Death did not claim them this night. Dawn rose upon them whole, yet not quite sound. They gathered now, ready and filled with dread. Prepared, as much as one could be, for what lay ahead. With methodical motion, Valencia checked her magazine once more. Partially expanded, yet all that remained of her ammunition. She hefted the thunderhammer in one hand and looked over the rest.

A few had elected to stay behind and die rather than risk the hellplane, she gathered. Such was their choice, and she faulted them not for it. Ilorath looked to be violently ill as the elf sat, slumped forward, head in her hands. Overuse of her magicks, or overwhelmed by dread, Valencia could not tell. Dawn’s shy light crept above the horizon, and with them came the steel death. Hard eyes gazed over the tower’s edge and upon the tide below. A sea of steel crept towards then, silent hordes come to grind them underfoot. The Mechanicim had discarded all strategems of raids and pokes to prod their defences, she surmised.

Now came the hammer.

Knuckles white upon the hilt of his claymore, the Blackguard stood next to her, expression tight.

“If you have any peace to make with your gods, there will never come a better time than now.” He uttered solemnly.

“The gods are dead.” Rodan tiredly snapped from where he crouched behind them, sweat wiped from his face in the heat of the morning.

“Their divinity is not.” Valencia spoke, voice hard. “Even a race as blasphemous as yours should do well to remember that, Grafted.”

Ul’eth snorted weakly from where she sat, the only one to find amusement somewhere within this predicament. The orc rested, while she still could. She would need every moment of rest to forge through the hell ahead, Valencia thought. Demise loomed upon a bleak horizon, yet the jade-skinned woman seemed unbothered.

“Humans.” She derided. “Of all the races to bring the world low, it was the short sighted mayflies who breed like rabbits. Who will usher in the next calamity, then? Goblins?”

“Flog it as you might,” Ilorath groaned sickly from where she sat hunched over. “But the mule remains dead.”

“Not humans.” Johann interjected. “Grafted. “More than human”, remember?”

Rodan’s clenched teeth betrayed what his lack of words did not.

“Humans. Grafted. All the same.” Valencia spoke coldly. “It was in your arrogance that you made a GOD, in your heresy that you turned upon your makers.”

She gazed around, voice pitiless as she surveyed the silent Grafted who had gathered to follow her into the hells below.

“And then sat surprised when it followed your example.”

“We must attempt the rift soon.” Ilorath spoke quietly. “Our hand is forced. Gather. Prepare yourselves and make peace with whatever you believe in, for you may not live to see the light.”

“We go in glory, then.” Johann uttered, unable to convince anyone. Even himself. Bluster had fled him even as the final day dawned. Cold, stark reality set in now, and its claws sapped the life from even the bravest men and women.

“Run, for there will be devils and demons upon your heels.” Valencia faced the rest and commanded. “Follow the elf. Protect her, or we are all lost. Look back for no one, lest you wish to join those who fall.”

With no further need to speak, she nodded to Ilorath.

Reality screamed as the elf tore a gash within its fabric, her lantern raised high. Space warped outwards, pushed aside by the screams of pure force that emanate from the spectral mouths upon the warped metal. The stench of rot, blood and hopelessness raced from the red hole torn in the space before them. A smell all too familiar to Valencia, and soon to be embedded within the memories of others.

“Follow.” Valencia commanded.

Colour, life and light fled as she stepped through the gash. Hell was pale, a sickly whiteness that sapped all pigment from the realm. White, jagged cliffs rose around her, a million skulls embedded in the rock. Mouths open in eternal screams, they filled the still, rancid air with a cacophony of moans and whispers of madness.

The first, highest hell was a mirror of the world above, in a crude, twisted way. A spire of pure black loomed behind Valencia, a beacon of malice. The shadow of the Last Tower. Streaks of crimson dotted a gray sky, jagged wounds rent upon a bloated carcass that dripped miasma. And the stench, the smell of rot and suffering that crept into every sense she possessed.

Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

Marble dust clung to Valencia as she paced forward along the rocky ground, dusted by uncounted bodies ground to powder. Hammer at ready, she took the lead as more spilled through the gateway behind her.

Faces filled by dread and fear were all she saw as Valencia waited, hammer at ready. Johann stepped through, Ul’eth supported by his weight. The Blackguard’s face was tight with anticipation as he half-carried the orc towards her. Rodan came second to last, and then Ilorath stumbled through. With a shriek that rang through the bone-white cliffs, the gate snapped closed. Valencia caught the elf as she stumbled, then hefted her weight up with one arm. Without any further recourse, she began to run.

Bellows, shrieks and roars filled the air as the hell came awake. Terror inspired new strength, helped find new recesses of energy to draw upon. Throat dry, Valencia ran between the sheer cliffs, a clamor that would stir sleeping giants in her every step. Metal clanked upon metal as shadowed shapes began to fill the sky above, always just out of the corner of her eye.

