

“I suppose this is where you and I part ways.

This is the part where I’d usually give you a profound piece of advice, a line or two to make you reflect on this…fucked-up game we call life, make you look both ways before you cross the road, or who knows. Maybe just to make myself sound wiser.

Although there’s probably not much I could tell you that you didn’t already know. Not that you would listen.”

The Slayer hurriedly broke off a final piece of Daedric armor and applied it onto the last exposed part of the Basilisk shield. The Exorcist stood up while pulling his sleeves back.

“So when you get back to Mars or wherever you’re going, don’t forget to write a postcard, you hear?

And if you’re ever by LA, do stop by. It’s always beautiful down in the City of Angels.

Hell, I’ll even buy you a drink.”

Crimson lightning flashed out of the corner of the Slayer’s eyes as the world was again enveloped in shadow. He had moments before the Storm hit.

“Hey buddy…”

What now?

The Slayer turned to face the Exorcist, his tie and jacket billowing against the backdrop of the looming Storm.

“…Got a light?” The man held out his cigarette, whole and unburned, and flicked it at the Slayer.

An indignant Slayer completed his shield and raised his combat shotgun square at the Exorcist’s face, but the man had already produced from his empty hand a glass ampoule filled with water, which he smashed on the ground at his feet before vanishing in a burst of light. The Slayer had just enough time to watch the buckshot pass through empty space, and he raised his shield as the raging might of the Blood Storm descended upon him.

He hated that prick.

* * *

A thick and tense silence fell over the shuttle cabin as Ruby’s revelation came to light. Reeves raised her hand to her mouth in horror, Romero heavily backed down, but Rogers stood frozen in perplexed fury.

“…You knew.” He finally growled through gritted teeth.

Ruby sighed. She was hoping she wouldn’t have had to tell them, even though the need would probably arise.

But not like this.

“You knew.” A vein in Rogers’ temple began to throb as his face turned red.

Ah crap.

“YOU KNEW!” He yelled as he lunged at Ruby, throwing her back onto the dashboard and punching at her helmet, prompting Romero to attempt to pull him off. Ruby’s guard suit and helmet absorbed the bulk of the soldier’s blows, although she was momentarily stunned by the sudden attack.

“YOU TOLD US THAT OUR FORCES WERE COMPROMISED! THAT COMMAND HAD ORGANIZED EVAC AT THE SPACEPORT! BUT YOU LIED! YOU KNEW ALL ALONG! YOU LIED TO ALL OF US JUST TO SAVE YOUR OWN SKIN!”

“CALM DOWN, ROGERS!” Romero roared at the raging lieutenant.

“AND YOU! YOU’VE TAKEN TAYLOR’S SIDE FROM THE VERY BEGINNING! DID YOU KNOW ABOUT THIS TOO? WERE THE TWO OF YOU CONSPIRING TO GET THE REST OF US KILLED?”

Rogers turned away from Ruby to punch at the gunslinger’s exposed face, knocking him back. Something finally clicked within Ruby and she sprung into action. Taking advantage of her combat training and her Elite suit’s enhanced servos, she pushed the lieutenant off and lifted herself from the dashboard. Rogers threw another blow but she quickly blocked it, kicked the back of his knee to bring him down, and struck his cheek with a single left hook, forceful enough to stop him but not so much to cause damage. Rogers immediately seized his aggression and blinked in disorientation.

“Stand down, soldier,” she hissed with deadly intent as her hand began to throb.

Rogers turned to face her with murder in his eyes while panting heavily. He brought his gloved hand up to his struck cheek, glancing at the faint bloodstain on the white plating.

Grinning, he nodded in defeat and started to laugh.

“We’re all going to die…we’re all going to die. We followed you because you’re an Elite Guard! Because we thought you had a plan! That you knew what you were doing and were going to get us out! But you never were! You never did!”

Ruby took her foot off the lieutenant’s knee, but he remained snickering on the ground.

