The Pleasures of Hell

Chapter 01.016

~~Mia~~

The two giant metal doors, decorated with skulls and chains, were closed. Mia wasn't getting out of the dungeon unless she opened them, and sure enough, she wasn't strong enough to do so. She pressed against them, and even with her bare feet getting a decent grip on the metal floor, they didn't budge.

But maybe someone was waiting on the other side? Adron or Kas? If it was Adron, then maybe...

She knocked on the door, hard as she could, and tapped on the rhythm everyone knew. Shave and a Haircut.

She got a couple of knocks back. Slowly, the enormous doors opened, Mia stepped back, and Adron stood in the now open path to freedom.

"Mia? What happened? Where's Zel?"

"Zel's busy. We need to get to her throne room, now!"

"What?"

"We need to get to her throne room now!" Mia marched forward and shoved the demon in the stomach.

Adron stared at her, unmoving. "You can't just—"

"Adron, please? I'll explain everything after."

After a slow frown and heavy sigh, Adron looked past her into the deep dungeon. There was no chance he'd see anything, this far from Vinicius's cell, but the fact he couldn't see Zel up and about was the problem.

"Alright."

"Alright? Alright!" Oh thank god. Maybe there was a little more to Adron than the mask he wore, a little more to him than the playful, mischievous, conniving demon he enjoyed being. Maybe he felt a little connection to the young woman he'd deflowered? Maybe—Maybe Mia you're being an idiot and you can psychoanalyze later.

They ran out to the balcony. Chaos. Normally there were big teeth doors around, like Mia's, something that needed to be opened with the spire's power. They were open, teeth pulled up and down out of the way into the skull archways. Betrayers, imps and grems, succubi and incubi, they all stepped out onto the balconies above and below, and the sound of panicked voices mixed with the screams of remnants.

"What's... going on?" she asked.

Adron knelt down, she slipped onto his back, and the demon wasted no time running to the balcony edge and jumping up to the next floor.

"The rider is attacking," he said between grunts. Every few seconds, he grabbed a dangling chain, or a dangling cage, or the rim of the next balcony up the spire's center, whatever allowed him to traverse as much distance as possible as quickly as possible.

"Zel said that, but I don't know what that means."

"Me neither. I've never seen him. But he's come at the spire with a massive hellbeast, and what looks like a couple dozen demons armed from False Gate."

"A couple dozen? How many demons are defending the spire?"

"Probably five or six hundred, and another five or six hundred demons in the mountains nearby."

Mia jaw-dropped. "Against two dozen?"

"In aera armor, and that hellbeast is... massive." He shook his head, and focused on his breathing as he got faster. The higher they went up, the louder the noises got, and soon the sound of roars and metal hitting metal joined them.

They passed the ground floor, and Mia managed a quick peek out through the big hallway to the outside. It was like a battlefield. No, it was a battlefield. Adron didn't give her time to get a good look, but a peek was enough to catch the sight of limbs flying, demons cut in half, and the legs of something that looked like Godzilla bred with an iguana and a demon.