Ifritt kept falling down, being pulled by the wrath of Mother Earth through the many layers of bedrock that separated the Nine Hells away from the surface. Because yes, on Pangerra, Hell was an actual, tangible place. It lay waaay deep below the surface, even lower than the Underdark, and was a series of massive interconnected caves near the lava stratum of the planet. Heck, on Pangerra, even the Nine Heavens were a real thing, being located inside of the larger moon orbiting the world, and Purgatory being located on the smaller of the two.
Hell still had a few "escape" routes, if you really wanted to get out, but Ifritt knew the truth, that they were more like “suicide” routes, since the success rate of getting up-top through one of those pathways was in the 0.0pointsomethingverylittle percentage.
In the end, under the magnetic pull of the force dragging him down, he broke through the ceiling of the first layer of Hell, then plunged straight down into the dirt.
*Thuddd*
Fuck! I'm back here again!
Ifritt, unlike other demons, absolutely hated the Nine Hells. He hated the morons running this place, the absolute lack of vision, organisation or ideology, and most of all the complacency that all of the devils and demons had grown accustomed to. If the Hells were to spend even 10% of the resources that they usually wasted fighting each other to make a push towards the surface instead, then the demons could have conquered at least one continent for themselves. But no, all that the demons here in Hell ever did was to fight each other, kill, fuck or/and devour each other, sometimes all of those things all at the same time, then wait for their bodies to get regenerated. Because here in Hell, no demon or devil ever died permanently. Once the body was destroyed, the soul of the demon would just linger around in its ghostly state for a while, before a new body would get formed for it out of the ashes, sulphur or lava of the place. Still, dying meant a loss of all of the previous' body Levels, so a fresh new body would have to kill their way back to the top while Leveling again. And nobody had found a way to imprison, devour or outright kill the soul of a demon as long as it stayed in Hell, not even the denizens themselves. And even when reaching the surface, where the demons and devils were a whole lot more vulnerable, there were still very few things that could be done to the souls of the fiends, and only as temporary measures. While you could not outright destroy a soul, there were some ways to force it into the Reincarnation Cycle, where it would have all of its memories removed, and would just get reborn as an innocent child somewhere without holding onto the grudges of the past. That was more terrifying to demons than anything else, since it would become a true Purge of their entire nature.
Ifritt looked down upon himself, and shrugged at the horrible sight that he had tried so hard to forget. Ifritt's true body, the one that would respawn whenever he got killed, was that of a measly metal oil lamp and the last reminder of his own horrible past. Because Ifritt had not been born as a demon, but rather he had been born as a Djinn, and had only wound up in his current state after signing a few shady deals with a bunch of devils, which had led to the corruption of his soul, causing him to get branded by Mother Earth as a “demon candidate” as he found himself being sent packing to Hell when he died the first time.
Of course, being a lamp was not that big of a problem for Ifritt, since he could easily create a new avatar body for himself out of the surrounding materials, but he had always felt ashamed about his former countenance.
You could consider that being sent to Hell a sort of a “privilege”, since only the most evil and fucked-up-in-the-head people would wind up down here. The fact that a soul had been sent down here into Hell instead of just being sent back into the Reincarnation Cycle meant that the person had done some really, really horrible things in his lifetime, and that the soul was a very good candidate for becoming a demon. Because this was actually the truth of the Nine Hells. Every person that resided in this place had been, at least at one point in their lives, just a normal Average Joe, and they had turned into demons because of their own actions or ambitions. Demons weren't born, they were “made” on the surface. The same could be said for the devils, with the single difference being that they came from a different “flavour” of Evil. While the demons were the embodiment of chaos and destruction, composed mostly of warlords, bandits, murderers rapists, arsonists, torturers and the such, the devils were the embodiment of corruption and deceit, composed of the more lawfull and refined part of society like former Nobles, Kings, Emperors, and sometimes the odd “bone architect”, “blood painter”, “moonlight flesh sculptor” or “badrater” that you could still somewhat respect as an intellectual, in comparison to the more barbaric minds of the demons.
Point being, demons and devils did not like each other very much.They would try and murder each other at every given occasion, hence the constant conflicts occuring in the Nine Hells.
In truth, Ifritt liked the devils a whole lot more than the demons. The devils knew the value of patience, of order and structure, and because of that they usually had a much larger chance at winning any conflict than the demons. Unfortunately, they were a whole lot fewer in number than the demons, since you would only get one devil for about 1000 other demons.
