Chapter 22 #2
But something else that Dante had just learned was that Armoni had been involved with the biblical flood.
Dina had said the Watchers had caused the flood.
He turned slowly to eye at Armoni, whose mouth was pressed tightly shut.
‘Tadeo’s looking to free you,’ he thought.
But there were others. Where were the others?
‘Tadeo.’ His torturer. ‘You cut my hand off but protected your own when the monster tried to burn you up.’
When he could, he’d tell his commanders: ‘I think some of him needs to stay unharmed for him to heal. If you blew him up, all of him, at once — you could get him. Kill him.’
Before Dante could ask, there were the thuds of multiple feet climbing down the steps, and Gemory and Rosier hurried, together, down the staircase to avoid getting in the way of five guards, three dukes, and the regent of Hell.
Baal was dressed as he always was, in his heavy robes and his laurel wreath, as he let out a long breath.
Running his gaze over the prisoners and their visions quietly, some seconds passed before the regent gestured for the guards to go unlock the cell door.
“Asmodeus, I really didn’t want to do this.
” But his voice was gruff, almost sneering.
“Try not to enjoy whipping me too much,” Asmodeus bit back.
And Baal laughed. “Don’t ask too much from me, old friend.”
Just as there had been when Asmodeus, Armoni, and Dante were brought to the prison, there was a march.
This time, however, Rosier was allowed to walk with them, as well as Gemory.
The demon of fruit held the arm and torso of the limping duke, and Gemory kept herself close beside Dante, whereas Armoni stood in between the two pairs, quiet.
The climb up the spiral staircase dragged for several minutes, and Dante remembered the jogs he’d done around the military college, counting every second.
Sometimes, he’d force himself to count in his first language.
A tongue he’d wanted to contribute to the killing of, once.
But now, he forced it out again: ‘Jun, cheb, oxeb, chaneb, jo’eb.’
As they moved into one of the trillion red, dusty surfaces of Hell, he saw pulsing, bright orbs hanging from the ceiling, organs akin to hearts, burning, illuminating this part of the infernal world.
Dante couldn’t remember seeing any of this when he was led to the prison.
‘Hell takes you where it thinks you deserve,’ Asmodeus had said.
It had no direction, no sense. Without demons, the keepers of Hell, to be your guide — eternal wandering would be the fate of any poor human who ever fell in.
Dante had been lucky. ‘Or unlucky,’ he thought, staring ahead.
There was an amphitheater there — made up of archways and bones of every type of animal — and a crowding of demons.
Heart stuttering, Dante also caught other creatures moving along the arches, on the open ceiling’s edges, and flying in the air — made of muscle, but undeniably shaped like all the beings whose skeletons made up the building.
Unlike the humans he’d seen — in the pyramid of blood and as living dust — the animals were perfectly distinguishable from one another, and they made the same recognizable communicative noises that they did on Earth.
The soldier noticed how there were animals all over the stout, flat-roofed homes here.
They were colorful, and some demons apparently maintained gardens by their front gates.
As Dante was shoved forward, he stumbled, and Gemory quickly took his arm and snapped at the demon guards leading them along.
Asmodeus leaned in and quietly told Dante, “You won’t be asked anything yourself, I’m sure. Baal is likely to send you back to prison for Satan to eventually deal with, so just keep still, don’t act suspicious.”
Gemory jumped in, whispering: “I’ll explain everything for you.”
“Thank you,” Dante said politely, then nodded, firm, up at the demon woman and smiled. He saw her cheeks flush again, and she smiled back as Armoni sighed.
“I’ll stay with you all too,” Rosier said to Asmodeus, back in the demonic tongue, and now the duke let out a defeated breath, but he didn’t argue, fearing the wrath that the fruit demon had earlier warned of.
They walked along the stone path, then through the first archway into a shaded space where hundreds of demons were all gathered in their long tunics and draped robes and their great horns, their swinging tails.
When they saw the prisoners marching in, they surged forward, trying to look at them.
