Chapter 20 Daesra
DAESRA
I’M TRULY in hell. I’ve called this place hell before, but the underworld looked nothing like it does now as I hang from the Gentle One’s talons by my pierced shoulders.
Blood has oozed continuously out of me as she’s flown, raining the desolate rock beneath us as if this were the Blessed Isles, and yet there’s no golden paradise below us but rather the steep slopes of razor-sharp black mountains wreathed in clouds of smoke under a starless dark sky.
It’s only grown darker the deeper we fly into the hazy peaks.
And then I see light—a red-orange glow in the clouds—but it’s coming from beneath us, not above.
The Gentle One dives into the smoky gloom, toward the heat I begin to feel.
The tug on my shoulders draws a hiss of agony from me, and I struggle weakly once more for a grip on her scaly claws to relieve the pressure.
But it’s too difficult to gain a handhold with how she has me pinned and how slippery my blood-soaked fingers are.
Never mind the damage to my muscles that can’t heal around her talons—if I would even heal after having lost so much blood.
I can’t even clutch the hilt of my sword for long.
I’ve summoned it several times, trying to swipe at her despite the risk of falling to break on the rocks below, but she only shakes off my feeble swings, forcing me to drop it.
I would swallow her soul if I could, and I’ve also closed my eyes to battle her in silent darkness in an attempt to seize it, but she repels my attempts just as easily there—never mind that my success would guarantee I fell from this height.
I doubt falling would kill me, and she doesn’t want to test it. She wants to ensure my end.
In fire.
Her swooping dive takes us through choking, sulfur-smelling clouds until the glow burns through them and the view clears—and yet it’s not one that I would ever want to see.
The black mountain slopes turn into steep cliffs that drop, along with the lashing tongue of a molten fall of liquid fire, into a deep, dark pit nestled between peaks.
The fire pools at the far bottom—more of a lake, I realize, as it grows at our approach, forcing me to reassess its size—but that’s not all the pit contains.
It’s teeming with sharp, angular structures and moving figures, some small and human-shaped, others too big for my liking.
Over the roar of the falls I can hear shrieks and screams and bellowing shouts, but I don’t have the chance to make out what’s happening throughout much of the pit—fortunately, perhaps—because the Gentle One takes me straight over the lake of fire, the crackling, sizzling red-hot glare of it drowning out all other sights or sounds.
The perfect place to leave me forever inflamed.
She pulls up well above the burning surface of the lake to avoid the flames herself. Her bat wings buffet me in scorching gusts of air, though what’s beneath my dangling feet is hotter.
Fear is already consuming me before the flames, for one of the first times I can remember in my long life. I don’t know how I will survive this, as weak as I am—and yet it might be worse for me if I do. Forever is a very long time to be inflamed.
And that’s not even the worst of it. Of course I’m afraid for myself, and perhaps that’s something no living creature can escape in the end.
But I’m more afraid for Melé, who is still far from the Blessed Isles; for Pogli, who might be stranded in the underworld alone; and most of all for Sadaré, whom I failed to save.
I promised myself I would find her. I promised her. I also promised her I would live—never mind live differently—and I’m failing at all of it, here at the bottom of hell.
“It is time for you to face the Mother’s wrath,” the Gentle One grates from above me.
Finally, she lets me go. But I only have a few seconds of relief after her talons retract from my shoulders, before the hot air rushes past me, the world turns upside down in my vision, and I plummet straight into the lake of fire.
And then there’s only pain. Burning over every bit of my skin. In my eyes, in my mouth as I scream. It burns so deep that I feel like my very soul has been set alight. That I have become one with the flames.
But my soul was already alight—and it still is. Glowing, pulsing, and eventually forcing back the heat, its golden warmth suffuses me.
I already burned once to become a god. Apparently once was enough.
My arms break the molten surface, flailing as I gasp a lungful of air that doesn’t feel so scorching now after being submerged in the lake.
I expect my skin to be crackling black, oozing, and flaking off, but it’s only flaring a brilliant orange-gold.
