5. A Most Appropriately Named Red Line

The Inferno of the Underside was very appropriately named, considering the temperature was always boiling. As Isaac stepped outside the subway station and entered the realm proper, the first thing he did was look up.

There was no visible sky in the Inferno. The entire realm was situated in what looked like a gaping chasm encompassed by glowing red stones. Long arching bridges crossed the great expanse, sharp stalactites hanging down from beneath them. They were far too long and thin to be able to support their own weight, but Isaac had decided not to question it when they were so obviously magical, considering those stone bridges constantly waved and rippled, as malleable as water. It was one of the reasons Isaac disliked the place, besides the heat. Walking on those bridges always gave him a headache. He couldn’t imagine how he’d deal with it if he were scared of heights.

The one saving grace was that, if someone had a lot of time to kill, they could take the stairs spiraling up the stone walls of the chasm. Granted, these stairs were rather steep, and they had no railings, but they were still probably safer in the long run.

Flitting around the open chasm, Isaac could make out distant silhouettes of various demons and devils native to the area (was there a difference? There was in D&D but Isaac was fairly certain the Underside didn’t have alignments). From where he was standing, it looked like a group of them had begun playing the flying equivalent of jump rope around the waving bridges, which just confirmed to him that they were never meant to actually be traveled on. Most demons could fly, anyway.

Isaac tapped the tablet, which remained blissfully cool in his hands, protected by whatever magical barrier Lilith had put around it. He closed out of his list of requests and instead pulled up the map feature, where the Inferno was first on the list. One more click pulled up a handy dandy live map of all the people inside the place, represented as tiny dots with floating names above them. Olzu’s name was conveniently highlighted, as was anyone else on his request list. Isaac frowned. If the map was accurate (which it always was, even if he often wished it wasn’t), then Olzu was located at the very top of the Inferno, right below the ceiling.

Isaac stared up at the swaying bridges, which had progressed past gentle rocking into violent swinging, as if in tandem with the flying jump rope game, and decided to take the long way up.

—

“Oh, the Traveler.”

Isaac was about an eighth of the way up the chasm and thoroughly regretting his decisions when he heard a voice speaking to him. Blinking, he carefully turned his head, keeping his feet firmly planted on the stairs, and faced the open expanse of the cavern.

Hovering a little above him was a familiar demon. The woman was about three times the size of an average human, with dark purple skin that seemed to glow red from within. A long snake tail hung where a human’s legs would be, and her fingers sharpened into points nearly as long as Isaac was tall. Behind her back, six feathered wings flapped up and down, sending out blasts of air that provided momentary reprieve from the heat. She had visible jagged rows of teeth jutting out from behind her lips, and her shadow completely engulfed the spot Isaac was standing in. Still, he didn’t tense up at all when he saw her.

He sighed. “Sharil. Could you please stop calling me that?”

The demon slowly blinked solid yellow eyes. “Why? Oh, well I suppose it might get confusing, with Fable and all.”

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Isaac didn’t really care about the confusion, it was more that he’d rather not be associated with the aforementioned name. He just nodded, deeming it a reasonable enough explanation, and Sharil seemed to get the memo.

Sharil was another one of the Underside inhabitants who he vaguely liked. She was frequently on his update list, but he found he didn’t mind as much because she only requested stat updates when she actually needed them. Sharil had been around Igor’s level during her initial stat assessment, and now, after about 3 years, she’d risen to level 32.

On his tablet, the screen automatically pulled up the demon’s sheet, as it did whenever someone new approached the vicinity.

NAME: SHARIL

SPECIES: DEMON

LOCATION: THE INFERNO, RED LINE

[CLICK TO EXPAND DETAILS]

ATTACK: 15

SPEED: 11

SKILL: 20

DEFENSE: 22

INSTINCT: 18

INTELLIGENCE: 19

STAMINA: 23

CALCULATED LEVEL: 32

Isaac silently closed the sheet as Sharil continued speaking. “What brings you here? Another update request?”

He released a long sigh. “Yep. Someone named Olzu. Apparently he’s up at the top of the Inferno.”

She stared at the stairs he was standing on. “That’s a long walk.”

“Yeah, well.” He looked pointedly over at the violently oscillating bridges. Two of the demons crashed into each other in their attempt to dodge them. Isaac thought he saw one of the stalactites break off and soar down into the chasm to hit whatever unlucky demon happened to be below it.

“Point taken.” Sharil extended a clawed hand. “I can fly you up, if you like. You’ll have your hands full soon; it’s the least I can do.”

Isaac squinted at her suspiciously. “You know Olzu, don’t you.”

The demon smiled, teeth glinting in the red glow of the cavern walls. “Maybe.”

—

It turned out that flying with a giant demon three times your size with giant claws and six flapping wings was a lot more difficult than it looked. In the end, Sharil had to resort to wrapping her tail around Isaac as she flew up. He felt vaguely like he was suffocating, but it beat trekking up even more stairs.

Flying was significantly faster, and while Isaac couldn’t actually see anything, considering his vision was blocked with snake scales, the tablet he was clinging onto for dear life helpfully updated him every time they passed a new level of the Inferno. Despite there being different named layers, they really weren’t all that different from each other. This certainly wasn’t Dante’s.

From what Isaac knew of, the levels represented different areas the demons lived in. There apparently was a way to enter the stone walls of the cavern, one that Isaac wasn’t aware of and wasn’t particularly interested in finding. He could only imagine how hot it would be within those glowing rocks. He’d rather not die of overheating.

“Here.”

Sharil’s voice was muffled as she carefully set Isaac back down onto the stairs. He blinked, his eyes taking a moment to adjust to seeing more than just darkness, and saw that the ceiling was significantly closer now, only a few more minutes of walking left instead of hours.

“Thank you,” he said gratefully. Sharil nodded.

“I’ll see you another time,” she said, and with another flap of her many wings, she soared back down into the lower levels of the Inferno.

Isaac turned to face the ceiling again. The roof of the Inferno glowed so brightly that it was hard to make out individual stones. It waved and pulsed much like the bridges, and combined with its color, it looked similar to a massive beating heart.

Taking careful steps, Isaac continued up the stairs until he’d reached the top.