Many of them shouted a particular word when they saw Dante, and he reasoned it was how they referred to humans.
But their eyes were wide, fascinated, excited.
There even seemed to be some cheers. Dante glanced up at Gemory for explanation, but she was shouting at the crowd to make way for them.
And so it was Armoni, who grunted, who tugged on Dante’s arm, who tried to answer with gestures of his free hand.
‘What?’ Dante had no clue how he’d been meant to interpret the angel’s pointing at the demons, then at him.
‘Is he trying to say that they’re excited to see me?
A human?’ But why? The blonde loosened his hold on Dante, and then they were all pushed unceremoniously past another archway, into a circular area beneath the open roof of the amphitheater.
There was a pulsing, enormous heart far above, hanging from the ceiling, casting a deep red glow onto the soldier and all those he stepped into the arena with.
He was reminded of gladiator fights he’d seen in films; the building style begged the comparison, but the seats seemed more cushioned, and there was a stone platform at the center, up some steps.
Once they’d reached it, Dante noticed the cuffs and bolts at the edges, some dried blood on the ground; this is where tortures must take place.
And it was here that he realized the absurdity of his situation, as well, and it took everything in Dante not to laugh.
‘I’m in Hell. I’m really in fucking Hell.
’ Were it not for how Baal extended dark wings before them, flapped them hard enough to ruffle everyone’s clothing and hair, the soldier would have cackled.
The regent rose high, then dived toward a platform on one of the hundreds of rows of seats; there was a throne there, but it was covered by a mantle.
In the crowd, there were thousands of demons, shouting, pointing, saying things to one another.
Behind him, Dante listened to some dukes step away, followed by a few of the guards.
And he turned to see the dukes leave while the guards remained.
They lifted their spears and pointed them at Dante, Asmodeus, Armoni.
Once again, the soldier had to bite down a snicker.
Just days ago, he’d been hiding behind a tank and having a gunfight, and now here he was, about to be tortured medievally, anciently for these monsters from a religion he despised.
Following the lead of Asmodeus and Armoni, Dante stepped onto the stone platform and expelled some of Hell’s heat from his lungs.
Rosier and Gemory remained on the steps behind them, nearby but not so close to be mistaken for the prisoners.
Baal, booming, shouted for all the demons to quiet. Dante gathered that from his tone, the inflection, and the wave of silence that passed over the demons. And when he began speaking again, he directed it at Asmodeus, an accusation, then a taunt, then a laugh.
“You were forgiven,” Baal was saying to the demons’ ears, “Asmodeus. You broke one of the few conditions that Satan gives us — to never visit Earth without his explicit blessing — over and over. These past centuries, you haven’t heeded the commands of the devil.
You know the consequences that Hell will inflict on us if left untended by the demons, don’t you?
The fires would rage out of control, and everything would be destroyed.
Even we might be destroyed. And — you have also neglected your duties in Hell as duke.
You were forgiven because you returned willingly, and then you thanked us for our grace by committing treason.
Why is that, Asmodeus? Are you tired of being a duke?
Too addicted to smoking and fucking all the time? ”
Just as Asmodeus had begun, speaking, however, another voice sounded out nearby.
Another demon, in even more of a roar than Baal, shouted: “Enough with this shit show!” On the other side of the amphitheater, Dante saw a grinning demon with trimmed, red hair and a large body rise to stand on a makeshift platform that three demons were holding in place beneath him.
One of them was red-haired like him, named Ara.
But the loud demon, named Moloch, continued: “Baal, I hate to interrupt, but this really can’t go on any longer.
” Baal, immediately, growled and stepped forward.
“Where is Satan? It’s been long enough. Tell us where he is. ”
“Moloch,” Baal snarled. “What is this?”
“It’s a speech,” Moloch teased. “The demons are tired, Baal.” He lifted a clawed finger, jabbed it in Baal’s direction. “They are tired of you. Where is Satan? Hell suffers without him. Hell needs him. Tell us where you’ve hidden him.”
