The Lamb and the Gray Battle

January 6, 1446

As soon as Diyiren cleared the Fortress and was free of the energy field protecting it, he opened his veins, spilled blood on the talisman. The light was bright, but he'd opened portals before and this was nothing new. He stepped through the portal and, when the light flashed away, he opened his eyes on a dark cavern, hot, smelled of sulfur, and the rocks were jagged. Diyiren had to use his hands, his human-like fingers that could barely hold dragon form, to steady himself.

His mother would have been furious. He missed the mark. He wasn't in Satan's throne room at all. He inched his way through the dark cavern and halls, guessed which direction he need to go. The hotter and stuffier the air, that was the way he went.

A drumbeat resounded and Diyiren followed it, let it call him deep into the bowels of Hell. His skin vibrated. The beat hypnotized him, a fog collecting behind his eyes. The heat made his brain bleary. He crept into the central room, but no drum, no players greeted him. Dozens of minions were knelt in this room, some with horns, others with razor claws, all with dark skin and red eyes. One shifted his eyes up. Satan stood on the platform and he was the source of the rhythm. Diyiren's own chest tightened. Satan's heart. Why hadn't BoBo warned him? The call dominated all demons and their spawn, even those with just a drop of demon blood swimming in their veins.

It seemed a mountain, the platform Satan was perched upon. Dozens of steps led up to his throne. Beside him, manacles around her hands, his mother stood, naked and human. Diyiren sniffed the air. A spell had stripped his mother of her energy. She was trapped in her human form, just as BoBo was. As human as she was, she was the first to detect Diyiren's presence.

His mother spit, "You fool! You little idiot! This is exactly what he wants."

Satan reach out with his cloven hoof, shifted it to a claw, yanked his mother's head up so the vertebrae of her neck separated, then sliced through the sinews, membrane and cartilage. He took her skull by the hair and smashed it against the cavern wall, but instead of the metallic bone being flattened, a gash was left in the rock. Satan kicked her body down the dozens of stairs and chuckled with each plop she made as she rolled.

Lock it inside. If they know they can hurt you, they'll torture you until you beg. And then they'll laugh.

Thump, thump, thump. Diyiren wanted to bow, but he also was hypnotized by his mother's body. Each thump was in time with Satan's heartbeat. And the limbs and torso flopped to a halt, feet from Diyiren.

Diyiren clung to his mother's words, went over to the headless corpse that didn't very much resemble the woman he remembered. Her bones were hard, like chromium or tungsten, shimmered with a golden sheen. And with one slash Satan had found a gap between the bones and cut through that neck of hers. Blood had spattered on the steps and was now pooling around her.

Satan had spent years watching him, Diyiren repeated to himself.

Diyiren bent to his mother's figure, forced his hand up under her rib cage, through her lungs and found the dead heart, yanked it from her chest. He had spent his life as a pescatarian and he brought his mother's heart to his lips, bit into it. Blood clung to his teeth and dripped from the organ in his hand.

"Thank you," Diyiren said, taking another bite of the bloody tissue. "I've wanted to do that for years."

Satan burbled a laugh.

Diyiren shook, but the tremors were invisible to the others. He held the heart up to Satan, clenched his teeth.

Patience, he said to himself.

Satan smacked his claws on the armrests of his throne, his heart racing. But the slight change in pace meant that the spell had fluctuated. Some of the kneeling demons blinked.