As much as Hell was traumatic enough, the whole process of getting there didn't make it any more of a pleasant journey. It was as though the very nature of reality wanted to hold you back an ask you if you were really sure you wanted to break protocol. No, I wasn't. But we did what had to be done. What the Org expected of us.
Sweat dripped down my forehead. There was something about being under constant observation that made the process of painting out the circle of sigils drag out for what seemed like hours.
“It usually takes this long? Surely there’s a better way?”
I looked up at Rodney, my glasses sliding down my nose. My knees were sore and prostrating myself on the grimy floor in front of a demon and this newbie had ruined whatever good feeling I had managed to scratch together this morning.
[Eric has been especially patient and reserved.]
“Oh, there’s no need to do anything different on my account,” the Blank smiled down at me - his confidence waning slightly at the sight of my tired glare.
“Nah.” I shrugged. “I always treat my first dates to some performance art. Once I’m done with the chicken blood, I’m going to piss all over everything.”
“Modern art, huh?” Rodney shot back, undeterred.
Against better judgement, I smiled. Only internally, though. On the outside I was about to burst apart like a broken fire hydrant, spraying expletives and misdirected anger about the kitchen. Instead, I stood and brushed down my slacks. Naturally, I had smudged some of the sigils moving around, but they were drawn out even better the second time around.
The illiterate murder scene was almost complete now, with only the final rune to paint in.
“Hope you have an easy off switch on your magic mirror there.” I nodded as I brushed my hair back from my overheating forehead. “If things don’t go to plan, then you have a front seat to the Redd Snuff film. Demons in the Lowers don’t just kill; they - well, I won’t sully your innocent mind with the specifics.”
[There is no need to be dramatic, Eric.]
Wight remained impassive as I waved my hand at him in dismissal. “You remember what happened to Jacobs, right?”
[Yes.]
“I didn’t even know that was physically possible.” I shuddered and put that memory back in the Do Not Open crate, for which the lid had been missing for a while.
Rodney shuffled on the stool. “I get it. My imagination might not be as sordid as yours, but I will tap out, should you… fail.”
There was something about that word that stung more than the half hour of torture on my knees that the tiled floor had provided. Perhaps it was that circular thought that ran through my brain like the midnight train. Level Three in as many years - that was a failure. At least in the mind of the Organization. No leads on my family’s killer - that was a failure in my own mind. Things like that tended to stack up, much like the rest of the garbage in my life.
“How do you get back?”
The paintbrush clattered into the sink, currently unwashed until the circle was complete. Instead, I lifted the coffee mug from where I had left it.
His eyebrow raised. “Coffee?”
“It’s an item bound to this reality.” I placed it in my jacket pocket. “I say the magic words, and a few seconds later I get vomited back out.”
“Ah, not instant then.”
A brief smile did manage to broach my lips this time. Humorless, however. If it had been instant, then it would be comparatively safer for Hunters to delve into the Hells for Quests. Often those three to five seconds would mean the difference between home safe and your head decorating a pike. “It’s even longer, deeper into the Hells.” It took my miserable mind a few extra seconds to realize he might have been making another joke. Instant coffee. Very good.
Rodney made the show of unzipping his top and withdrawing a piece of paper - no, a small folder. As he opened it out, he read from the first sheet. “This Bacon Bitz is a piece of work, huh?”
[It’s actually pronounced Bacc’ Znbitt, the Rodney.]
With all things being equal, I rolled my eyes at both statements. Why the Organization deemed it necessary to produce a rap sheet for the demons was beyond me. It should just say ‘Crimes: Is a demon’. That should be sufficient and often was as far as they were actually concerned. My revolver was certainly not picky.
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
“Theft, Murder, Fornicating with a Corpse… there are a lot of counts of that.” The Blank’s brow furrowed as he read down the list.
[Current Warlord of the Unending Rot clan. Eric killed the last leader. It was quite impressive.]
Now it was my turn to share the concerned stare. I couldn’t remember a time Wight had given me a compliment, much less apparently sounding proud of an achievement of mine. Either he was showboating or was quickly trying to take the shoes from my mother. May she spin in her grave at the notion.
“You shouldn’t have a problem with this one, then?” The folder snapped shut, a slight worry now creeping at the features of the young man. The quickest way to age, that was.
“I have problems with many things, Rodney.” I opened my arms up in open invitation, trying to bait the comeback to squash his nerves.“But, killing demons is only one of them.”
[Now would be an opportune time to delve, Eric.]
The paintbrush was quickly grabbed from the sink, a blob of congealed blood still stuck between the bristles. I knew when Wight said something like that; it was time to act.
