Mixik betrayed him the second they entered the city, proclaiming loudly that Zeke was an interloper. The only silver lining to that dark cloud – as represented by an angry mob of demons – was that Zeke had expected it. So had Eveline, which she wasn’t shy about reminding him.
“You can’t trust demons, Ezekiel. How many times have I told you that?” she asked.
“But you want me to trust you,” he replied, facing off against thousands of demonic entities. None were particularly powerful, but they certainly looked impressive enough. Hulking creatures with sweeping horns, tiny monsters with bloated bellies and wings that shouldn’t have held them aloft but somehow did, and slender creatures with too-long limbs and bulbous heads were just the tip of the iceberg. There were so many different varieties that Zeke had already given up on trying to categorize them.
“Of course. I’m not a demon anymore, Ezekiel. I no long feel the urge to betray anyone who trusts me,” she said primly. “Nor do I want to torture and kill. I have been reformed by my transition into a mind spirit.”
“Does the fact that you can’t affect the corporeal world have anything to do with you turning a new leaf?” Zeke asked.
“No. Of course not.”
“Sure.”
“It doesn’t! My motives were rooted purely in self-improvement!”
Zeke wasn’t so sure about that, but truthfully, he wasn’t that concerned by putting his trust in Eveline. On so many occasions, she’d already proven her loyalty. He’d lost count of how many times she’d had an opportunity to betray him, and she’d so far kept her demonic impulses contained. Maybe she’d changed, and maybe she hadn’t, but she had earned the benefit of the doubt.
The same could not be said for the demons arrayed before him. Zeke looked them over with a practiced eye, and he found that none of them were even remotely powerful enough to challenge him. Perhaps all that was required was for him to prove his strength, and then they would back off. That seemed like the law-of-the-jungle brand of thinking that pervaded demonic logic.
So, with that in mind, Zeke decided to approach it like he would the first day of prison.
“You’ve never been in prison.”
“Sure. But I’ve seen movies,” he said inwardly. “The key to survival is to pick the biggest, strongest guy in there and put him down. After that, everybody will be too scared to challenge you.”
“Oh. Well, that should probably work. Assuming that these aren’t just the dregs in the outskirts of Tenebralis. Which they are. Your plan won’t work,” she said. “Oh. You’re not even listening.”
Zeke wasn’t. Instead, he’d locked his eyes on a particularly large, bull-headed demon with sweeping horns that extended at least six feet on either side of its head. Its body was packed with dense muscle, and it stood at least a head taller than any other demon present.
Which meant that when Zeke embraced [Titan], it matched his nearly thirty-foot height. What it didn’t match was Zeke’s inflated level.
He stepped forward, his footfall thundering so loudly that it cut off the din of accusations and insults. The demons didn’t run, as he’d expected. Instead, they collapsed in on him, piling on without hesitation. Before Zeke knew what was happening, he had a hundred demons biting and clawing at his legs while even more had leaped upon his shoulders.
And as much as he hadn’t wanted to cause a huge ruckus, he knew that the time had come to show Mal’canus who he was.
With a roar, he snatched one unlucky demon from where it clung to his chest. The thing had the face of a scarred rat and the body of an overweight athlete. Zeke barely noticed its features. Instead, he just squeezed.
Its head popped like a tube of toothpaste, spewing blood and innards in a steep arc that ended in a splatter. He tossed the dead thing aside, then grabbed another demon. This one had a large shell, so he didn’t bother trying to squeeze it to death. He threw it instead, and for a moment, he watched as it flew miles and miles away, screaming the entire time.
After that, Zeke lost track of individual kills. He didn’t care how the things died. All he wanted was for them to understand their mistakes in attacking him. He smashed, he ripped, and he tossed aside hundreds of demons, and eventually, they got the picture. Rather than buying him peace, though, his actions only caused more attention, and from someone that he couldn’t easily dismiss.
The lower leveled demons scattered, fleeing before his might. Meanwhile, a creature that looked like the bull-demon’s big brother stepped forward. It was taller even than Zeke in his titanic form, and far more densely muscled.
“Interloper. Why are you here?” the bull-man demanded.
“You the one in charge?”
“I am Rakar, the Bloodied, and I rule Tenebralis by virtue of my unmatched strength. Bow before –”
“You’ll do,” Zeke said, and Voromir suddenly appeared in his hand. He stepped forward, shifting to the side before he enacted a most familiar, baseball style swing.
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Rakar, to his credit, initiated a block, erupting in corrosive mana that formed a thin dome before him. The head of Zeke’s hammer shattered that shield without even a second’s delay, and when it crashed into Rakar’s chest, the bull demon’s entire torso exploded in a dense cloud of blood, muscle, and what was left of the creature’s organs.
Rakar’s immense body ragdolled backward, skipping across the ground until it hit the wall of a nearby building that crumbled upon impact. The now inert hunk of meat and bone kept going through three more walls, which brought an entire building down, before it came to a bloody rest.
The few demons that hadn’t already left the scene disappeared, dodging into alleys and taking to the sky on wings that looked incapable of supporting flight.
“Dammit,” Zeke muttered, looking around. “How the hell am I supposed to find the Pit now?”
“You should have kept one of them alive,” Eveline said.
“I should have wrung Mixik’s neck,” he countered. “Do you think he’s still around?”
“If he is, he’s even stupider than I thought.”
“The real question is why,” Zeke said. “I mean, he saw what I did against the locusts, right? He must have known this wasn’t going to end well.”
