The Sin Hunter: Double or Nothing

Wrath

"And you're entirely sure of that, sir?" "Yes, I'm confident in my decision. Now get out of my sight before I change my mind." "O-oh, yes sir!" Azazel stepped away from his windowsill, disregarding the barking orders of his Magmarian Warden. His headache had become slightly better now, enough so that he could comfortably walk through the black stone hallways he had guarded for centuries. As he walked toward the opposite end of his fiery quarters, loaded with special training weights, statues and powerful relics of his forefathers and mothers, the door knocked abruptly.

Azazel jumped slightly, sneezing flames onto his rug as they flickered and spat across the surface of the charred red carpet. The Lord of Wrath turned up his weary eyelids in irritation, stepping by while extinguishing the flames with his boot. Azazel slid his fingers over the knob, twisting and opening the door to reveal his faithful assistant, clad in chains and blades all over like his boss. Two dusty old hiking boots stepped past the door while a pale blue mask shielded the owner's face from sight, keeping him quarantined while his boss recovered.

"Morning, boss. It's good to see you've picked up spirits, eh?" Azazel grumbled, crossing his chain-wrapped muscles. "Nothing's ever 'good' in Wrath. That's the whole point." Avery set the tray of Hellraptor soup and sand-baked bread on the table beside a large chest of skulls and sacrificial offerings. Avery gently tapped the chest closed, turning to face Azazel with a smug grin. "Do Living folk really still send you sacrifices? That's some crazy eldritch god stuff, eh?" Azazel laughed, but a deep neaselly laughter accompanied his stuffed fiery features.

"Ah, relax, Avery. Who sacrifices what to me is my own business. But I appreciate your thoughts on the topic." Avery chuckled, moving around the room with his tattered fingerless gloves tied behind his back. A small gap in his teeth produced shrill whistles and clicks as he strolled around the room, admiring the domed ceiling of the space aligned with tapestries and beautiful, Wrath native flora. "You've amassed quite the fortune in rare hobbies, eh? I'm impressed." A loud cough shook the pillars and the framing when Azazel's neaselly voice interrupted Avery's thought process.

"Can we stop gawking at my gardening skills and start worrying about the current problems with the people trying to leave Pride?" Avery cleared his throat, turning away from the flowers to face his boss at the war table. "Yes, of course." Gathering beside the Lord of Wrath, Avery fixed the chains wrapped around his pant legs while Azazel sneezed a pillar of plasma into the air, sniffling. "Okay," he muttered through weakened, drained charcoal eyes, "let's talk about what's going on in Pride." Avery waved his eyes over the maps of Hell, keeping his fingertips on the lip of the dark oak table.

"Why Pride? Why not talk about our economy, eh?" Azazel turned his fiery nest of hair up in irritation, shaking his mane of white and gold flames in firm disagreement. "Nah, Wrath's fine. Nobody's gonna come here looking for a safe home from whatever's happening. No, I wanna know why everybody's trying to leave Pride specifically." Avery crossed his sleeves, raising his tainted gray eyebrows in puzzled silence. His face gave the impression of someone looking at an unsolved Rubik's Cube. "I'm...I'm not sure I understand, sir."

Azazel dragged a ring studded hand through his fiery hair, striking the table with a fist as he turned to Avery. "What I'm mostly pissed off about is Pride. What, or, worse yet, who in Hell would be bad enough to scare people out of an entire continent?" Avery crossed the table to his boss's side, inspecting the maps and charts. "You make a fair point. Somebody has to be behind all of this madness." Azazel nodded, stepping back from the table. "And whoever's doing this could have answers about why I've been so damn stuffy lately."

Avery cocked his head to an angle, his eyes flashing with shock. "You think the person orchestrating the madness and bloodshed in Pride is the same person who's been giving you a beastly headache?" Azazel gripped the corners of his biceps so tight they could have exploded with sparklers. "Nothing in Hell is a coincidence, Avery," the Tyrant of Torture concluded, twisting away from the table and striding back to the window looking over his fiery black fortress. His flaming fingers clasped the sill when Azazel leaned forward into the deep black night.

"One thing's for sure. I'm out to find this punk and twist his spine so tight into a cord it'll flatten every other bone in his body and leave him as a living slinky." Avery laughed, his hysterics trailing behind him while he sauntered to the ledge beside his boss. Avery set his elbow on the ledge, relaxing when he spoke again with the breeze of humid wind brushing across his face. "And we'll make sure they're still alive to experience it all, correct?" Azazel chuckled, the flames in his fiery mane glowing a darker orange than white when he laughed.

"Always alive, kid. Death just makes it easier for them. If you wanna torture someone, you gotta make sure their eyes are open for every second of it."