“Satan has matters beyond attending to his spoiled children!” Baal spat. “Step down. Step down or suffer in a prison cell.”
“You can’t imprison us all, regent.” Moloch waved an arm and other demons in the crowd hollered, raising their fists, calling the name of Moloch, demanding to know where Satan was.
“You — Asmodeus.” The demon of lust in question stared forward, as if he hadn’t even heard the insurgent’s call.
“Come on, you most of all know that Hell has become unlivable under the rule of Baal. That’s why you keep running away, isn’t it? You know this place has rotten.”
As this occurred, Gemory brought her face to Dante’s ear and, voice quiet, told him: “That demon you see is Moloch. He was a duke once but Satan had his title taken away because he was so violent.” Dante blinked in surprise, trying to imagine how any demon could be too violent for the devil.
“He’s been trying to build an army for the last hundred years to overthrow Baal.
” Gemory’s eyes lingered not on Moloch but on Ara, the supporter standing closest to him, with a pitiful gleam.
“He… wants to be at Satan’s side, but he’s cruel. He’s crueler than anything.”
“You’re almost there, Moloch,” Asmodeus answered, then tilted his head at him and laughed.
“If I swear to you, you’ll have the favor of the majority of dukes, right?
” At that, Moloch twitched, and some of his own followers snickered at their hero’s goals being stripped bare so inelegantly before everyone. “Well, what would I get out of it?”
“Not a whipping,” Moloch joked back. “And an angel for yourself. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?
” He nodded his head, suddenly, at Armoni, then muttered more darkly: “You keep stealing my slave away, after all. How about we all go after that angel you set free, and you can have your own slave, so that you can keep your hands off of mine?”
When Moloch looked at Armoni, the angel’s eyes widened in terror, and then he lowered his face quickly, and though Dante hadn’t understood, he tried to gesture subtly.
He pointed at Armoni, and then he waved a hand at Moloch, before making a slicing motion at his neck.
He was trying to tell Armoni to kill him, but the angel shook his head gravely.
Ignoring them, Moloch turned up to Baal again and said, “Tell us where Satan is, and maybe there will be no new war in Hell.”
The duke, again, said, “Step down.”
“No,” replied Moloch, grinning, baiting him.
And he soon retrieved a stone from his robes, and he flung it across the stadium.
He didn’t hit Baal — in fact, he missed extraordinarily well — but the second the rock left his fingers, others in the crowd cheered and stood.
Many laughed, many threw stones — those joining Moloch's army — and others threw objects just to throw them.
Baal growled, and then shouted, “Take the prisoners back to their cell,” before he flew up into the air again, rose high over the crowd, then slowly, almost impossibly so, lunged toward Moloch.
But whatever fight was about to occur — Dante wouldn’t be able to see it.
He felt himself grabbed by a guard, thrown off the platform to clumsily fall onto the ground with a hiss of pain and a twist of his ankle.
At the same time that he was shoved forward to walk alongside Asmodeus and Armoni, however, the guards also frantically pushed back the demons scaling down from their seats onto the arena.
Dante hurried alongside the two other prisoners, with only two guards dragging them along now, toward the archways.
Chaos was erupting loud, bloody — yelling, shoving, brawls, stones flying.
Far above, animals looming at the edges of the ceiling cackled and howled.
“We have to get away from these damn guards,” Asmodeus whispered in Dante’s language, and then he threw himself against one of them, making him stagger into the crowd.
Then, Asmodeus took Armoni by the arm and tried to sink into the sea of demons opposite the guard he’d just shoved, and Dante understood.
He hurried after Asmodeus, Armoni, and soon, the three of them were pushing through everyone, running.
Briefly, Dante looked back only to see Rosier and Gemory trying to follow, however thick the crowd between them grew.
Armoni spoke, quickly, urgently. A quick string of words, something about an ‘Azazel.’
And before Dante could ask for translation, Asmodeus said: “We’re headed for the Watchers.”