Into the Hells

 

As Whisperleaf stared down the huge, steam belching, red metal monstrosity that was barreling toward him at an impossible speed across the dusty red plain, his panicked brain momentarily took a step back and reflected on his situation, in that strange, calm way that panicked brains sometimes have.

"How did it come to this exactly?" he thought.

For a moment he locked eyes with the poor unfortunate that was chained and bound to the front of the infernal machine. They shared in the momentary communion of the utterly fucked. He thought he saw sympathy in those eyes.

And then the Infernal Machine was on him.

Whisperleaf tried to dodge out of the way at the last possible instant, but got the timing wrong. He didn't exactly even feel the metal beast strike him, just a momentary shock, and a transient feeling of flying through the air at great speed. And then there was darkness.

Just before the darkness set in one final thought lazily crossed his dying mind

"I probably shouldn't have gone through that gate."

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"Oh hell no" said Dakhir. "I'm not going."

The tunnel widened, an ominous red glow emanated from the passageway ahead, Dakhir could smell familiar smells, wafted on the hot breeze blowing out of the tunnel. Brimstone and sulfur. Fresh blood. As he approached, he started to make out the source of the glow. Two great vents, one of either side of the tunnel, vomited a constant flow of glowing blood, which pooled and steamed into a stream in the center of the passage, creating a river of blood that flowed turgidly down the gentle slope of the corridor.

Flowed toward some kind of massive gate.

From deeper down the corridor, partially visible in the red glow of the blood river, something moved. Something large.

For a moment Dakhir was almost overcome by panic. He could feel his pulse start to race, his breathing quicken. Cold sweat broke out on his brow. Clearly lit at the end of the passage he could see a gate, and somehow, intuitively, from deep within, from his Tiefling heritage he knew where the gate led.

He had always, from a young age, known where he was headed, where the end of the line lay for him, but that didn't mean he was ready for it. Or that he expected it so soon. 

"No. I don't want to go" Dakhir stopped suddenly.

Whisperleaf looked quizzically at this friend.

"Go where?" 

"Hell" Dakhir replied simply. 

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"Mortal, what do you here? This is not yet the time for your judgement" the left head of the giant three headed dog growled. The beast was massive and seemed to be composed partially of flame. Fire rippled along it's body, it had fire for a mane, and when it opened one of it's mouths to speak it was like staring into a white hot furnace.

Whisperleaf had read of such creatures. They guarded the entrances to the Underworld. Usually the darkest parts of the Underworld.

"We need to pass the gate" Whisperleaf said, pointing.

All three heads of the beast starting laughing, deep guttural laughs.

Whisperleaf was feeling a little hard done by. Normally this conversation would be Dakhir's job. He was the expert on demons, hells, and things that went 'bump' in the night after all. But Dakhir seemed to be having some issues. He'd gone almost catatonic after seeing the guardian, kept mumbling "No. Not going to go" and similar. 

"I think he needs a moment" Radiant Lightbringer had said worriedly.  "There is no magic effecting him, I think this is a natural reaction." 

"Not going" Dakhir repeated. "Not going down. Not yet."

"Very well" Whisperleaf acknowledged and reluctantly assumed the role of negotiator-with-demons.  

The creature finished laughing.

"Of course mortal. You may pass." the central head intoned.

It moved out of the way and behind it the massive drawbridge on the gate lowered, the portcullis swung up.

"You will let us pass freely?" Whisperleaf queried suspiciously.

"My job is to keep people in, not keep people out" the central head replied, grinning savagely. 

"This seems too easy" Ricmo whispered to Whisperleaf. Despite his attempts at quiet, the beast evidentially had excellent hearing.

"Hell is always easy to enter, but very hard to leave" the left head replied. "You have been warned."

Whisperleaf turned toward Dakhir. "Are you able to do this my friend?" he asked.

Dakhir was still for a second, then he noticeably got ahold of himself.  Whisperleaf heard him mutter "It may be 'A' hell but it isn't 'MY' hell. There are many hells. No one I know will be there. Probably." He shuddered, and in a louder, firmer voice replied "Whatever. Fine, fine. I guess at least this explained what happened to the Cerro Rico, a Hell broke through and corrupted it."

The right head of the dog laughed again and replied.

Foolish mortals. Hell did not come to this place to birth the abominations you have seen. for the evil of demons has nothing on the evil of men. Hell did not birth these men, these men birthed a hell"

For a moment the party was silent, absorbing this

In the rear Radiant Lightbringer suddenly lit up with a pearly light, glowing from head to toe, too bright to look on. His light swept over the grim scene like a wave, banishing the darkness and shadows as he raised his hammer high. Even the huge dog averted it's eyes and whined nervously.

The cleric thundered.