The devils had isolated themselves in the Ninth Circle of Hell, and had built their own city-state in that place. Besides the first circle, which was ruled by Cerberus and acted as a “gateway” for all of the other Hells, and the bottom the 9'th Hell which was ruled by the Fallen Angel Sadan himself and was rightfully called “bureaucracy hell”, the other 7 hells were under the jurisdiction of the “seven sins” of Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Wrath, Envy and Pride.
Ifritt in particular hated Greed and Envy, since they would always try to steal the wicker and oil from his lamp whenever they met him.
Ifritt reconstructed a body for himself, and then made a beeline for the gateway that connected the first Hell to the second one. When he got there, he pushed and punched his way through the crowds that were waiting for the approval for entry, and went to meet up with Cerberus who was acting as the doorman and bouncer.
What very few really knew about Cerberus, was that his name was actually an abbreviation of the names of his three heads, which were Ceriss, Bertram and Russel, but Ifritt was knowledgeable about that certain titbit of information, which usually allowed him to bypass the Guardian of the first gate of Hell without any problems. It was Russel that you wanted to talk to, the left head, if you wanted to pass, because Cerris was a retarded-jolly dreamer, and Bertram a never-satisfied trickster. No, it was only Russel that was remotely serious about his “job”.
Ceriss: "Lool, look, it's a Genie on fire, quickly, make three wishes before it burns out! Giggle!"
Bertram: "Don't you mean nine wishes, since it's three of us here?"
Russel: "Hi there Ifritt, did you get your ass banished down here again? Which Hero got you this time? "
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Ugh... A big important…yeah...a big important one... It was quite a struggle! We left half the mountain side in ruins. But enough about me, are any of the leaders down below...active?
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This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.
Russel: "Nope, same old same old. Just be careful when you pass by Sloth and Wrath, because they have been butting heads against each other for the last couple of years."
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Right, thanks…well...see you around!
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Ceriss: "You're going back to the devils' place again? I do not know why you find those bores so attractive. All they know how to do is throw their paperwork into your face and accuse you of breaching the contract."
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No, it's not because of that! This time, I need a summoning token.
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Bertram: "You? You are willing to get yourself summoned? Man, whatever guy whacked you must have really pissed you off, if you are willing to put up with that sort of thing just to get back up on the surface."
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Not guy, girl. And she got lucky! There will not be a second time!
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Ceriss: "Hahaha, Ifritt got killed by a giiirl. Who's a little pussy of a Geenie now, eh?"
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Aw shuddup, Ceriss!
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After leaving the gate of the first tile, Ifritt did not bother with the rest of the layers and headed straight for the 9'th Hell, where the devils had barricaded themselves, in search of a summoning token.
The item in question allowed for the soul of a demon or a devil to get summoned to the surface world by a practitioner of the demonic arts, and would usually enslave the demon or the devil in the service of the Summoner until the contract between the two entities was fulfilled, or the Summoner died.
Of course, since Ifritt was an actual Ancient Demon and knew how things worked down here in the Nine Hells very well, it did not take him too long to steal a summoning token from one of the devils.
It did not take a lot of waiting for Ifritt to receive his first summon. That came within barely one day after he had stolen the token. You would be surprised how many people across the entire world were desperate enough to resort to these kinds of things.
The first “summon” had been totally unsatisfactory. And the second, and the third. Ifritt had killed all of his Summoners so far, because all of them had barely had enough “fire” inside of themselves to even kill a chicken.
No, the demon respected himself, and would only accept as a Summoner a person who already had a decent enough amount of power of his own.
The main issue came from the fact that while a demon was considered a “summoned entity”, it's own body would be made out of the magic provided by the Summoner, which meant that a weak Summoner would result in a weak power of the constructed “body” hosting the demon’s spirit. It was the main caveat of the whole summoning business, and was the reason why Ifritt usually avoided such “lowlife” methods of getting up top. But considering how pissed-off he felt, and who his actual target was in the first place, he did not mind spending a few years in the service of a Summoner, if he could get his vengeance against the girl.
Unfortunately, after the 20'th summon by what looked like a pimpled scholarly student in desperate need of a good lay, he finally figured out that it had been a bad idea to steal the summoning token of a succubus.