“Why don’t you just pull your gun out and shoot me right here? Hell, shoot all of us right now, get it over with! I’m sure it’s a far better end than whatever’s out there waiting for us.”

Ruby turned away in disgust and reached her hand out for Romero, still on the floor with a bleeding nose. The gunslinger took it and she helped him to his feet.

“You okay?” She asked him.

The gunslinger did not reply as he wiped his nose. He only pursed his lips and nodded, the disappointment all too clear in his eyes. His look injured Ruby far more than any of Rogers’ blows.

“Agent, there’s something out there.”

Reeves pointed towards the shuttle’s windshield, at the sinister red glow visible in the hangar floor. Something was casting a gleam from above the clear ceiling. Ruby rushed over to the dashboard and look up through the wide pilot viewglass, immediately wishing she hadn’t.

There were deep crimson stormclouds spreading across the Martian night sky, crackling with arcane energy and turmoiling with hellish ferocity. Ruby could spot dark figures and demonic sigils flashing through the gloom.

What the hell, what the hell is that?

Reeves and Romero followed her into the cabin and likewise bore witness to the infernal horror spreading across the planet’s atmosphere. A sudden burst of static brought her attention down to the dashboard.

The shuttle’s screens were flashing with strange symbols and imagery, causing the other two to uncertainly back away. There were pentagrams, runes, feeds from throughout the Mars Base, all glitching with static as an unknown force hacked the system. Ruby tapped the screens, the buttons, anything to prompt some sort of response. Nothing.

A face suddenly appeared on the main panel, the heinous horned face of a Summoner-class demon lord. Ruby’s eyes widened. The demon stood perfectly still within the glitching scarlet image, seemingly staring through the screen directly at Ruby.

No, not seemingly. It IS looking right at me. The damned thing can see me.

A chill ran down Ruby’s spine as she felt the cold merciless gaze of the demon lord on her, feeling its evil presence as real and close as if it were right in front of her.

The other two primary screens on either side of the dashboard settled on two similar images. The second screen, colored a dull grey, revealed a different demon lord whose head unnaturally jerked around as a low growling voice emanated from the speakers, and the third purple-tinged screen depicted an empty room, no doubt containing a third hidden demon lord.

Ruby stared petrified at the dreadful scene before the images of all three Summoners suddenly leapt at the screens with a harsh roar, causing her to leap and shield her face in terror, and the shuttle went dark. Ruby slowly brought her arms down to look at the dashboard.

The middle screen which had held the image of the red demon lord was cracked, as if something had attempted to break through it.

Ruby resolutely grabbed her pulse rifle and headed out the shuttle.

“We have to keep moving. We’re sitting ducks out here in the open. Our only chance of survival now is to head to the labs’ lower decks-”

Ruby stopped when she realized Reeves and Romero weren’t following her. She spun to look back at the shuttle, from where the two were watching her leave.

“Are you two staying here?”

Neither one of them replied, and Ruby didn’t have the time or willpower to argue. If the others wanted to stay and die, she wasn’t going to try to convince them otherwise. She’d just as well continue on her own.

“Have it your way,” she finished indifferently before turning to leave.

“Taylor! Wait!” Romero called out to her.

Ruby stopped as the gunslinger walked up to her, bearing a stern expression.

“I’m coming with.”

“As am I!” Reeves called out as she ran up to them. “You’re not leaving me here, damn it. You promised you’d get me home.”

Ruby sighed in relief. “I did. And I will.”

“What’s the plan? Without our helmets, we sure as hell can’t go back outside.”

“As a Level 3 installation, Helix has a restricted array of teleporters in the lower decks that high-priority individuals, such as Elite Guards, can use for quick and covert transportation to secured facilities across the Mars Base. We get to them, configure them to beam us to Lazarus, and take out the foreign signal that’s interfering with the flight network. Once that’s done we come back here, fly the shuttle to the Spaceport, and hopefully find a ship that can get us the hell off this planet.”