I blink at it in shock. And then I shake myself, and I do what I’ve always done.
I swim, starting for the shore through waves of liquid fire, but my shoulders still aren’t moving properly with the holes in them.
Even if I’m not burning, I’m not healing with any great speed.
The Gentle One spots me. She hasn’t departed, obviously sticking around to make sure I never came back from this. She dives for me like a hunting falcon, her claws extending—no doubt intending to push me back under.
But I’m ready for her. Just as her talons are about to slam into my head, I reach up and seize her bulbous raptor ankles, swiveling under them and dragging her forward with all my might—forward and down.
Any attempt to press off me, to catch the air with her wings and reverse out of her dive, is lost as I capture her momentum and send her whipping into the lake.
Her wings flap wildly as she screams, but they’re already burning.
Her red eyes fly wide and panicked, her sharp-toothed crimson mouth in the shape of agony as the molten fire rises to cover it.
She somehow manages to form words with her final cry. “May Vengeance take you!” And then she sinks entirely under the surface.
And yet, she’s still alive, thrashing beneath me as I hold her under. Probably still cursing me, though I imagine what I heard was a name—the name of her final sister—as well as a curse.
There’s only one way I can kill her.
When I reach for her soul this time, she practically welcomes it. It’s a mercy, really. For her, if not for me.
Power flares through me, brighter than the lake.
My wounds heal in an instant, even banishing any warmth I still felt on my skin.
The Gentle One, for her part, no longer struggles—no longer even has enough substance for me to hold in my hands.
The lake consumes her body as quickly as I consumed her soul.
Wasting no time—fearing what’s to come—I swim once more for shore with powerful strokes, cutting through the liquid fire as easily as cool water, my limbs no longer even glowing with the heat.
The fire isn’t the problem. It’s the anger building inside of me. I’m aflame, just in a different way. By the time I reach the shore and claw my way free from the burning lake, I’m shaking with it.
I’m so furious with Isha that my roar rebounds off the surrounding cliffs.
I’m furious with the Gentle One for hauling me here and forcing me to eat her soul.
I’m furious with Sadaré for waiting to put on her fucking ring and leaving herself vulnerable to death.
I’m furious with her for dying, and for what she’s done with Isha since to survive.
I’m furious with Horizon for making me into a tool only fit for digging deep into the underworld.
I’m furious with Orseus’s imprisoned soul for tricking me into liking Isha in disguise.
I’m furious with Kardon for not giving me a fucking ferry ride across the godsdamned river, because how difficult would that have been?
I’m furious with those villagers for not getting out of my way—twice.
I’m furious with the judges for judging me, no matter how justified they were.
I’m furious with my mortal mother for keeping me from consuming the souls that I needed to help us, never mind that it was the kinder thing to do.
I’m even furious with Pogli—though only the smallest amount—for being so fucking pure and so perfect, better than I could ever be.
Most of all, I’m furious with myself. For being an arrogant demigod. For becoming a vengeful daemon. For becoming a dark god of chaos. For always, always, always being my worst self.
For never being good enough for Sadaré.
A small part of me knows my feelings are irrational, but the much larger part of myself doesn’t care in the slightest. If, after consuming the last Gentle One, I wanted to hold the world in my arms only so I could watch it rot, now I want to pin the world under my heel just so I can watch it all burn.
So it’s good for the world’s sake that the Pit of Hell lies before me, not the mortal realm.
It doesn’t hurt that this place is also particularly offensive.
Structures rise through the rock and smoke, twisted metal bars and plates forming stacked cages among a jumbled web of walkways, though not everyone is trapped in the cages or even walking.
Huge spans of wings in flight circle through the wavering, hazy air above.
Daemons. Dead daemons, but they look more than lively to my eyes.
Isha wanted me for his collection, and here it is, at the bottom of this pit: dozens and dozens of twisted demigods or less-divine beings who chose to bind their souls for unleashed power and potential.
For immortality, even, if their potential was great enough.
There aren’t a ridiculous number, but there are enough, prowling, flying, or otherwise unleashed upon the shades who’ve been condemned here.