“Run, you dogs!” She yelled over her shoulder, vicious encouragement thrown back at those who followed. “Run!”

A bloated, clawed form on tiny, shriveled wings swooped down over her head, only to be smashed from the air as she swung the hammer up to meet it. The imp shrieked, a signal that they had been found. Valencia’s boot crushed it’s head underfoot a heartbeat later. Ilorath grumbled and violently expelled the meager content of her guts all over Valencia as the elf’s body swayed and trembled. There was a price to be paid for touching the magicks of this hell, and she envied the elf not.

Howls rang through the rot, shrieks and screams of delight, rage and greed all bled into each other as the infernal chorus drew near. Each step they took in the Hells mirrored another in the world above, and they had so far to go. To surface anywhere in the vicinity of the Mechanus legion would be a doom sealed in stone. Valencia surged at the front, the grafted and humans behind her outpaced as she kept the lead through sheer effort and will.

A shiver inside her chest signaled something worse.

The thing stirred, every breath of rotten air she drew a further provocation. She stumbled as her chest tightened and threatened to spasm. Only a quick sidestep saved her from the fall. Ilorath’s weight grew heavy as demonic screams filled her ears. Shouts of fear rose behind her as Grafted spared glaces upwards and saw doom approach. Valencia chose to spare herself the sight of whatever horde circled above, and focused on what might lie below.

A bulky, leathered form dropped from the cliffs and landed before her, a hate-filled visage amidst the clouds of bone dust it kicked up. With a curse, Valencia attempted to awkwardly draw her auto-bolter in a hand already filled by her hammer.

“Wrap your arms around me!” She snarled at Ilorath. The elf, even in her delirious state, found strength to comply and with her left hand free, she drew the bolter. The weapon thundered and bucked in her grasp, it’s bolts vaguely aimed at the demon. It cared little for the steel she fired it’s way, she learned. Lances of force and irc arced past her and slammed into the infernal monster. It shrugged them off and charged at the group. Valencia’s hammer to the face staggered it only in the slightest as the woman ran past. Ilorath hung on for her life as Valencia nearly buckled on impact, almost stopped by the sturdiness of what she had smashed into.

A massed magical barrage did little to slow the fiend as it plowed through their ranks, and screams rose as it snatched someone off their feet. Screams that followed the rest as they ran on. A damned soul left to its fate lest more join them.

They broke from the cliffs into a rolling desert of powdered bone, a wasteland that stretched before them. Dunes passed underfoot as they ran, pools of rot and oases of blood the only color against the dead hellscape.

A scorpion man-thing burst from the bonesand, deformed and twisted as it snatched a robed form and disappeared back into the dunes. Valencia watched it go with a cold numbness inside, never paused to even fire upon it. The flock of demons circled above, a slow descent of hunger that drifted ever closer. Only their fights to be the first to swoop kept the mortals untouched by the cloud of hunger, for now.

But safety was a fleeting illusion, and Valencia gave no heed to its lies. She pressed on, Ilorath’s weak arms around her neck.The elf gasped in pain as she endured the agony of existence within this blighted, bloated plane.

“Far enough.” She gasped after Valencia stumbled over another mountain of powder. The armored woman slowed, grabbed the elf and propped her up as she struggled to raise the lantern. Struggled and succeeded. With a shriek, the light glowed from her blank eyes as the elf forced another hole to be torn in reality. Only it was so much slower from this side. The smallest of cracks shattered the air before them, a hole that expanded at excruciating slowness.

Valencia turned, ducked and swung her hammer overhead as a demon swooped towards Ilorath. Ichor splattered across the sand as the woman grunted on impact, her lungs filled with rotted air. Breath came short now as pain expanded inside her chest. Another, larger fiend clawed its way over the dunes in desperation, hunger and hate personified as it sought to consume the light. The void stirred beneath the surface, eager and on the edge of waking. She indulged its desire, felt control slip from her limbs as the hammer fell at terrifying speeds. A head was reduced to paste as the thing relished in the kill.

She could feel her body want to contort beneath the pain as a weight slammed into her back, but the monster cared not for such human reaction. It turned her form and batted the demon aside, even as her own arm cracked under the impact.

“Worms!” Came the howl from her throat, though she did not command the voice. “FEAR ME, DEMONS! I AM YOUR JUDGEMENNNNTTTT!”

Its fervor slipped, and with ungodly effort, Valencia seized back control. Ilorath’s hole grew slowly, but expand it did. Grafted, those that survived, raced through into the cold arms of Famine’s Throne. Johann stumbled past, form bloody and greatsword bloodier as Ul’eth supported the human. Only then did she realize Rodan was gone. Emotion stirred and was forced back down.

The horde descended, a carrion call of hunger as they swooped towards the few who remained. Valencia gripped Ilorath and yanked the elf through even as she raced into the portal. And with a final, merciful whimper, hell was gone and the wasteland greeted them once more.