Sweet Pandemonium

Chapter 6

“I’m fine,” Maria assured as she stumbled out of the tram. “Totally fine. You don’t mind if I…”


“Feel free,” Hanan gestured to the floor of the terminal. Maria nodded and bent double, coughing out a few more blobs of vomit. The high windows were splattered by a fresh volley of brimstone, and soldiers rushed in to seek shelter from the onslaught. Ire stood close by Maria, wary of anyone looking to harm the obviously fresh arrival. A Captain with horns curling out from his forehead and cloven feet sprinted to Hanan and snapped into a smart salute. “Colonel! Did you get my email, sir?”


“No, my phone is running updates again.”


“We’ve received notice straight from the top. We’re getting a divine visitor…” the Captain stopped in mid-sentence and stared at Maria. She had straightened out and found herself looking at a Satyr in fatigues with a sidearm on his hip. He his lip curled as looked her up and down. “You like what you see, babe?” He blew her a kiss.


“Hey cud-muncher,” Ire called, “give a blowjob to a porcupine.”


“That’s enough, children.” Hanan glared between them both. “We should have no problem accommodating as long as Colonel Korvaldsson knows. When will this guest arrive?”


The satyr pulled his glare away from Ire. “Three hours, sir.”


Hanan rolled his eyes and rapped his fingers against his sidearm. “We stick to usual protocol then, no time for anything too opulent. I’ll read your email when I get to my office.” He dismissed the captain, who leapt back through the crowd with inhuman speed.


Maria wiped her mouth with a vaguely shell shocked expression. “...Did I just get hit on by a goat-man?”


“Yep.” Ire gestured for Maria to go first.


“Right. Just checking.” She followed Hanan, who stormed through the bustle of armed guards towards the main door leading outside. Maria gave an alarmed double take and slowed at the sight of white hot brimstone pounding the glass doors, but Ire pushed her forwards with no little impatience.


Over the great door was a statue of a beautiful woman with a massive snake winding over her shoulders. She had sharp taloned feet that perched directly over a bold sign that read: There Are No Kindly Ones Here. Maria slowed again to look at the statue “Who is she, and why does she have bird feet?”


Hanan’s foul mood quickly melted away as he saw a chance to show off. “All the Fangvaktare report to two great beings: the first is the goddess Ishtar, who founded our group shortly after she arrived some three or four thousand years ago. The other is Great Asmodeus—represented by the snake she’s holding—who granted me that tram, this fort, and this little gift here.” As they reached the door, the colonel produced a thin knife from his belt and showed it to Maria, the light from the brimstone cast strange patterns along the wicked blade. He winked at her, gripped his hand hard about the odd metal, and cut deeply into his hand. Maria stepped back with alarm, but Hanan barely flinched. Instead he shoved the door open and raised the blade up. It sprouted upward, then blossomed miraculously into an umbrella. He tilted it out into the hail of brimstone, which bounced harmlessly off its canvas. “After you.”


Maria rubbed her eyes and glanced between the umbrella and the sparks that landed at Hanan’s feet. “Shut the front door.” She stepped out and Hanan followed with  Ire close behind, fearlessly out from underneath the umbrella. The brimstone curved away from her as well, as though the canvas stretched across a space several times wider than the umbrella. Maria looked behind and gawked at the sight of Ire standing without shelter under the blazing rock, then walked precariously out herself. The clouds of smoke and debris whirled and seethed as they poured out fiery rain. Maria raised her arms outward and laughed with wonder—a sound rarely ever heard in Hell. Hanan walked up behind and clapped her on the shoulder. “In case you think this is normal…” he gestured over to what had once been a squadron of soldiers lying not thirty feet away, their already charred corpses hissed and sizzled like bacon in the heat.


Maria bent over and gagged again, but nothing came out. “So how are you protecting us with that?” She shouted hoarsely over the clamor of fire, thunder, and stone.


“This,” Hanan gestured to the umbrella, “is a demon!”


