A-a bit narcissistic, don’t you think?
“This is not supposed to be here.”
Where is it supposed to be?
“Nowhere.” He walked up and shoved one of the statues off its pedestal.
Hey! Shalise thought as it fell to the ground with a loud thud. It didn’t break. The floor wasn’t even damaged. With a mental sigh, Shalise thought, they’re better than empty halls. Though they are a little tasteless, I suppose.
Prax blinked, forcing Shalise’s vision dark for an instant. When her vision returned, the statue was back on its pedestal.
And it had changed. All of them had.
Shalise felt her embarrassment shoot through the roof as Prax turned to survey the room.
Gone were the scenes of battle. Half of the statues consisted of a very nude Prax performing muscle-man flexes in different poses.
If that wasn’t embarrassing enough, the other half of the statues were Shalise in similar poses. It wasn’t even her Prax-muscled body. It was her regular body.
“What are you doing, mortal?” Prax said. He had her teeth clenched together hard enough that she was worried they might crack.
Nothing! This is your stupid domain. I don’t want any of this!
As soon as the words came out of her mind, everything vanished. The castle’s hallway returned to the single red carpet and plain gray walls.
Shalise had never been happier.
Prax, Shalise could feel, was the incarnate of rage.
“What,” he said, “did you do?”
— — —
Her bloody sword cleaved through another angel. She pressed her foot down on the golden spear laying in its grip and added its metal to her twisted armor.
Nothing had been able to pierce her armor for some time.
The demons rallied behind her unstoppable might.
The enemy was in disarray.
Routed.
All except for the judicator. She stared, unmoving save for the slowly flapping wings.
Juliana snarled. Her earth magic propelled her across the terrain. Her sword swept left and right, cutting down the retreating angels as if they were nothing more than flies.
The judicator finally made her move. With glacial power, she hefted her sword to an upright position.
And she moved.
Juliana brought her sword down to meet the upward swing of the judicator.
A demon dove at the judicator while their blades were locked. It simply exploded. Black blood splattered over Juliana.
Not a drop touched the judicator.
Juliana licked her lips, tasting some of the blood that made it through the holes in her helmet.
With renewed vengeance for her fallen comrade, Juliana kicked off the ground. Earthen spikes pinned down her opponent as Juliana’s blade came down on her head.
The ground shook, breaking down her spikes and sending dust into the air.
That didn’t stop her attack. The judicator couldn’t move in time.
Juliana’s eyes widened as her sword plunged through empty air and buried itself within the ground.
She tried to jump back.
A white-hot pain seared through her chest before she could move.
Looking down, Juliana saw the judicator’s massive blade sticking out of her armor. She hadn’t even felt it go in. It passed through like butter.
She looked back up to the glowing white eyes in the darkness behind the ‘Y’ shaped visor.
They looked… sad.
What was I doing?
Juliana’s sickness returned in full force as whatever possessed her died out. She promptly vomited black blood.
The judicator removed her sword. Again, not a speck of filth touched any part of the angel. She slowly turned from Juliana–who was standing solely through virtue of her ferrokinesis failing and hardening her golden armor around her.
She watched the wings sweep the angel away as her vision darkened.
The pain in her chest vanished as a light clapping noise echoed inside her head.
Juliana blinked. The theater was back. She was on the stage, looking out over the seats.
“Bravo, bravo. Good show, milady.”
Before Juliana could turn her eyes towards the front seat, she collapsed. First to her knees, then her face met the floor.
She gave a light groan as she manipulated as much gold off of her as she could manage. That stuff was heavy after all. Especially now that she was back in her normal body.
“Bit of an overenthusiastic bow, don’t you think?”
Juliana pushed herself up to a kneeling position and looked over at the marionette demon. As she watched, he reached up and slid a featureless mask off his face and over to one side. The strings puppeteering his hands danced around him as he moved.
“You–”
“Willie,” he said, standing from his seat and performing a bow of his own. “I cannot recall whether I introduced myself or not during our first meeting. I was in a bit of a rush before.”
Blinking, Juliana grasped her chest, feeling all around. There was no sign, not even the tiniest mark, of the angel’s spear or the hole it had made.
Juliana bent over and gagged. She could remember every moment of what happened. Cutting down all those angels. The blood. The liking it.
She spat out on the floor in front of her and tried to control her breathing. Juliana didn’t know how long she sat there, but it was a good while. All constantly thinking about what she had done.
It wasn’t real, she thought. Like a video game.
As she finally calmed down, Juliana looked up. Willie hadn’t moved. He just stood there, watching. It had to have been more than an hour, but he didn’t move.
Juliana spat on the ground one more time, trying not to think about tasting anything. “What was that?”
“I provided you with entertainment upon being summoned. As a theatergoing demon, I expect the same of visitors in my domain.”
“Your domain? How–I was supposed to be in Prax’s domain.”
“The gift I gave you marked you–”
“Like this?” Juliana held up her ring finger, wishing Ylva’s ring was on a different finger.
Willie tilted his head with a pained expression. “Not quite that strongly. Just enough that I could tell you had entered the waters of Hell. Quite the surprise. Nearly missed my chance to nudge you over to my humble abode.”
Juliana half rolled her eyes and half glanced around the exorbitant theater. From the stage, she could see a second floor. The place had to be bigger on the inside. Each of the second floor seats were filled by golden statues of half-humanoid bees. None of them were moving; given the honey outside, there had to be a connection.
“What are you doing in Hell, milady?”
Juliana frowned, wishing she had a proper answer.
Chapter 015
The long hallway.
Blood red walls with a black hardwood floor. A narrow carpet protected the hardwood from the sharp undersides of Eva’s feet.
There were no doors. No side passages. Nothing at all apart from a way forwards and a way backwards.
It looked exactly as it had every other time.
Eva took off at a run.
And promptly got nowhere.
It didn’t matter which way she ran. Neither direction ever took her anywhere apart from where she was.
Yet Eva ran.
There had to be progress somewhere. Even if she was dead, there had to be more to it than a hallway.
She passed by some scorch marks on the walls. Those were old. She hadn’t tried burning her way out of the hallway in what felt like forever.
It never worked.
On the plus side, if Eva ever managed to escape from the hallway, she was quite confident that her thaumaturgical flames had increased dramatically in temperature and intensity. Attempting to burn down a hallway several times over the past eternity turned out to be decent training.