Rituals, Regrets, and Really Dumb People

Chapter 3: Emotional Movies are Trite Trash, but I Kind of Want More, Part 3

I walked back down to the cellars and went to the east, to the furthest end. That is where the demons stayed, at a fiery portal back to the Hel. There wasn't enough room to house them, so they came and went as they pleased, all willy-nilly. The portal was created by Reinhardt long ago, and while my demonology was of poor quality, it was enough to keep the gate maintained.

The large room where the couple of dozen demons sat and waited was nothing of note. The crimson-skinned male demons often stayed on the right side of the room while the fair-skinned and blonde-haired succubi lingered to the left. These two groups rarely got a long, the males often preferring straight up violence while the succubi preferred subtlety, but they managed to commingle as long as they had the pact in effect. She, the Darkness, annulled the pact when she wanted me to send them back.

The gate, itself, stood all of twenty feet wide, and around ten feet tall. Oval in shape, the frame was made from a type of obsidian found here on the island, extracted deep from the earth by cultist-miners who sacrificed their lives for the material. The inside of the gate was constantly open, a preview into the other side, one of ice and eternal winters. Hel wasn't hot, even its fires burned the coldest of colds. People who'd be stuck there in the desolate wasteland were often frozen within seconds if they did not have the proper enchantments and gear. I did not like going to Hel often despite milady's preference for me.

"What brings Sanguine down here to grace us with his presence?" one of the red-skinned males asked me. His face was pulled tight, held in place by large staples in the back of his skull. Demons enjoyed extreme BDSM. "Have you talked with She?"

"Well, yes. I do have an announcement to make, straight from She's mouth."

"Oh?" one of the succubi asked.

She floated across the floor towards us on her feet like some fairy, her clothing barely hanging on her shapely body. All succubi looked like their mother, She, the Darkness, and all had the same name; Lilith. If you practiced bad magic, like I have done my entire life, you could see phantom-like traces of their two small horns just below their hairlines and close to their temples, as well as a tail with a tip shaped like a spade. People who didn't practice my sort of magic often found themselves staring at angels. They were not angels.

"Yes. Which Lilith are you?" I asked her.

"One of many," she responded in her faux-bored voice.

Succubi often found themselves bored, which is why they often got in trouble. They loved teasing mortal men and women, enjoyed flaying their souls apart with promises of carnal desires to be fulfilled. Heard it was the best ten seconds before your soul was sank in a well of eternal torment. Totally worth it.

I waved my hands around, annoyed by the games they often played. "Which of the succubi is your leader? I need to talk with both clans' leaders."

"I am," she said before pointing to another, "and she is, and we all are."

Goddamnit. I immediately drew my foot back and kicked the leg of a table in frustration. "Why do you all got to do this to me, every time!?"

The succubi giggled and danced around, spinning and showing off her thin gown. "I'll get her for you."

"Good. And yours?" I asked the stapled freak to my right.

"I'll get 20." Demons often referred to themselves as numbers. Twenty meant he was the twentieth strongest devil in She's circle of Hel. She was first, and I knew a little of the second and third, but the fourth and the rest in between escaped me.

"Thank you."

I walked around the table I had kicked and sat down, my arms crossing as I waited for the leaders of their respective sides. It took them all of three minutes to get back to me; a spider-faced, stocky brute of a devil and a leather-cladded succubi in high-heel boots with her hair put up in a dark coif. Fun.