“Can’t we teleport directly to the Spaceport?”

“Negative. The teleporter arrays that link these key facilities are a closed network, which does not include the Spaceport. Resists interference but makes them incompatible with common teleporters that link the rest of the Base, which we’ve seen are already compromised.”

“Is this our only option?” Romero gravely inquired.

Ruby hesitated before answering.

Our only other hope would be that the Doom Marine returned, wiped out all the demons on the planet including the three Summoners, and carried us off into the sunset atop a white unicorn. But he’s gone now, and even if he magically came back, I don’t think even he could take down all three.

But the team didn’t need to know about him, at least not anymore.

“Truthfully, yes. It’s the only chance we have.”

The gunslinger held his hand toward the exit.

“After you, Agent.”

Ruby prepared to leave but remembered Rogers was still in the shuttle.

“Wait, hold on a moment.”

Climbing into the shuttle, Ruby walked over to Rogers, who was hunching over in the pilot’s seat.

“Lieutena…Rogers, listen to me. There’s a chance we can make it out of here. We’re heading down to the lower decks, take a teleporter to the Lazarus Labs so we can shut down the foreign signal and fly this shuttle.

I shouldn’t have lied to you, and if you want my blood after this is over, you can have it. But we need you if we’re going to make it, and you’re not gonna last long on your own either.”

Rogers remained silent a moment before responding.

“‘No one gets left behind.’ Heh. Spoken like a true soldier.”

Ruby thought back to Colonel Johnson and that night on Europa, how he chose to come back and save his platoon.

No, Johnson was a true soldier. I’m just doing what he would have done.

Johnson would never have led civilians to their deaths.

What the-! No! No! Where did that come from? Crap, they’ve really gotten to me. Come on, Taylor! Get a hold of yourself!

Forcing herself to clear her mind, she thought Rogers would choose to stay and die before he dejectedly got to his feet.

“I’m coming, but I’m not doing it for you or for that mercenary. I’m doing it for Reeves. I’m doing it for that girl who died back at the hospital. And I’m doing it for the doc.”

Ruby’s heart panged as she remembered the young technician, mauled to death by imps. She’d completely forgotten about her.

“That poor woman. I never even learned her name.”

“Neither did we. She didn’t talk much.”

“Then live. Make it back to Earth and let her be remembered. Let Christopher be remembered.”

“Then we settle this. Between you and me.”

“Fair enough.”

“One more thing.”

The lieutenant’s expression turned troubled, and Ruby leaned in with concern.

“…We’ve been lucky so far, but if I start to turn…promise you’ll shoot. I don’t want to become one of those fucking things.”

Ruby nodded in understanding.

“I promise.”

Rogers stood at attention and held his HAR at the ready.

“First Lieutenant Mark Rogers, reporting for duty.”

Ruby returned the salute.

“On the double, soldier.”

The lieutenant hurried out the shuttle to rejoin the team, and Ruby was about to follow when a sudden ache flared up in her hand.

“Ahh, what the f…”

She pulled her suit’s glove off and felt her stomach drop.

A grisly corruption had manifested in the last two fingers of her left hand. Her ring finger was a mottled purple color, but her pinkie was completely black with dry cracked skin. She tried moving them. The ring finger felt tender but the other was cold and numb, and its fingernail was bleeding. She softly touched it.

The fingernail came dislodged from its bed and hung lopsided on the bleeding skin before falling to the shuttle floor with a soft clatter. Ruby gagged as her heartbeat raced.

“Taylor, what’s the holdup?” Rogers called from outside. “We’re all waiting for you!”

“C-coming!”

Ruby desperately put her glove back on as she hastened out the shuttle.

It’s just an infection, don’t worry. There’s medicine, there’s medicine for this. And I can always get a new hand printed.

But deep down she knew that Hell had already snared its long malignant claws around her.

If I turn before you, Rogers, promise me you’ll shoot.

* * *