When it rains, it pours. I didn’t even mind the rain that much - but this wasn’t the normal downpour of a gloomy sky. This was hellfire, flickering ash across my mental plane. It sizzled and burned, leaving me uncomfortable and exhausted. Made me wish for some actual precipitation to whet my tired mind and clear the air. One problem at a time.
I stepped through the portal, one last bite of the dry sandwich struggling to work its way down my throat. And then we were there.
Amber lights of Hell.
Wight pooled in beside me and immediately cocked his head.
[I thought we were going somewhere in the city.]
“A simple misdirection,” a voice came from behind us. “Someone must have messed with the runes.”
We spun around, nothing but expansive rock extending on forever - until we faced the speaker. A man in… well, it was a beekeeper suit. Not much more needed to be said.
//C… E… Gre…
“I’m a little busy,” I worked my jaw, “Felix, I assume? I’ll just be going.”
From beneath the shade of his meshed hood, a wide grin crossed his face.
“You’ll find that you cannot, Eric Redd. Such a shame my patron interferes with such things.”
I raised an eyebrow at Wight, who shrugged back at me. Briefly, I closed my eyes and focused on my internal energies. Something felt like it popped in my head, and a fuzz of static washed over my face.
//Picture now clear. That’s…
“Confirming contact with known betrayer ‘Felix’,” I spoke into the air. “Requesting authorization to terminate.”
The beekeeper looked around, tilting his head in confusion. “You’re bluffing.”
[You clearly do not know who we are.]
//Confirmed. Execute with extreme prejudice and return for redeployment.
I clucked my tongue. “Looks like I have to kill you quick and go fight the Fiends. This isn’t your Domain, right? Pretty boring if it was.”
We didn’t really have the time to waste on fighting another Hunter, and I wasn’t looking to get plunged into an oversized beehive or get honey all in my hair. Why he thought he could just pluck me from my day job to give me a cold sales pitch I didn’t know. If there was one thing I hated, it was this man right now.
“Domain? No- I don’t have a-“
The bright light of the attack faded away. A pair of white boots, charred to cinders at the top, sat in the space that the man had been standing. I spun the revolver, waiting for the inevitable revelation that he was actually just a million bees in the suit and his real body was…or maybe a queen bee would regenerate him...
Silence filled a handful of tense seconds.
//Target neutralized. Return for redeployment.
[That was anticlimactic.]
My vision blurred as I returned to the Org, stepping out into the dark chamber of the ready room. Rodney looked over from the panels and raised his eyebrows. The lady beside him apologized, which I waved off. What a way to sour my mood.
With Wight back with me, the portal then spooled up, and we entered again.
This time, the cool chill of the evening air washed around us. The mortal plane in all its fragile glory.
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A couple of suits by a car were waiting off to the side. Of course, they didn’t have the ability to just portal me anywhere - but this was the closest constructed portal. I was in the back seat with Wight before I even realized it. Nerves were getting the best of me.
[He really thought he could hold us back.]
It annoyed me. Like getting a pebble stuck in your boot. “I used the reverse of Private Eye to restore communication with Rodney.” That wasn’t really much of a response to his statement, but I was on autopilot. Explaining things that could go unsaid. I was unsettled - as if things couldn’t have been that easy. Perhaps I had been stung, and this was a hallucination while I stood comatose in Hell still. Maybe he had turned into a bee and was hiding out on my jacket to assault me when I least expected it.
“Ten minutes, Mr Redd.”
I nodded. No, the Hunter had just died. Ego had gotten the best of him, and he didn’t truly understand what I was capable of. Even without knowing the other members I had dismantled, a Hunter should exercise more caution.
[He was Level Four.]
Not powerful. That made it make a little more sense. Probably picked up by whatever the traitor jerkoffs had called themselves because he could stop travel and communication between planes. Useful when you want to do sneaky bullshit in the darkness. I allowed myself to exhale and deflate into the leather seat.
“You should have your seatbelt on.” I raised an eye to my patron.
For the rest of the short journey, I watched him struggle to pull it around and find the place it was meant to slot into. He eventually succeeded about ten seconds before we arrived at the drop-off point. A little unfair of me to not offer him help, but I was hypnotized by his ineptitude. The whole spectacle of this powerful being in a cute birdman body trying to complete a task like a child - right before we went to commit wholesale slaughter against destructive monsters.
“Targets are still contained, no civilian casualties. Two Hunters on site.” The suit in the front let me know the situation as the car pulled to a stop.
Deep Fiends liked to destroy and break things, and were more methodical than their more violent cousins in the Lowers. While they would impassively rip you limb from limb and chew you to shreds, they’d almost just as happily destroy the environment around them. We were down by a new district still under construction.
Half-formed gray buildings loomed up to the darkening sky, their metal protrusions almost bringing the place into a muted Hellscape of its own. I stepped from the car, waiting for Wight to work out how to unbuckle himself, and walked over to the edge of the construction site.
There was a drop, maybe forty or so feet, where they were in the process of building basement levels to whatever this construction was to become. High-rise apartments? Department store? It didn’t matter, but the cracked hole near the middle looked rather untoward.
//Come in. Video… adequate.
“Audio also adequate.” I furrowed my brow. Rodney wasn’t usually able to speak to me in the real world. Perhaps this was one of the benefits of his patron. Now he could interface demon-to-demon.
//Audio confirmed. Demon portal is located underground, beneath the construction.
“I can see the hole. That’s where the two Hunters are?”
//Affirmative. They are holding the demons back, but will soon be overwhelmed.
They would be doubly so once they saw Wight and me in action. Not a great thing that I was so eager to impress—or show up—the other Hunters. Especially after just chastising the beekeeper for having too much ego.
That only seemed to matter if you couldn’t back it up.
The car drove away, and I started around the side of the fencing to hop down. While Wight might be able to absorb some force, I didn’t feel that breaking both legs would be the best way to start this Quest. Maybe the next one.
With a slight jog, we made it to the bottom of the pit, and closer to the opening in the floor. The stone and metal bars around this area looked to have been clawed or chewed upon, and broken shards of concrete and rebar lay strewn around the hole. There would have been demon bodies and blood if they didn’t burn out from this plan on death, no doubt.
“Into the darkness we go then?” I handed my patron his knife.
[It is where you most excel, after all.]
I grunted something akin to an acknowledgement. All the different colored questions had been poured into the pot, and the weight of adversity had started to stir it. Still, I wasn’t sure what the resulting mix would turn out like. Something useful that I could paint my future with? Or a drab and uncomfortable hue that would need to be chalked up as a lesson learned the hard way?
With a slight pause, I pushed my glasses up to activate
The more I thought about that, the more reasonable that seemed.
“Something about this doesn’t sit right.”
Wight said nothing, but nodded his head. Deep Fiends were powerful, but not the sort of demon you’d send as a first wave. Not when you wanted to be quick about something. Sure, they may have activated the portal in panic after I put a bullet through a few of their group… but that didn’t seem much like demons either. Demons from the Mids who could reform liked to play the long game if it was safer.
There was no urgent need to push through the portal now. They could have just cooled off. Heck, even waited for me to die of old age before starting their plan again.
The question wasn’t if they were after something else, but what?
Spinning the revolver in my hand, I leaped down into the depths.