Chapter 10 Malachi
Malachi
Ass.
That is the primary olfactory note of the mortal realm.
It smells like fumes, lukewarm garbage, and unwashed ass.
What a fucking disappointment.
After the sanctuary of Eden’s apartment, I am very displeased to report that the ‘great outdoors’ is a cacophony of depression.
I had—perhaps naively—expected spectacle.
I expected Caligula reborn in polyester blends; streets slick with vice and mortals debasing themselves in ways that would make Hell’s auditors blush.
I expected a roar of ambition, a feast of greed.
Instead, I get a man in a stained tracksuit struggling to extract a cigarette from a crumpled pack, and a teenager smoking what smells like chemically enhanced strawberries.
This is not sin. This is… beige moral decay. It’s the flesh-and-bone equivalent of lukewarm dishwater. Where is the fire? Where is the grandeur? These creatures aren’t even failing interestingly; they’re just lingering.
My consciousness claws for Eden’s apartment. I want the stifling, safe scent of her bookshelf and the rhythmic purring of the House-Beast. I want to go back to the sanctuary of the fuzzy socks and the impromptu baths of salt and tea.
But her boots are already moving quickly against the concrete.
I have to hunch my shoulders, ducking my head so the ridiculous blue hood covers my profile.
It’s a losing battle. I’m towering above these tiny, leaking mortals, my shadow swallowing them whole as they scurry past, eyes glued to their glowing rectangles.
“How much further is this pilgrimage, little summoner?”
“About two miles,” she shoots back under her breath.
“Two miles?” I grit out. “I do not want to hike through the scent of flatulence and despair for two miles.” My eyes dart to the keys clutched in her hand—clinking, silver promises of a quick journey. “Do you not have a metal carriage? It would be significantly more efficient than... this.”
“No,” she says quickly, her gaze fixed straight ahead, pace never faltering. “And stop talking. Just... blend. Please.”
Blend. As if I could ever efficiently mix with this tepid, lukewarm soup of humanity. If it weren’t for Eden and her bleeding arm, I would have turned around within five seconds of being out in this shit-pit.
This is a horrific vacation—and I should know.
I once visited the Iron Spires of the Seventh with Rhaziel during the Great Recalibration, where the air was literally composed of the screams of the unrepentant and the ground was made of sentient glass.
That was a nightmare, yes, but at least it was honest. It didn’t try to mask its rot with billboards for ‘half-priced caramel lattes’ and ‘$1.99 burgers.’
I tuck my chin deeper into the hoodie, trying to filter the air through the synthetic material before I actually gag.
I wonder if the mortals are immune to this wretchedness—if the stench of rot and exhaust is dampened for them, or if they simply live their entire lives in a state of sensory masochism.
Is this normal to them? Do they wake up and think, ‘Yes, I would like to inhale the ghost of a burnt tire and a stranger’s stomach contents today’?
The thought is as revolting as the reality.
She must dislike it as much as I do—my little summoner is exceptionally tense right now.
She’s sticking to the inner edge of the sidewalk a step ahead of me, keeping as much distance between us and the litter-scattered road as possible.
Her head is down, her shoulders hunched as if she’s trying to shrink into the fabric of her own coat, disappearing into herself.
I’m practically leaning into her wake. It’s the only damn way to survive this. She’s the only thing that doesn’t smell like garbage.
The flow of the crowd hitches in one movement. A man in a tailored suit with a face set in a mask of self-important urgency barrels blindly through the lane and slams his shoulder right into Eden.
She stumbles sideways, her shoulder cracking against the rough brick of the buildings we’d been hugging, and she full-on recoils, letting out a panicked wheeze, her eyes instantly blowing wide and glazed, staring at nothing.
She’s shaking, her hand scrambling for purchase against the brick like she’s trying to hold onto reality itself. But the asshole doesn’t even look up. He doesn’t even break his stride or offer a grunt of apology.
