One more mission, and I was out. I would be K-Three no more. They would remove me from service and expel me from the hells.

For the last decade, killing has been all I’ve known. My handler points, and I attack. I was an experiment. And a failure. But I had survived. The Void-Ship I was on rocked, sending me leaning forward as it tilted. I gripped onto the ice cold rail as we descended into the abandoned city below. The horizon seeemed to stretch into forever, the chunk of land that the city rested on below seeming to just fade into darkness as it stretched away.

There was only this roar.

A magic explosion deafened me to normal sound, leaving me with nothing more than the crackle of static over my interface. The device was built into my neck. My body shifted, never comfortable with the amount of Infernal metal buried under my body and strapped to my bones.

Around me, teams jumped off the still moving ship as we coasted over the city, most landing on the roof tops only a few feet below. Others fell much farther. Void-Ships battled in the sky above.

[Mission: Retrieval. Team Six, engage.]

Just retrieval. I wasn’t entitled to know anything more — to know why we were throwing away hundreds of lives in a battle in an abandoned pit of hell. The city was dead and lifeless below us, illuminated only by the ambient Hellfire that filled the air, casting everything in the same, soft orange glow.

We jumped. I braced myself and rolled as I hit the top of a sky scraper, feeling rubble bite into my legs and palms as I brought myself to my feet. They were calloused anyway.

[Report Status.] My Captain issued an order over the interface, landing heavily in front of me.

He was a gigantic, bulky devil. He didn’t look like he should be able to stand — his legs were only a few feet tall feet flat like an elephants, holding up a giant red body, covered in menacing black armor in the shape of spikes and curves. He held a gigantic axe made of infernal metal, a wicked, curved implement with a gleaming edge.

While the leadership both consisted of devils, the rest of the squad was a mix of races. I, myself, was a Tiefling — rejected by humans for being of the hells, and rejected by the hells for being mortal.

I didn’t learn the names of the others. I had stopped doing that after the first few years, and the first dozens of faces.

[K-Two. Landed one roof over. K-Four and K-Eight are with me. Out.] Across the roof, the second in command, K-Two, waved at us. He was a tall, irregular devil, body long with black skin.

[K-One. We’re down K-Nine and K-Ten.] K-One laughed into the interface, the sound overlapping with the static of another magical cannon shot rocking the city. The sound of glass and crashing buildings overwhelmed us. [Damn new recruits missed the jump. They’ll have to send a recovery team for their metal.]

Two of the ten of us were already dead, just like that. Most missions had a low survival rate. This was, after all, the hells themselves.

Without a word, K-One began descending the building. He chopped downward, breaking through the roof to step down over the rubble.

[K-One Descending.] The Captain said. My Interface, directly programmed into my eyes, began to display markers indication our direction and destination, as well as distant pin points that highlighted the positions of other squads members.

Some of them winked out even as we descended the stairs.

[K-Two — contact —]

Static picked up, cutting off communication between us as the armadas above fought for aerial control of the city. Whoever won would glass the ground forces below.

There was a closer explosion from the building over.

[K-Two — K-Four is dead. Contacts eliminated.]

[K-One. Copy.]

Most of the windows of this towering building had been broken apart or blown out over the years. Ancient graffiti had faded to nothing but stains. This deep in the hells, nothing survived for long.

We had almost reached the bottom of the building, only deterred so far by a few jumps through broken staircases and piles of rubble, when a shot from a void ship rocked the building.

Everything creaked as we heard floors above start to collapse. There was a boom, then another, then another, accelerating as the floors collapsed on eachother. Dust poured out the side.

K-One ran to the window, jumping out across an entire city block and landing in the building next to us. I followed a second after, turning back to stare wide eyed at my squad.

K-Five, a human, almost ran into me. K-Six, an orcish man, hit the ledge, shouting as he gripped it with the edges of his fingers before pulling himself up. K-Seven froze.

The rubble threw us backwards across the floor as the building collapsed on top of him.

[K-Seven down. Dumb bastard.] K-One said, the letters scrawled in my vision and voice audible through my interface.

I felt the now perpetual scowl on my face grow. Most Devil Captains were bad, but this one was a particular asshole. He didn’t demonstrate a shred of hesitance or remorse, more often than not being joyful as his own squad died.

K-Two and K-Eight arrived through a hole in the ceiling a second later, landing heavily on the floor. K-Eight, an almost human man, was panting and bleeding, grabbing at his arm. I judged that he would live as long as we ex-filtrated the mission. The Hellfire augmentations to our bodies made us much stronger than our baseline.

We descended the building. The next floor was filled with rubble, half collapsed and stopping us from taking the stairs, but we were close enough to the streets to jump out. They, too, were covered in rubble now, along with a few corpses.

Dropships flinging soldiers into the city shot by overhead, filling my interface with static and the air with noise.

We moved towards an objective, taking alternate routes down city streets blocked with collapsed buildings and piles of rubble, even carving through buildings where it sped us up.

Across the city, everyone raced towards whatever objective awaited us in the center. On my interface, hundreds of pin dots moved inwards the same objective. The ships above bombed the area.