Maria cocked her head. “No offense, but I’m a little underwhelmed.”


“This one is just one of the rank and file, but it still commands great power in this place. No demon would appear only as a man or woman… most hate appearing as such unless they’re forced. They are much broader minded than that… they can also grant favors large and small, depending on the payment you offer them.”


Maria was half-preoccupied with a fresh plume of smoke from a neighboring volcano. “So that demon is cool with being a knife or umbrella all day?”


“They become whatever I wish them to become—again, if I pay appropriately. Though I’ll admit, this demon is obliged to give me quite a discount.”


“Great Asmodeus told it to?”


“Just so. And when a Demon Lord says jump, all the little demons jump.”


He turned, jauntily resting his umbrella against his shoulder as they strolled through the apocalyptic scene. The open expanse was little more than heavily pockmarked stone and dirt, scoured by the constant eruptions. Just ahead was a hideous monolith of concrete dotted with slitted windows. “That’s the prison?” Maria asked.


Ire cleared her throat. “No, that’s the admin building. That’s the prison.” She pointed at the shape looming behind it.


A great black spire, jagged with strange buttresses and outcrops, soared upwards into the hail of molten rock. Hanan took his time walking around towards it, never going faster than a leisurely stroll as he pointed out the control tower in the wall, the smoking grates in the earth marking where prisoners in solitary were at the mercy of heavy fumes and scorching debris. He stepped carefully around the ashen remains of those too slow to take shelter, keeping his mirror-like shoes immaculate. Ire didn’t mind that he took point for this opening part of Maria’s tour; where she wasn’t the chatty type, Hanan loved nothing more than to show off. And there was nothing he loved to show off more than his beloved Dawaar.


“We should take a side entrance,” he advised. They followed the colonel away from the path towards the tremendous steel gate and into the shade of lofty buttresses. But the great tower’s base was wide enough to cover four city blocks, and there were no openings in the warped black stone. Instead, skulking by the base were humanish, horned creatures, hideously muscled with blue, green or red skin. “Oni,” Ire informed Maria. “You’d have a hard time finding footsoldiers as nasty as them. I wouldn’t advise fighting one drunk.”


Maria giggled. “Speaking from experience?”


Ire shrugged. “So this one time, I was coming out of this bar with my shogun friends—” Hanan cut her off with a whistle to a particularly large, neon green Oni in the middle of sharpening his horns. The hellspawn tucked the blade away and gave the colonel a lazy salute before drawing out a radio, and ordering a lift to be sent down. Mere moments later, a great stone platform descended, one side fixed into nearly imperceptible ruts in the wall, the other supported by dense chains. “They’re the only way up,” Hanan said, “save through the front door.”


Maria scratched her head. “Why aren’t we using the front door again?”


“We keep a Manticore just behind it, and feeding day was four days ago.” He gestured them on after him, and the lift quickly whisked them over a hundred feet through the air. Halfway up, no less than six screaming people plummeted past them towards the ground. Hanan grumbled as he looked at his phone. “Ire, what time is it? My phone is still updating.”


“Two ‘til.”


Two more people plummeted by. “Those Oni bastards are taking their lunch break early.” The lift cranked to a stop at a row of open arches. Handcuffed denizens struggled away from them, but Fangs stood just behind with cattle prods, stabbing them over the side. Hanan had to yell several times before the Fangs halted. “The guards eat at noon climax, and not a second earlier! Sit those prisoners down, right now… good!” He stalked by them and flourished his umbrella demon, and it collapsed back into a knife as easily as water fitting into a mould.


“You do not break protocol ever,” he snapped. “For this, you are now going to stand there and guard those prisoners until the Silence. Until then, no one moves a damn muscle.”


“But the Oni will go hungry sir…” one man mumbled.


“Exactly,” Hanan growled. “And whatever those Oni threaten you with, I promise I can do double. If any of you move a fucking inch, I’ll rent a cell out for you myself.” With that, he strode past them and stepped into a hallway.