A white-hot spike of fury pierces through my disdain. How dare he. How dare this well-dressed worm smack into my little summoner like she’s a piece of furniture. Like she’s just another obstacle in his path to more money and more boredom.
“Hey,” I snarl in his direction, the sound vibrating out of my chest.
I want to reach out, snag him by the back of that expensive silk tie, and show him exactly how small a mortal becomes when he’s staring into the maw of the Ninth.
I’m about to move, hands twitching inside the oversized pouch of the hoodie, but my attention is snagged by Eden’s whispered plea that I really don’t want to hear.
“It’s fine. Just keep walking. Please.”
“Fine?” I hiss, stepping into her space. “He didn’t even acknowledge your existence. Stick up for yourself, little summoner. I should peel the skin from his—”
“Quiet!”
I force the snarl back down my throat, the metallic tang of unshed anger coating my tongue. I have to settle. I have to compress myself back into the shape of a man who pays taxes and worries about his cholesterol.
But the realm I’m beginning to hate isn’t finished with us. Before I can give the suit-wearing worm the lingering death he deserves, a man in a neon vest steps directly into our path, clutching a clipboard.
“Hey!” he chirps, his voice a pitch too high with a forced, manic cheer. “Do you have a minute to talk about the environment?”
My muscles coil to lunge. First the suit, and now this slab of meat has the audacity to stop our pilgrimage? To talk about the environment they’re already burning? The sheer, staggering arrogance of has the blood in my veins simmering.
Then, I look closer.
Oh…
He has a wide, far-too-toothy grin plastered across a face that, at a glance, is classically handsome.
Chiseled jaw, perfectly symmetrical brow, but the closer I look, the more it sours.
Those eyes are too far apart… his skin’s tight where it should be loose, and sagging where it should be cinched to the bone…
Vermin-Class Harvester from the Twelfth Division.
He isn’t here to save the planet. He’s here to harvest the low-level frustration of passersby, feeding on the tiny drops of misery they leak when they’re forced to be polite to a stranger they want to punch. He’s a bottom-feeder, a parasite in a neon vest.
And the little shit is looking me right in the eye.
He knows. He fucking knows.
I step forward, my height casting a shadow that swallows his cheerful neon vest whole. “You will move out of our way. And you will do it while you still have the structural integrity to stand.”
The little thing steps forward, closing the gap until I can smell the stagnant musk wafting off him beneath the lavender he’s caked over his skin.
He eyes me up and down—taking in the oversized hoodie, the beige mud-streaked face, and the ridiculous glasses.
A flicker of genuine amusement crosses his plastic features.
“Where’s your sanctioned shell?” he asks, quiet enough to stay below the hearing of the mortals. “The Ninth Division hasn’t issued shitty makeup and tight clothes as a standard shell.”
“Well they’ve obviously kept you out of the loop,” I lie, because there’s no way I’m going to tell this scavenger that I’m essentially a squatter tied to a girl who wasn’t expecting me to appear in place of her dead boyfriend.
“New model, specifically for a job that requires me to peel you like a grape if you don’t step aside. Now, move.”
“I’m just doing my job, sir,” he says, loud enough for the passing crowd to hear, his voice dripping with that mock-humility that makes me want to rip his tongue out. “Just trying to make the world a... cleaner place.”
He lingers on the word, his gaze flicking for a fraction of a second to Eden—to the way she’s vibrating with fear and the way she’s holding onto me.
From the corner of my eye, I spot a girl in a denim jacket slow down, her phone already half-raised as if she’s considering filming the giant in the blue hoodie with an oversized skull threatening some environmentalist nut.
To them, I’m just another unhinged city statistic, a looming threat in cheap polyester.
He’s watching the girl with the phone too, his plastic grin twitching. He clears his throat, the sound like dry leaves skittering over a grave, and attempts a very bad impression of human casualness.