"Forward my brothers, and be not afraid! Though we walk into the valley of darkness, though we walk into Hell itself, we shall fear no evil! For, lo, Mithras walks with us, his light comforts and protects us, even unto the ends of the world.  His sword and his spear will strike down our foes, he will raise his shield before us in the presence of our enemies. Surely Light and Mercy shall follow us all the days of our lives and we will dwell in the House of the Sun forever. "

"Hell yes!" Ricmo replied. "Let's do this!"

And they entered the gate

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For a moment, all was shadow and fire. Whisperleaf felt a momentary sense of nausea so strong he feared he might vomit. And then, he was standing somewhere else.

He and his companions seemed to be outdoors on a dusky day. The light was red, bright enough to see by, but still relatively dim. The sky was shrouded and smokey, the air hot and acrid in his lungs, burning his throat and making him cough.

They seemed to have emerged on a small ledge jutting out of a massive rocky wall, a few hundred feet above a vast plain. Above and behind him the rock wall stretched up, out of sight, curving gently as far as he can see, above them and to each side. The wall was covered with familiar scaffolds and ladders, similar to what they had navigated countless times in the Cerro Rico, but a vast collection of them stretching away to the left and right as far as he could see, and up into the haze above him and out of view.  In front of the him the vast plain stretched away, a flat wasteland of rock, dust and sand interspersed with glowing pools of blood. He could see nothing living, as far as he looked, just wasted earth and blood. Far out of sight across the plain, along the horizon he could make out a dim, red glow.

Only three significant landmarks broke the monotony. Below him to his left he see the ruins of a vast fortress, about half a mile from the rock wall. It must have been grand at one time, but now it was little more then rubble. The fortress lay at a road junction, where two roads intersected. The roads were smooth, wide and flat, impressive in their engineering. One road curved away paralleling the wall, the other intersected perpendicular to it, heading out across the wasted plain.

Far to his left he could see low rocky hills rising from the plain. Out of these hills a massive river of blood flowed, glowing strongly in the dim light. meandering across the plain and wrapping around the ruined fortress before it disappeared underground into the rock wall. The road once crossed the river on an arched bridge, but the bridge had since collapsed into rubble.

At his side, Dakhir coughed. 

"Where are we?" Ricmo asked wonderingly. "Are we still inside the mountain?"

"No." Dakhir replied. He seemed to have gotten himself back under control, though he still shivered a bit even in the oppressive muggy heat of the place. "We are in a Hell. I am not sure which one, there are many."

"I always heard there were seven. Or nine. Or 666 depending on what religion you talk to" The Halfling replied.

"That's all poetic license" said Dakhir. "No one knows how many hells there are, as many as grains of sand on the beach or stars in the sky?"

"Each religion has it's own take on the hells, weaving them into their doctrine, but according to the Metaphysics of Shadow that I just read, the number of the Hells is only limited by the fears of mankind, and it's penchant for cruelty and evil." Whisperleaf added. 

Ricmo considered that, his eyes growing rounder. "That" he said "Is a lot of Hells."

Whisperleaf nodded. "And according to the Cerberus guarding the gate, this one was brought into being by evils of the Cerro Rico mine, and the atrocities perpetrated on those who worked there." 

Dakhir nodded. "I haven't read the Metaphysics of Shadow yet but that descriptions is similar to some of the teachings of my own family. That the hells arise out of the Shadowland, birthed by the actions of sentient creatures, similar to the way the deeper reaches of Lost Anchorage was birthed by Lady Ophelia."

"The Metaphysics of Shadow claims that the process is the same for heavens too. And gods. It's no wonder the established religions suppressed it." Whisperleaf grinned. "It's worth noting that the seventh volume  of the Books of the River, the one the Church of Mithras suppressed and tried to expunge, had a similar theme."

"That is all well and good, but what is our plan?" Merus, ever the practical one brought the two arcanists back to reality. 

Radiant Lightbringer unstrapped a pickaxe from his pack, and held it reverently in both hands while quoting

"Your task is not yet done. Much evil has been done in this mountain, over many years, the blood of a million souls has soaked it's very roots. Such evil is not easily uprooted.

It is to the roots of the mountain you must journey, to the center of the maze, if you are to undo the great evils that have been done here and free the souls of my children, who died in the depths of the crushing dark. 

My blessing be upon you. I am not a warrior and cannot aid you in the battles to come. But, take my pickax. When you reach the center and nexus of the evil. and the time comes to usher the spirits of the dead to their final rest, swing this pickax three times into living rock and I will come to guide my children home."  

"Thus spoke Blessed St. Kinga, during his visitation, after we cleansed his chapel." 

Radiant Lightbringer was silent. 

"Well hard to get much more 'root of the mountain' then this I suppose" Ricmo spoke, "but I wonder what he means by 'center and nexus?'"

