“Speak your piece,” Resent said from Misery’s side. “Nothing will make me attempt to preserve your life.”

“I would never ask you to dishonor our duel in such a manner.” Slowly, Misery reached up toward Resent’s throat with a gauntlet that was splitting apart. His hand was so frail that it was unclear whether he was trying to use the last of his strength to choke Resent. “Now that you have won, and there is no one to overhear, did you truly not kill King Strife?”

“No. As I said, I would have been thrilled to do so, and in a few decades, perhaps I would have issued him a challenge for the crown, but my power was still too far beneath his at the time of his murder.”

“So, then these past fifteen years...all for naught.” Misery chuckled, letting his feeble hand drop to his side. “I suppose I owe you an apology. The witnesses in the castle were many, and each wholly convinced they had seen you leaving the throne room, dragging the king’s corpse behind you. We even found the crown secreted away in your chamber. Whoever pitted us against one another either deeply infiltrated Dreadmus, sowing such terror in every purported witness that no amount of torture could glean the truth from them, or is some form of shape-shifter.”

“You’re just going to believe it wasn’t him?” Rodrigo asked.

“I never honestly thought him responsible. No matter how I may feel about Misery, the depth of his loyalty to Strife is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. It is downright contradictory to the very essence of a demon.”

Misery’s eyes fluttered closed. Briefly, he seemed dead. Then his eyelids snapped open, and he seized Resent’s arm with a surprising amount of force. “In my quarters...your father’s journal. I was unable to decipher the writing, but if you can, it may provide you some insight.”

“Demons keep journals?” Rodrigo asked.

“Father was an anomaly in many ways,” Resent said, his eyes locked on Misery’s. “I give you my word, I will hunt down whoever is responsible for toying with us, and their passing will be several times more painful than yours.”

A faint smile touched the dying king’s lips as he stared up at Resent, almost as if he was proud of him. Resent rose, and for a moment, Rodrigo thought he would leave Misery to bleed out on his own. And why not? Apologies and justifications didn’t bring Carlito or the countless dead humans back to life. Suffering a slow, lonely death was the least scum like this deserved.

But then Resent encased Misery’s skull in the nebulae and crushed it as the rest of the torso convulsed. The surge of indignation Rodrigo felt at his enemy being granted such a small mercy, startled him into silence. That Misery was dead, and he himself played a role in it, should have been enough. It should have satiated the rage spreading through him like a cancer since Carlito drew his last breath. But Misery had lived for centuries, and died on his own terms, utterly unafraid. How was that justice for a terrified ten-year-old?

“Spectacular!” Amdusias yelled, reminding Rodrigo they had an audience. “While in most cases the prince would be crowned king immediately with this victory, his special circumstances mean the council must convene before any decision is made. There were more judgments scheduled for today, yet given the condition of the arena, I think it best we stop here. To all of you who stuck around to the bitter end, try not to be killed by falling debris on your way out. Or do. It would give the rest of us a good laugh.”

As the demons began exiting in droves, Rodrigo asked, “What happened to his sword?”

Resent looked at what moments ago had been Misery’s black great sword, rich with detail, and was now a small, plain, sword-shaped slab of steel.

As Resent gripped the hilt, a second disembodied voice, ancient and authoritative, penetrated Rodrigo’s mind. “Ye who would wield the power of assimilation must payeth the price with one of thy sensory faculties.”

“D-Did the sword just talk?” Rodrigo asked.

“It appears so,” Resent said. “And now I understand Misery’s lack of an energy sense. He sacrificed it to this weapon for its power to absorb the abilities of others.”

“So, then what we were really fighting was Jett’s electricity and Adena’s fire.”

“I assumed as much, though the electricity certainly seemed more potent. It also explains how Misery managed to get through that inferno unscathed.”

“Why wouldn’t he take the nebulae?”

“Because he knew he would be doing himself a disservice against me. Like an amateur swordsman brandishing a blade against a master.”

Rodrigo ignored the barb. “So, should we pay it?”

“You just lost an arm and you’re already prepared to forfeit one of your senses?”

Resent had a point and the more Rodrigo mulled it over, he didn’t need yet another voice in his head. “All right, so what do we do with it in the meantime? It’d be bad if it found its way into some other maniac’s hands.”

“I shall store it away as something to barter with. Right now, the crown is our priority.” Resent went through the gap in the arena’s spiked wall through which Misery had emerged and began climbing up several hundred feet worth of spiral steps. The entire place was crumbling around them piece by piece.

“Man, I feel sorry for whoever has to fix this place up,” Rodrigo said, thinking about how he’d seen scaffolding up in certain parts of New York for as long as he could remember. “It’ll probably take years.”

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“This level of damage is far from unprecedented. Judgments will be split between the many other smaller venues throughout the city, while the servants and slaves take a few days for repairs.”

When they reached the top, someone with long platinum blond hair was already sitting on the throne, twirling the tri-horned crown around a finger. Their hair was parted in the middle and immaculately straight, without a single strand out of place.

“Semiazas, remove your filthy fallen hand from my crown before I tear it off and feed it to you,” Resent said, his exhaustion showing in his weary tone.

Semiazas glanced over a narrow shoulder at Resent with glacial blue eyes, and it was only upon seeing his extraordinarily handsome face that Rodrigo realized he was male. “Brazen of you to spout threats at a high lord, especially in your condition. You only narrowly defeated an upstart never suited to be more than a general.” His gaze lingered on the crown a bit longer before tossing it to Resent with irreverence. Rising to display elegant yellow and white clothing that complemented his slender figure, he said, “Enjoy it while it lasts. Regardless of your reasons for being in it, you will not be ascending the throne with that body.”

