Zeke dropped to his haunches, studying the scene below. It looked familiar, though it took him a few moments to understand what he beheld. Once he did, it all clicked into place.
“It’s the elven ruins from the mortal realm,” he muttered, mostly to himself, though he wouldn’t have objected to Eveline’s input. She remained frustratingly silent, sequestered in the back of his mind as if she was trying to protect herself from something. Perhaps she felt threatened by him.
Regardless, he couldn’t afford to split his focus, so he homed in on the ruins laid out before him. They weren’t identical to what he’d experienced back in the Radiant Isles, though the architecture followed a similar pattern. On top of that, he saw the familiar shapes of harpies fluttering back and forth, and for his vantage point, he couldn’t miss their nest at the center.
There were tens of thousands of the creatures within the ruins.
Zeke looked a little closer, recognizing that the monsters weren’t entirely the same as the ones he’d encountered in the abandoned elven city. For one, they were much larger – at least human sized – and their bodies were more developed. Taken piece by piece, their features might’ve been enticing. But when seen as a whole, the combined effect was horrifying.
Yet, Zeke couldn’t deny that they held a certain graceful allure, even if he was disgusted by the way it made him feel. Shame colored his mind as he shifted his attention elsewhere, and he soon saw something else familiar.
Something that should not have existed in Hell.
Zeke was moving before he’d even thought it through. An inadvisable, stumbling descent from the lip of what seemed to be a crater followed, and soon enough, he was within the ruins. A second later, he encountered his first harpy.
He had only a moment to recognize that his previous observations about her size were accurate, but then, her claws flashed, and he found himself staggering backward, his chest reduced to ribbons of flesh.
She fluttered a retreat, her talons glistening with his blood. Then, she smiled, though there was no kindness there. Only the expression of a predator who was about to slaughter her prey.
Zeke’s eyes drifted down to her naked chest. Then…
She hit him again, faster than ever before and the attack nearly ripped his eye out. He’d flinched at the very last moment, saving his eye, but blood flew from his new scalp wound.
He steeled himself against the distractions her naked body represented. He shouldn’t have found it so alluring. She was part bird, with a feathered lower half and wings to match. But every time he let his focus slip even a moment, his eyes drifted down to her all-too-human chest.
“Lust, Ezekiel,” came Eveline’s strained voice. “Firm your thoughts and be strong. There is magic at play.”
Zeke followed her orders, though not without difficulty. The harpy remained at a distance, flapping her wings lazily as she awaited a slip in Zeke’s focus. So, he obliged, his eyes drifting slightly downward, and she struck.
This time, though, Zeke wasn’t as enamored with her body. Being aware of what was happening had helped him fight against it, and when she came at him, he met her with the head of his hammer. The blow broke her in every way possible, and with a dying squawk, she hit the wall of a ruined building before succumbing to her numerous injuries.
“What…the…hell…”
Zeke had never felt mental manipulation of that sort. It was almost as if he’d had no control. If he’d been left to his own devices, he would have fallen prey to the harpy’s predations.
“I know what this place is,” Eveline said. “It is the Tempest. Lust. Desire. Greed. You mustn’t let it derail your purpose, Ezekiel. It is insidious. You will succumb without even knowing what is happening, and you will be happy about it.”
“You can help me though, right?” Zeke asked. “Like you just did.”
She gave a mental shake of her head. “I cannot. If I let myself free here, I will happily betray you. I am powerless before the forces present here. I am guilty of many sins, Ezekiel, but none more so than unbridled lust. I was a succubus for a reason, after all. You can’t depend on me. From now on, if I speak to you at all, you must ignore me, for I will surely be trying to seduce you, one way or another.”
“But –”
“Heed my words, and you will pay the price. Let me worm my way into your psyche, and I will surely be your doom. Do not be afraid, though. If any man can overcome the challenges of this place, it is you.”
“What will you do?” he asked.
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“I have some defenses, though once I take refuge within your mind, I will be unreachable. Do not breach my walls until you have broken through to the next circle,” she said.
Then, she retreated deeper than Zeke had ever felt. He almost couldn’t even feel her in his mind, and when she erected her defenses, she was almost entirely undetectable. Only a slight stirring of ethera betrayed her presence, and even that was barely more than a flicker.
Only then did it hit him that he was more alone now than he’d ever been before. Immediately, he craved companionship, but was that just a natural response to Eveline’s absence? They’d not been so surely separated since she’d taken refuge in his mind, and Zeke keenly felt the loss.
Or was it the Tempest muddling his emotions? Did a desire for friendship count as a sin? Maybe, at least in the way Hell tended to twist things around. Regardless, there was nothing to be done about Eveline’s absence. Her precautions were understandable, and Zeke had no choice but to accept them.