We crossed a street and an enemy unit ran directly into us.

A group of devils, no augmented mortals assisting them, starting swinging the moment they saw us. The first swing cleaved K-Six in half.

I drew my own sword. The sheathe I carried it in hid the blade in sub space, leaving just the handle to pull free the length of red metal as a devil met my blade, blocking it with a long hafted weapon. I circulated Hellfire through my arms, sucking it in from the ambient air. My body glowed orange. I pulled back, readying to swing again.

The devil exploded, K-Two’s magic nearly hitting me as well as it took off the top half of the devil. I was already looking for the next target. There were no thoughts. Just years of training and ingrained experience.

K-Eight clashed with a devil, barely able to hold his own with his injured arm. I almost reached him when he grunted, the devil pushing through his guard — and his stomach, running him through with the blade as I arrived behidn the devil.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

With a swing, I took the devil’s head off. The body fell limp to the ground.

The fight was over and K-Eight was dead.

[Report.] K-One said. [We’re down to half strength.]

[Copy.] Another voice flickered over the comms, the sound of a Handler — our remote commander onboard one of the distant flagships, organizing and directing dozens of squads below.

The distant pins the interface provided slowly turned off, fewer and fewer squads surviving where we approached. There was a boom above, the city shaking, then a horrible whistling noise as a void ship descended into the city.

K-One had ran a good distance ahead of us, and now turned on his heel, trying to run back as the ship slammed into and tore up the earth. I turned and ran, ducking down a side street as the world behind us exploded. A building tipped, collapsing.

[K-Two assuming command.] K-Two’s voice rang through the interface. [K-Five, K-Six, follow markers towards the objective.]

The lizard like demon led the way through a few more streets, then into a building, where we found a stair case descending into its basement.

[This is the place.] K-Two hissed, his voice reaching over all of our comms despite his words only being applicable to us.

We descended the stairs.

K-Five and K-Six blipped out, their dots disappearing as the city continued to shake.

Eighty percent of our squad was dead.

“What the hells are we fighting for?” I asked. Our missions were bloody. Always bloody. But like this? Fighting over an abandoned city devoid of life? There couldn’t be anything of value here. I didn’t have to yell. I knew the interface would carry my words to K-Two without it.

[You don’t need to know.] K-Two said.

We moved through winding labrynthine tunnels, encountering nothing else as the city rocked above us, the slight slope of the floor guarenteeing we descended deeper. I felt the power in the air shift as K-Two repeatedly channeled and dispelled Hellfire, almost as if it were a nervous reflex.

Finally, we came on a sliding door, covered in dust with age and matte. K-Two looked nervous. We were closer than any other squad.

The [Retrieval] order hovering in my vision expanded as the Handler updated it.

[Retrieve the artifact.]

I didn’t believe there was a piece of magic here worth the cost in lives.

Then the door slid open. The dull orange of the maze of tunnels fell away to brightly powered lights, white halls clean except for accumulated dust.

K-Two stepped inside uncomfortably. He may have been a devil, but he had a collar too; a glowing orange halo that extended up from his neck and around the back of his head, made purely of magic. It was a communication device and a handle for the devils to control their most dangerous soldiers, augmented with Hellfire fueled technology.

We walked for minutes down a short hallway, the explosions above growing ever more distant as we approached our destination.

The next door slid open to a gigantic chamber.

My interface flashed, dozens of orders seeming to appear and disappear at once. My vision blacked out, then reappeared, the Interface blocking me from perceiving whatever was in the center of the room. A shifting texture covered a moving shape, the word classified repeated over and over.

Then I noticed my mission parameters.

[Find and retrieve the transport artifact. Eliminate K-Three through K-Ten. Their contracts are up.]

They were never going to honor the terms of my contract — to return me to my world. They were always going to kill me.

[Interference detected. Collar triggered. Terminating K-Three.]

My eyes widened at that. My neck felt like a hot coal had been shoved inside of it, burning. I flinched and staggered to the ground, reaching up to touch the base of my own Interface at my neck. K-Two stared wide eyed toward me.

[Error: Termination failed.]

A buzz of static rose as my vision flashed again.

I hadn’t even known the interface could fake out images and block what I saw. K-Two gathered magic, looking at me alarmed. I fumbled for my sword, grabbing at the handle, but my whole body ached from my Hellfire engine suddenly rebelling against me. I wasn’t able to circulate Hellfire to empower my limbs.

[Hello!] A new voice talked on my interface. It spoke with overwhelming sensation, booming through my entire body with a voice of pure magic. I stumbled forward again, right as I was about to stand.

K-Two also stumbled, the Hellfire he was gathering dissipating in an instance.

[Right. Sorry. Too loud.] The voice said, the text scrolling through my vision. My skin tingled. [Is this better?]

“What the hell is this?” K-Two asked, voice raspy. “Handler?”

He looked uncertain between me, then at the center of the room.

Now I could see the magical artifact they wanted to retrieve. They had called it a transport artifact. It looked like a gate way, steps leading up to a circle of concentric rings which spun wildly. An image contained within the gateway flashed as the rings spun and rearranged themselves, showing alien landscapes or empty skies.