“That unfortunate thing you just destroyed was a peak demon, Ezekiel. People like Mixik can’t fathom someone doing what you just did,” she explained. “Their conditioning won’t allow for them to consider it.”
“That’s stupid.”
“Be that as it may, they can’t help it. They have to believe those above them are almost infallible. If they question it, then they’re close to making a move,” she went on. “Mixik knew you were strong, but he’d probably seen that bull-demon –”
“Rakar.”
“Right. Rakar likely put down thousands of challenges over the years. Tens of thousands. He expected you’d be the same,” she reasoned. “And before you ask why he would do that, maybe he thought you’d injure Rakar and render him vulnerable to another challenger. There’s no telling.”
Whatever the case, Zeke was a little disappointed. When he’d been betrayed – as mild of a betrayal as it was – he had felt a twinge of hope for a good fight. The locusts had sated his lust for battle, but that satiation had been brief. He needed something more substantial.
“You could just go home,” Eveline pointed out. “Summon your gate and at least visit your friends and loved ones. Maybe that would reset you.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about.”
“You weren’t really talking at all.”
“You know what I mean,” Zeke said. “And I don’t need to go back to the tower. They’re fine. I made sure they had everything they need.”
“There’s more to it than just making sure –”
“Enough, Eveline. I’m not going back,” he interrupted. “I don’t want to get distracted and lose momentum.”
That was what would happen if he let himself go back to the tower. He’d spent so much time trying to reunite with his companions, and now that he had, he realized that they couldn’t go where he needed to go. None of them had reached the peak, and as such, they would not be allowed to enter the Pit.
Besides Pudge, they couldn’t even survive in Hell.
Just as Zeke was considering that, he saw a familiar figure standing only a hundred yards away. Mixik was peeking around the corner, looking at whatever remained of the slain Rakar.
Zeke didn’t hesitate. He threw himself in the demon’s direction, and with enough quickness that Mixik couldn’t even think of escape. Zeke slammed into him, though he held back just enough to ensure the demon’s survival. Still, he grabbed Mixik by the throat and shoved him against a wall with enough force to crack the surface.
“You set me up,” he accused. “Give me one reason why I shouldn’t just rip your head off right now.”
“I…can…help…you…”
Zeke released the demon. “How? Going to introduce me to another horde of demons I need to kill? They were pathetic, by the way. And Rakar? My little brother could have ripped him to pieces.”
It was true. Pudge could have killed that peak demon without issue.
“I can help you. I know where to find the Pit.”
“Feels like I’ve heard this one before. Tell me why I shouldn’t just do to you what I did to your buddy over there,” Zeke said, looking down on Mixik. “The way I see it is if someone like you knows where the Pit is, then plenty of others will too.”
“They won’t help you.”
“I’m sure I could just kill a few of them and change the others’ minds,” Zeke reasoned. “Might not work the first few times, but it’ll eventually get the point across.”
“I swear it – I can lead you to the Pit. It’s not even far,” Mixik insisted. “A couple of days. Maybe less. You won’t find it without me. I was once part of a retinue for a demon that made the descent. I know how to get through the obstacles.”
“Maybe let him do it,” Eveline suggested. “You can always kill him later.”
That was true, and he fully intended to do just that once he got what he wanted. For all that Zeke didn’t like to kill people, he had no such compunctions about slaughtering demons. If he’d had his skills available, he would have destroyed the entire city with a well placed [Wrath of Annihilation]. But as it stood, it would take him weeks to do that kind of damage, and he didn’t want to spend that kind of time on an ultimately pointless endeavor.
Because whatever else happened, there was no shortage of demons in Hell. In fact, Zeke suspected that their numbers far exceeded those sent to the other side.
“Fine,” Zeke said, looking around. “Get up.”
“Are you going to kill me?”
“No. Not today. Maybe tomorrow.”
After that, Mixik stood, dusted himself off, then glanced all around. “It seems that I have lost my followers,” he said.
“I think I killed a few if it makes any difference. Most ran away.”
“Cowards,” Mixik said without a hint of irony. “Let us go, then. I’m certain that when they return, they will bring more demons. I’d prefer it if we got this over with sooner rather than later.”
“Fair enough,” Zeke said. He gestured, saying, “Lead on. I’m following you.”
“Oh. Right. Onward, then.”
With that, the pair set off through the city. To Zeke’s surprise, they didn’t return the way they’d entered. Instead, they traversed the entirety of Tenebralis, and the more he saw, the more he found it to be a truly terrible place. The architecture was uninspired, reminding Zeke of the poorest areas of Earth. Given the nature of magic and mana, he had expected more.
“Great feats of civilization require cooperation, Ezekiel. Demons are not capable of that. This place probably grew when individual demons built onto existing structures, adding on until it became a city,” Eveline explained. “You will see great things in Mal’canus, but it’s all built on the backs of slave labor. And not the kind you’re used to. Those demons are enslaved, body, mind, and soul. They know nothing else. So, don’t get it in your head to go rescue them.”
“You don’t have to worry about that,” Zeke said as they trekked through the seemingly deserted city. “I have no sympathy for demons.”
Eventually, they left the city behind and continued their hopefully short journey to the Pit. The less time Zeke had to spend in Hell, the better off he’d be. In that way, he was almost looking forward to his descent.
“You’ll change your tune soon after it begins. Mark my words,” Eveline said. “You’ll be dreaming of Hell like it was a relaxing vacation.”