Even if he never wanted companionship more than at that moment.
Suddenly, he felt like he had back in the troll caves. At first, it hadn’t been so bad, but after a couple of months, the solitude had nearly driven him insane. It had gotten easier over time, but for most of that first year, he’d become little more than an animal. He’d blocked most of that from his memories, but in Eveline’s absence, he felt the keen sense of isolation like he hadn’t since.
Before he could succumb to those feelings, he turned his attention to his surroundings. He didn’t know what he was meant to do, and he expected that part of passing through the circle was figuring that out. So, he stepped forward, intent on keeping his wits about him as he traversed the city.
It covered a much larger area than the ruins in the Radiant Isles, though from a visual perspective, it looked much the same. What was left of the architecture suggested a flowing beauty that he hadn’t seen from any other city, and it left him wondering just what had happened to the elves that had built it.
Clearly, they had ascended to the Eternal Realm en masse, but what happened after that? Had they become the elves he’d heard about in his travels? Or had they been wiped out, as so many others had?
Those questions flitted through Zeke’s mind as he traversed the ruins. Along the way, he was attacked by a few more harpies, and though he felt the pull of his desires tugging at his mind, he succeeded in ignoring them. With his mind on task, he had no issues killing the creatures.
At least that was the case until he found himself facing off with an updated version of the queen. Like all the other harpies, she was a naked amalgamation of human and avian, though she leaned far closer to the latter than the lower-leveled creatures. There was barely a feather in sight, which made her nudity all the more enticing.
For a long moment, Zeke was entranced – especially when she spoke. There were no words, just a melodic tone that cut through any mental defenses he possessed. He fell to his knees, ready to worship her.
But even as she approached, Zeke knew there was something wrong. He just couldn’t put his finger on why he felt the need to resist. Still, he struggled against his emotions until something snapped within him. By that point, she was only a few feet away, but she stumbled backward as her song faltered.
That ended Zeke’s entrancement.
He responded without hesitation, aiming his hammer at her torso. She twisted out of the way, then launched herself at him. Suddenly, he noticed that there was one bird-like feature he’d neglected to notice. Talons screamed through the air, sharp and glistening with mana.
Zeke leaped to the side, though he wasn’t able to avoid the attack entirely. Instead, those sharp claws ripped through his hastily upraised arm, cutting down to and notching the bone. But the fact that he’d managed to mostly dodge the attack was enough to throw her off-balance. Zeke’s hand shot out, closing around her neck.
He squeezed.
She let out a pained cry, and his mind spun with pity. He almost released her, then and there. But Zeke’s battle-hardened instincts were enough to drive him forward. He knew precisely when to press his advantage, and his body reacted without the benefit of thought.
He slammed her against the ground, shattering the delicate bones of her wings. He didn’t stop there, though. No – he couldn’t afford to let her continue living. That was a good way to once again become entranced by her song…as well as her other assets.
In the end, Zeke was forced to smash her against the ground five more times before she finally died. That was a testament to how much more durable she was than the lesser harpies, and when she finally succumbed to her injuries, Zeke knew that she was one of the most dangerous foes he’d ever faced.
Obviously, the Eye of the Tempest would test him at least as thoroughly as the Plains of the Forgotten. And if he faltered even a little, he would be slaughtered. Or worse.
He shuddered at that though, but he wasn’t certain if it was due to excitement or horror. Those two emotions warred within him, casting his entire mind into turmoil. To maintain his sanity, he shoved them aside, vowing to keep them there until he wasn’t affected by the Tempest.
With that, he strode forward, keeping ever ready for the next attack to come. He only got a few more steps before he found himself swarmed by an entire group of harpies. They were led by one of the larger ones, but oddly enough, the fact that there were so many diluted their effect, and he managed to dispatch them without issue.
That wasn’t the last time he was forced to endure the physical and mental assaults of the harpies, and over the next few hours, he lost track of how many he killed. Hundreds, at the very least, but it might have been thousands. He simply didn’t know, and in his increasingly muddled state, he couldn’t be bothered to keep track.
But as had become his mantra, he vowed to keep going. His goal was to reach the center of the ruins, which seemed as good a place as any to find some answers. Once there, he would slaughter the population of harpies, then take stock of what he needed to do next.
It was a good plan, but as was the case with most plans, it didn’t last.
Because on his second day trekking through the city, Zeke found himself face-to-face with the last thing he expected to see in Hell. What’s more, it was almost a perfect recreation of an experience he’d lived through before. Though his memory and what he saw before him were subtly different in so many ways that he scarcely recognized the scene.
As he stood at the edge of the plaza, he wondered how Abby had ended up in Hell. And what’s more, how had she drawn the attention of a group of men who look strikingly similar to the ones who’d attacked her when they had first met?