Tello shrugged. While the others had been talking, he had been fiddling with several sextant like devices, taking some kinds of readings. "The walls of this realm seem regular and circular, with as little as one percent deviation from true. If the observed curve holds, I would estimate a circumference of around 200 nautical leagues, which means a radius of around 30 leagues. Or 100 imperial miles." 

Ricmo looked impressed and a bit skeptical. 

"The curve of the walls is very regular" Tello added almost apologetically. "Amazingly so."

"100 miles? This realm is 100 miles across?" Ricmo marveled.

"100 miles in radius, so 200 miles across" Tello corrected him.

Merus pointed. "I can see a faint glow over the horizon, in the direction that would be the center if the Tortle's calculations are correct." 

Tello bristled. "You are welcome to check my math" he said icily. 

Merus raised both hands outward toward him in apology and then considered the vista before her, her keen eyes carefully scanning every inch of the land before her.

"That is quite a journey, if your calculations hold true" she finally observed.  Also the terrain looks extremely inhospitable. It would take us days, weeks even" Merus sniffed the air. "I don't like the smell of this air, it is unclean."

The companions considered their options, which didn't seem especially good. After a moment, Dakhir took a deep breath, coughed a few times on the foul air, and then stated "Well I guess we should get to it. Make our way down to the ruined fortress and get on the road at least? One of the roads seems to be heading in the direction we want to go."

Merus considered. "Roads come with perils all their own, but I see no other option, the land is too broken, travelling cross-country would be extremely slow and laborious." 

"There are ladders and scaffolding all up and down these walls, I think we can make our way down easily enough" Ricmo observed. "It's just like back in the mines."  

"Let us proceed" said Merus. After a moment, a little uncertainty crept into her voice. "I cannot place the sun, and do not know how many hours of daylight we have remaining."

"There is no sun" Radiant Lightbringer replied. "Not in this place."

Merus stood on the top of the dune and shaded her keen elven eyes with a slim hand, They had made their way down from the parapet to the flat plain, and had been slowly making their way across it for the last hour. It was surprisingly hard going. 

The land was relatively flat, areas of hard packed dirt, interposed with stretches of blowing sand. There was little in the way of vegetation, just some scrawny type of tumble weed. The sandy stretches were tedious and hard to navigate, and the bad air made it hard to breath, and made exertion unusually difficult. 

Then to make matters worse their path was occasionally crossed by pools or streams of boiling blood. The streams were rarely wide but the blood was extremely hot, hot enough to instantly scald, so fording even a narrow one was tricky. They had made barely two miles of progress in the last hour, and easily had another five to go before they reached the river and the ruined fortress.

Merus frowned, her eyes drawn to a cloud of dust on the horizon. Clouds of dust were not uncommon here, the occasional wind whipped the stuff up something fierce, irritating the eyes. But still, that particular cloud didn't look natural to her. She studied it for a moment more then turned to her party.

"Something comes. Something moving very fast. Ready yourself."

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The last of the Canian Interceptors was built two hundred years ago at fabulous expense by Arch Prince Mephistopheles onetime ruler of the The Hell of Infernal Machines for his royal guard. Only nine of these infernal machines were ever made, and after the passing of so many years, only one remained. But that one was impressive.  Sixty tons of solid reddish steel, she sucked demon ichor by the gallon, and sported ten inch thick Canian armor plating that can stop a cannon ball cold. Dual boilers with 2000 horsepower sent immense energy through her treads. She was meanness set to music, a bitch that was born to run.

The brutal vehicle was built for just one purpose, crushing enemies beneath it's massive metal frame. A sleek, burnt red dart, the entire war machine was built around a massive reinforced frontal ram, a dense arrow of spiked metal, capable of tearing through less sturdy war machines like tissue paper. 

How exactly she found her way on to that desolate wasteland barreling down on Whisperleaf and his friends was a story that could fill volumes. And why exactly she had a prisoner strapped to her front grill and how the dead soul known as 'Max Zombie' had come to be there could fill an appendix or two on top of that.

The machine was not only huge, it was surprisingly fast, in fact it was a sudden burst of speed that was their undoing. While the Interceptor was covered in the dust raised by it's rapid travel over the wasteland, Merus's eyes had still seen it coming a ways off, giving them the illusion of time. Spells and projectiles leapt forward, most bouncing harmlessly off the steel armor. Some found their mark, one demonic creature was in an exposed position atop the vehicle, likely a driver or scout, and he did not fair well. Riddled with arrows and pistol balls, his body tumbled aside and was crushed under the machine.  

The machine was still a good eighty yard away when it changed the game on them. With a demonic roar the engine revved to an extreme pitch, massive gouts of smoke and fire jetted out the rear and the whole sixty tons of metal and mayhem surged forward impossibly fast. 

"Scatter, it means to crush us!" Merus barked diving to the side.

And Whisperleaf tried to follow her advice. 

But not quite fast enough.