“Yeah, it’s all... rad, dude,” he says, giving a stiff, disjointed thumbs-up. “No sweat. Totally chill vibes. Save the planet, right?”
He looks back at me, his eyes gleaming with a ‘fuck you’ that requires no translation across any division of Hell.
A low growl ripples the marrow of my bones.
It’s the sound of a structural collapse, a warning that the ‘chill vibes’ are approximately one second away from being replaced by a localized apocalypse.
I don’t care about the phone-wielding mortals or the ruse anymore.
I want to take that clipboard and feed it to him one splinter at a time.
“Malachi, stop,” Eden hisses—and then does the unexpected.
She dives her hand right into the front pocket of the hoodie, her fever-warm fingers sliding past my wrist to interlock with mine.
The contact sends a bolt of pure, living heat traveling right to my gut.
I should pull away. I should be insulted by the restraint.
But instead, my fingers curl around hers of their own volition, pinning her small hand against my stomach.
“He’s just a volunteer,” she mutters, using the leverage of our entwined fingers to tug me along. “Keep your mouth shut. And walk.”
She can’t see the roach behind his eyes.
She just thinks I’m being a dick to a college kid.
But I move, letting her pull me past him, even if I don’t take my eyes off the prick until we’ve put a dozen yards of human filth between us.
I can still hear his cheerful, chirping behind us as he stops his next victim.
“Hey! Do you have a minute to talk about the environment?”
My boots strike the pavement with enough force to send jolts up my spine.
I am fucking fuming.
“You’re being ridiculous,” Eden hisses, her voice barely audible over the roar of a passing bus.
She’s still clutching my hand inside the pocket, her pace frantic.
“We are supposed to be laying low. We are supposed to be invisible. What was all that about? You almost started a fight with a kid asking for donations!”
“I just don’t like to be bothered,” I snap, jaw tight. “And I don’t like being stopped by insects who think their time is more valuable than mine. This entire realm is a logistical nightmare. How do you live like this? Everything is so... loud and it fucking stinks.”
Eden lets out a long, ragged sigh, the kind that says she’s too exhausted to unpack the layers of my ego. She doesn’t let go of my hand, though. If anything, she pulls me closer, navigating me around a cluster of morons.
Mortals think they’re alone here, but the city is crawling with my kind.
There’s another one right there—a hot dog vendor on the corner, his skin a shade too sickly, fingers moving with an insect-like twitch.
He’s slathering mustard onto a bun with a grin that I can guarantee promises forty-eight hours of violent, soul-shredding food poisoning. Purely for the sport of it.
There are always a few like him in this realm.
Licensed pests. They punch a clock, file their little reports, and go home to whatever damp hole they call a den, thinking they’re important because they made a toddler cry over a ruined meal.
It’s pathetic. Back in the Ninth, we have architects of despair—beings who can turn a soul inside out with a whisper.
Here, the ‘forces of darkness’ have been reduced to losers in grease-stained aprons, content to peddle intestinal distress to the masses.
I’m surrounded by the dregs of my own kind and the most boring of hers. It’s a match made in a very specific, very boring corner of Hell.
This was supposed to be it—the grand unveiling. I’d spent centuries listening to the travelogues of other entities who bragged about the ‘sensory feast’ of the surface, and enough time on the waiting list to come and see it for myself.
But on my first trip outdoors, I’m being harassed by a clipboard-wielding scavenger in a world that smells like a wet basement.
It’s a joke. The architecture is drab, the people are hollow, and the ‘nature’ they’re so worried about is currently represented by a single, dying weed pushing through a crack in the cement.
She stops suddenly, her shoulder brushing against mine as she points toward a storefront with a flickering neon sign.
“There,” she says, her voice trembling with relief. “It’s right there.”
I look up to where a green cross glows against the smoggy sky. This is it. This is the grand temple of mortal healing. After several miles of inhaling the collective exhaust of a dying civilization and nearly committing several counts of homicide, we have arrived at the source of salvation.