I limped forward, my body aching as the Hellfire augments stopped complying. I started drawing my sword anyway.

[Right! No need for violence. I’ve disabled both of your… communication devices? Your bosses can’t reach you here.]

I paused, looking at K-Two. The series of spinning rings finally stopped.

On the other side was a single massive eye that seemed to be made out of glittering stars. It approached curiously, staring into the room.

“What the hells are you?” K-Two asked.

“I am the being powering the… transportation device, as you call it. I’d like to make a deal. Free me.”

A devil knew better than to ever make deals. K-Two was already gathering his mana for an attack.

I rose and swung in the same motion. K-Two’s bolt went wide, missing the portal and crashing into the wall. The eye inside of it flinched back, the image making my head hurt as an image of space and stars seemed to move around within it.

K-Two’s neck bled from the wound. He fell to the ground, retreating backwards away from me. But devils were more resistant than that.

“We’re on the same team! What are you doing!” K-Two shouted at me, grabbing at the side of his neck. Hellfire coalesced around him.

“You tried to kill me!” I shouted, body aching as I walked toward him.

[Violent bunch, aren’t you?]

“That was the handler! Not me! We can walk away from this. Your contract, fulfilled.” The devil said.

[Error: Termination failed.][Error: Termination failed.][Error: Termination failed.]

The error repeated in my interface, dozens of instances floating across my vision.

[That’s him trying to activate the bomb collar in your neck.] The entity said, talking over our interface.

I brought the sword down, plunging it into K-Two’s chest, heaving. The lizard-devil’s eyes darkened in an expression of hate, then grew dim.

[You seem like a reasonable person to work with!] The entity said.

I turned to it.

“What in the hells is happening?” I asked. “What is a transport artifact?”

[Exactly what it sounds like. A device capable of transporting. People. Goods. Armies.]

“And you’re powering it?” I asked, turning to the entity.

[I was! But I cannot sustain myself on Hellfire. I am made of pure energy — and that energy is fading. Enough of me has rotted away, stolen by time, that the magic that once held onto me now clings to dead air, the arcana encircling me meant for something much larger. But that doesn’t concern you. What concerns you is what concerns me.]

I squinted. I had gotten into this entire mess — a decade of service, meant to end in my murder, because of dealing with entities beyond my knowing. But I wasn’t going to make it back out of here alive — not after killing my own squad leader.

“And what is that?” I asked.

[Freedom.] The entity said. [You free me. And I free you.]

With its last sentence, the image of its eye faded away, the rings spinning to display a distant landscape. Then another. Then another. Each of them looked like paradise, lush tropical environments. Even images of oceans. I hadn’t seen an ocean in person. But I saw them. Water stretching farther than I could imagine.

“I know a deal too good to be true when I see one.” I said. “If you’re lying to me, I’d rather risk my chances escaping the hells alone.”

[Well, I actually… can’t guarentee where we will end up. Somewhere liveable! For sure. We will survive the first few hours at least! No violent decompression.]

“Decompression?” I asked.

[Don’t worry about it. And also, I will be… temporarily moored to your body until I recover your power.]

“I free you. And you free me.” I said. I trusted a party a lot more when I understood what they had to gain from me. Motives could be trusted, even when words could not.

[Also, your augmentations — they won’t work now that I’ve disconnected you from your network. Like if you were out of range of your ship. But if I’m moored to you, I can make them work until we find a better solution.]

“My augments wouldn’t have worked away from my ship?” I asked.

[Oh, no. Infact, the bomb collar was designed to explode as soon as you went out of range. I disabled that also, by the way. You’re welcome.]

“They were never going to fulfill the contract.” I said, turning. All of the distant dots had stopped updating. The room was quiet except for the rush of air from the portal changing to different environments. “They were always going to get me killed.”

[That’s right!] The thing in the portal said. [But I can take you far away. You’ll never have to see them again.]

Take a chance at hiking through the lower hells, betting I’d be able to find food and water before I died, or trust the eldritch alien intelligence?

I was kidding myself. Being alone in the hells was a death sentence, nothing else.

This was my only option.

“Can you bring me back?”

[What? From the dead? No.]

“Back to the hells.” I said, impatient.

The room was too clean. Too futuristic. Too quiet. Just the hum of magic from the machine. And it was growing louder. I hadn’t been in a place so sterile in years. It was making my skin crawl.

[Why would you — oh, revenge? You want to come back for revenge?]

“Yes.” I said, biting off the word with anger.

[Once I’ve recovered, I can take you anywhere.]

“How do we do this?” I asked, stepping up to the machine. It made my skin prickle. “Are you inside of this, or?”

[No.] It replied. [Just step through. When the device activates and teleports us, I’ll leap onto you and follow you through. Be ready for a fight on the other side. I don’t know where we will end up, exactly.]

I nodded.

At least if this thing planned to kill me, it would be a quick death. Not starving in the hells. I took one glanced back at K-Two’s body.

The portals image grew more intense, flickering, seeming more real.

I stepped through.