Achieving Heaven Through Hell Part 3: Only the Results

Chapter 18: Katoche

Chapter 18: Katoche

The ominous ziggurat towered over the cityscape, casting its vast, oppressive shadow over the city of the damned. Demons marched up its endless steps by the thousand, a tortuous march that drew them closer and closer to their doom with dreadful slowness. Each one had been meticulously followed and observed until such a time where their value as witnesses reached its zenith. Now they would be interrogated, processed, and sent to the soul lathe, where the truth of their souls would be laid bare in a final, agonizing blaze of Hellish energy. The glowing pillars of liberated demonic essence lanced into the sky from dozens of places on the mighty structure.

They hadn't stopped blazing for months.

Deep within the Ducal palace, once such process was taking place.

Three battered imps stood lashed to a pole, their arms bound up behind the backs and over their heads as they were hung forward. Their mottled red and white skin was slick with sweat, the ones with hair found it matted, ruffled, soaked with perspiration as they heaved and panted.

"Well?" Blitzo sneered. "Let's hear it, Moxxie."

Moxxie glanced over at his employer, a long-suffering expression on his face. "What are you talking about, sir?"

"Oh, can the bullshit, Moxx! I know you're just snipping steel cables with your asshole, waiting to dig into me about how all this is my faAAAAUUUUUUUUU–"

Captain Gallia smirked as she unleashed a torrent of golden, demonic lighting upon the hapless imps, wracking their bodies with arcs of pure agony.

"–UUGHllt. I know you want to, so just do it already!"

"Alright, you want me to tear into you, sir? Well, alright then!" Moxxie took a deep breath. "You are a crude, perverted, unprofessional degenerate and your drawing skills are subpar! Further moOORRRAAAAAAAAAARGH!"

Gallia electrified the trio, a hard, cruel smirk on her noticeably unmarred face. The imps jolted and writhed as their bodies were consumed by something beyond pain, beyond suffering, suffusing their very souls as arcs of energy danced over their rigid, galvanized forms.

"RRRRRGGGGOXxie! Don't bring up his artwork!" Millie broke in, her tone calm despite her ragged, choked panting. "That was uncalled for!"

"Excuse me?! Oh, he's just constantly talking about violating our marriage, putting us in danger, and insulting me to my face, but the second I clap back, I'm the bad guy!"

"Listen to your hoe, Moxx," Blitzo snickered. "I'm open to constructive criticism, but the second you start swinging below the belt, I just might swing back with some fire disses of my own!"

"Bring iiiIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGH!!"

As the light flashed on Gallia's face, her smile slowly gave way to bemusement, the surges of tortuous energy faltering somewhat.

"YEEEEEEEEEou should be flattered I even bother with your boring-ass married life! I like to keep up to date on my employees' personal lives, like a good boss, but holy shit!" Blitzo spat. "Serenades, dinners, gang exterminations! Gawd! Don't you two ever fuck?! I know I said I wanted turn that hotdog into a sandwich, but that was before I found out you got the sex drive of a Shaker Panda, you pencil-dicked gremlin!"

Gallia desperately suppressed a laugh as she raised her hand to jolt them again.

"I'd say you should fuck through a bedsheet, but that'd remind you too much of your parents, wouldn't it?"