Cradle Her In Darkness, Love Her In Light

Chapter 15

The landing was softer than Tara had been expecting for how long she had spent falling. Quite literally plummeting into the unknown.

She was surrounded by spongy dirt, its texture somehow both thick and light at the same time. There was only one direction she could move in and that was forwards, heading towards a dim glow at the end of the tunnel she had been deposited in. As she had no choice, she followed it, barely short enough not to scrape her scalp on the low ceiling.

In the room the tunnel opened into, a group of people jerked around upon her entrance. Their eyes burned into her with an assortment of curiosity, bewilderment and horror. The colours of their irises spread across a spectrum that contained only black, white and red. But that was the least shocking trait that Tara was faced with. Horns, curling or twisting out of foreheads, wings of varying sizes and all damaged in some way, and the bones in their faces were built in the correct formation but severely distended as though they had scraped through an entire contouring palette for just one look.

No one moved. No one spoke. The lack of reaction did nothing to reduce the fear bubbling under her skin.

"H-hello?" Tara stepped further into the room, straightening properly now that she did not fear bumping her head. It was circular, the earthen walls embedded with torches that flickered with orange light.

No one responded.

She spoke louder. "I'm looking for Azazel. Do you know him?" Surely, she reasoned, he can't have passed through here long before her. Did the passing of time alter in Hell? Tara really needed to grill her friends more about the underworld they came from.

Heads tilted, looking amongst themselves and murmuring words in a language Tara could barely register as noise, let alone understand as meaning anything.

She tried again, this time just saying Shawn and Ava's demonic names in the hopes someone, anyone, would recognise them. "Zibiah? Azazel?"

Stepping out from behind a table littered with papers torn, rumpled, and curling at the corners, was a feminine figure who seemed to glide upon long slender legs. Their horns rose up out of their head, long and thin, adding an extra foot of sharp black height to their already tall form.

Tara flinched back when they threw a hand forward and grabbed her by the back of her sweater collar.

"H-hey-"

Their grip was unshakeable as they dragged her towards one of the many doors leading out of the room. Tara pressed her sneakers into the ground, desperately fighting to hold her ground.

"I need your help! Azazel is my friend! Zibiah is my partner! I don't know Imogen's real name but she's my friend, too!"

The door was kicked open brusquely and Tara shoved through with just as much force. By the time Tara had spun on her heel to make another attempt at pleading with the tall person who had finally released her, the door was shut. She gave the handle a rattle but all she got in return was a clanking noise. She took a flustered step backwards, taking in her surroundings. The door she had just been thrown out of was set into a mound of mud that did not look nearly tall or wide enough to house the room that she had just left.

How could they not even give her a chance to explain? She needed help; she couldn't navigate this place herself. This place. This place that logically she knew was Hell, but her body had yet to register the horror of this fact.

With a slow pivot, what she had first been expecting to be the great outdoors that she had been shoved out into, was in fact a dark cavern that expanded beyond what her human eyes could see. The ceiling appeared to be balanced upon pillars of jagged rock growing out of the ground. On the nearest one, Tara could just about see some symbols carved into it. It was somehow simultaneously overwhelmingly huge and empty, but also claustrophobic with the lack of light and low ceiling. Without needing to travel to the very edge of the space, she could tell instinctively that she was trapped in. It made every breath feel just a little more strained than her panic was already making them.