“Are you so certain because you orchestrated all this?” Resent asked. “Revenge for Devika’s ignominious defeat, perhaps?”

“Oh, please, spare me your half-baked allegations, princeling. I may have a myriad of good reasons to detest you, but King Strife’s death has been of no benefit to me. He was more enlightened than the majority of your uncouth species.” With no warning, out from the vertical slits on the back of Semiazas’ shirt, burst a pair of ragged skeletal wings, each one the length of his body. The wings didn’t look like they should be able to move, let alone support his weight. Blood dripped from the sharp wingtips that had ripped through his back, but he expressed no pain. “I make for the meeting at the castle now. Do not dawdle.”

Semiazas rose into the sky with a flap of his wings, causing a gust of wind strong enough to nearly knock Resent down. Then he flew off at a speed that left an ear-popping sonic boom in his wake.

“Okay, who the hell was that?” Rodrigo asked. He remembered the name being mentioned in the latest dream, but he was still lost.

“High Lord of Vicearia and current leader of the fallen angels.”

Had Rodrigo not known what he knew now about the origin of Hell and demons, he wouldn’t have been surprised to hear their natural counterpart existed, too. “I don’t understand. Demons were created here, on earth, right? So, what does that make angels?”

Resent clicked his tongue. “This is why I didn’t want to explain any of this to you. You make it sound like we’re somehow lesser because we don’t match up to the imaginings of your scripture. And yet, we’ve informed every aspect of it. Before our creation and our earliest ventures into your world, dating back many millennia when the portals were first constructed, the concepts of demons and Hell hadn’t even existed.”

Rodrigo said nothing, because whether Resent was basking in his victory, or just too tired to feign ignorance, he was being more forthcoming than usual.

“That said, the angels align quite well with the beliefs of your era, sans their compassion for humanity, of course. Or else Hell never could have come into being. Banished by Heaven, the fallen’s pupils changed to reflect ours, and their wings withered, feathers and flesh reduced to nothing but bone. Their wings lack functionality, but remain a point of pride among the fallen, so some, like Semiazas, use their abilities to relive their former glory. They make up a small fraction of Hell’s populace, and we permit them to stay here for the intel they supply us on their old comrades.”

“Then what’s the deal with you and him?”

There was a pregnant pause before Resent spoke again. “Offering them sanctuary is one thing. Giving their appointed leader such a high position of power in our hierarchy is another. Never mind him. My concern is getting to the journal before the castle guards ransack Misery’s quarters.”

Resent placed the crown on his head, and in an instant, it shrunk down, resizing itself for the perfect fit. Then touching a finger to the same gem on the crown that Misery had back in the pit, they instantly warped into the throne room.

“Hold on, what about Raquel and Adena?” Rodrigo asked. “You left them in that horde of demons!”

“Cease your whingeing. Last I saw, they were in the audience with Ose, the high lord I was traveling with. You will be reunited shortly.”

Generating the ill-proportioned right arm with the nebulae, Resent shoved open the enormous doors of the throne room and revealed a circular great hall. Leading up to the doors were two curved rows of life-sized stone statues, facing one another, and wearing carved versions of the crown Resent wore now. In front of him, spinning around and backing away from the doors to take a semicircle formation, were ten Brutes with their swords and spears raised. As they noticed the crown on his head, their eyes bulged in their helmets.

“You...defeated King Misery?” one of them asked.

“No. I destroyed him. Now, are you going to obey your rightful king and lower those weapons, or are you all that eager to join him?”

They did so reluctantly before returning to guard the throne room entrance. That was all the defiance they could express, and they knew it. Any further and Resent would kill them. In time, he still might.

“Are these all the past rulers?” Rodrigo asked as Resent continued on.

“Not even close. Only those who held power for at least half a millennium are eternalized here. Many with brief reigns, like Misery, have been largely forgotten.”

Resent strode by several of the statues, most of which were diavoliks, until he came to a stop in front of one that was pointing forward with a saber in his left hand and held another in his right at his side. It was King Strife. There was writing at the statue’s base, but for all the sense the intricate characters made, Rodrigo might as well have been looking at hieroglyphs. He was about to ask for a translation, when Resent spat up onto the statue’s face, muttered something in Demonic, and kept walking.

At the hallway’s end, Resent passed through an opening in the wall to his right. As he started down a set of long, onyx spiral steps, Rodrigo asked, “How many floors is this place?”

“Excluding the dungeon, six.”

“Then why does this staircase seem endless?”

“With all the larger demons, particularly ogres, our establishments cannot allow low ceilings like those in your world. In the castle, each story has a minimum height of fifty feet. Fortunately, the royal family’s chambers have always been on the fifth floor, directly beneath the throne room.”

Within the next minute, Resent reached double doors guarded by two Brutes. They had the same disturbed look in their eyes as the previous group, yet taking their lack of numbers into account, showed no disrespect, even bowing slightly before prying the doors open for him. Resent proceeded inside without acknowledging either of them.

There, in yet another broad, circular hallway, were several large ebony doors. Apparently, this floor had been constructed with an extended royal family in mind. There were no guards in sight, probably because anyone who had made it this far without incident had to belong here. Resent stopped in front of a pair of doors that were both bigger and more ornate than the others. With the nebulous right arm Resent was maintaining for appearances, he placed a finger to the lowest set keyhole, and sculpted the nebulae to unlock the door.