“Jeez, that was harsh,” Maria observed. Ire snorted.


“Welcome to the system, new blood. I’m often saddled with less competent people,” Hanan shrugged as they left them and entered a maze of black stone corridors lit with blinding fluorescent sconces. “This prison doubles as a training ground for the Fangvaktare’s greenest.”


They strode along for a time without speaking. Screams filtered up and down the hall through thick, barred doors, though their own way looked utterly deserted. Ire glanced down at their guide’s hand and cleared her throat. “Hey, you want to wrap that up in something?”


“Hm?” He looked at the hand he had cut, then back at the thin trail of blood following them down the hall. “The cleaning staff will get that, Ire. I have some gauze in my office.” Then Hanan turned to one and pressed a button. There was a whirr of machinery and a click as the door unbarred itself. Maria, clearly still shaken by the guards with cattle prods, immediately stepped back. “Why are we going in there?”


Hanan raised an eyebrow. “Because it’s the way forward.”


“Fair warning:” Ire hung her hands casually in her pockets. “Whatever you’re expecting to see… it’s worse than that.”


Maria took another step back, her hands shaking. “Why do you do this to these people, Hanan? You run this place. Couldn’t you make it better for people?”


Hanan chuckled. “Oh, new blood! But they all deserve it. Besides—” he raised the knife, and it turned into a key without any prompting— “it pays well.”


He unlocked the door and shoved it open.


Ire was never prepared for the smell; it assaulted them and set her head spinning. Maria reeled away from it and leaned heavily against the other wall. Hanan gave a sad shake of his head and gestured for them to move forward. “Come on,” we’ll get through it soon!” Ire yelled through the shrieks as she grabbed Maria around the shoulders. She resisted at first, but bent her head low and stumbled through the door.


The available space was no bigger than a broom closet. Yet behind walls of chain-link, a pack of prisoners howled and pounded until the metal rattling rose to match their cries. More chain link cages were stacked one on top of the other, each one filled with emaciated souls that trembled, shivered, screamed, and shat. Human waste and blood ran down from the top cages to the bottom in a never ending trickle, leaving the souls at Ire’s eye level caked in layers of filth. Maria managed a weak moan as she looked up before she fell back into a faint.


Denizens pointed and jeered at her limp form as Hanan shut the door. The machinery under the floor whirred to life, and they were born up, past the masses packed in on every side, their only light a sickly yellow bulb over their head. They came to a stop several stories up, and Ire struggled to carry her ward through the door into a large, dark room. She didn’t recognize this space. Perhaps it was a new addition.


As her eyes adjusted, she could see the amphitheater, with comfortable seats occupied by denizens casually drinking, eating, or smoking. Hanan shut the door behind them.


“Perhaps it’s a good thing she passed out in economy,” Ire murmured. “I doubt she was ready for...”


He was cut short by a groan from Maria. “A-Rod,” she groaned. “I just had the worst nightmare…”


Ire scratched her head. “What’s A-Rod?”


Maria lurched up and glanced around wildly at the dark amphitheater. “Where’d you guys take me? How long was I out?”


“Mere seconds,” Hanan assured. “And it seems you’re in luck after all. You get to see Ammit’s Afternoon show!”


Sudden light flooded the stage, and a man hanging over what looked like an orchestra pit begged for mercy in a short motif. Then a crocodile head longer than a car and veiled in curtains of lank hair lunged out and ripped him out of the chains. The creature shook him wildly, and Maria caught a faceful of blood.


“She’s quite good,” Hanan sighed.


The audience applauded politely at what experienced damned would consider modest carnage. A second man was roughly dropped from the ceiling in chains and immediately began cursing the audience loudly. Maria leaned sideways and spit out the taste, eyes still squeezed shut. Ire knelt beside her, partially to share genuine advice, but also partially for the joy of harassing a tourist. “You look a little out of it. We’ll get you something to eat.”


All three of them were hit by a second spray of blood as Ammit gurgled hungrily.