My eyes winced as my joints complained about bending down this low again. With a couple of glances at the paper, I wrote in the final sigil. Discarding the brush and page to the counter, I went and stood against the wall opposite Rodney.
“Good luck,” he nodded, placing his hands at either edge of the polished tray.
I gave a grim nod in return. There was hesitation in my brain - the words stacked in a broken queue ready to give the confirmation. It had been months since I last had to make this journey, and I was unprepared. I felt for my revolver and the coffee mug. Both present. As my mouth dried, I turned to face Wight.
“Activate the runes. The coffee mug will be my exit artefact.”
Wight gave no nod or change in expression. Instead, he hovered over to the middle of the room. His loose, foggy tendrils began to twist and weave around the shape of the painted circle. A tornado of dark smoke, his singular red eye glowing, ever watching me.
Gradually the darkened blood-runes first began smoking before a glow picked up. Cracks of light at first, breaking through the dried crimson. Then in a flash, all were aglow in an almost blinding red light. The swirling tempest of Wight’s form increased in ferocity as his eye grew darker.
Then a pop in the atmosphere. My ears buzzed and rang as my eyes slowly readjusted to the hellscape now illuminating the room. The circle in between the sigils was a portal of swirling and pulsing reds, pinks, and blacks. It was sickening. Not only the sight and what it represented, but the smell that accompanied it. Poetically they’d harp on about brimstone and sulfur, but this was worse. This was a rotting carcass that you threw on a pyre. Decay and burned flesh, the melting fat and splitting bone.
This was the Lower Hells.
With a brief salute to Rodney—more for my own sanity than his—I leaned forward and dove into the portal.
It would be hard to describe the sensation of changing realities. It was disorientating. A water slide that was made from flesh and empty space alike, emotions grabbed out at you as if in a horror movie, while vertigo made you feel like you weren’t moving at all. Maybe the coffee was laced with hallucinogenic mushrooms, and I was tripping out on the floor of my kitchen. Rodney ransacked what few valuables I had while my brains leaked from my nose.
That would be a preferable reality to what was actually happening.
Either thirty seconds or a day passed before vertigo stopped, the caress of the eternal nothingness ceased, and I felt warm stone beneath my prone body. The heated air caused me to blink several times to clear my vision, and I slowly righted myself to my feet.
I seemed to be on the outskirts of a small village. That was perhaps a charitable and quaint description for something actually hellish. Around me was nothing but a wasteland. Dried and cracked stone that jutted out in vicious angles as if there were frequent earthquakes here. The dim glow of bright amber light shone out from some of the splits in the rock, a hint of the cause of the constant warmth radiating from the floor beneath me.
The village itself was a group of dark wooden shacks - something uncompromisingly strange given that no tree grew here. Carpentry was not something the pigmen held much stock in. If it didn’t fall down today, it was good enough. Thus the pitiful excuses for shacks mimicked the cracked rock of the surrounding wastelands - improperly affixed and cut wood, hastily and half-assed when it came to the inevitable repairs. It was as if a particularly stropping child created a wooden house of popsicle sticks and was forced to repair it using a hammer and grease.
//Mr. Redd, can you hear me?
The voice of Rodney irritated inside my skull, his voice coming through nasally. I held up a thumbs up rather than replying. Not just to see if he had the viewing mirror ready, but I was also trying to delay the necessity of grabbing a mouthful of the foul air this area was serving up.
//I can see you.
“Good,” I eventually relented, the taste of warm seafood entering my mouth. Demons didn’t really need to eat, as far as I knew, so for the pigmen to be such gluttons of anything - and I really meant anything… well, I suppose that’s why it was a sin.
//Sound is fine too. Looks like you are just outside their den; your entry was not noticed.
Now that was music to my ears. Unlike the attempted assassination against me yesterday, a lot of the Lower Hell demons did not have the foresight to use planning or tactics. It was perhaps a blessing that the High Hells had little interest in the mortal realm. Still, the element of surprise could make this a short Quest - one Hell Shot through the boss’ head, and then I could be out of there.
[I am ready, Eric.]
I turned to Wight, his wavering form now joining me on this side of reality. It always had to take him a little longer to make his way through, as he had to open the portal and ensure it would allow my exit. Lecturers at the Org liked to tell the story of the initiate who didn’t follow procedure and forgot that part of planning. It was a short story.
The dark wrapping around the silver revolver fell to the floor as I allowed my patron the inhabit it.
With a determined scowl, and a barrel full of reckoning, I stepped towards the pigman hovels.