13. Chapter Twelve

Imust have passed out, because when awareness returns to my body all I can sense is the sickening feeling of falling without end. I am spiraling ceaselessly through the darkness, my body folding and twisting on repetition as I grasp desperately at nothing with my unsteady hands.

I cannot tell where I am, what direction I'm facing, or where I am going. All I know is that I am falling at a speed so unimaginable that I keep passing out and regaining consciousness. A cycle that annihilates my sanity and leaves me begging for death.

I'd give anything to collide with the ground. To end this torment now, so I don't have to experience another minute of this. The idea that I may be trapped here forever has me screaming and begging for mercy. I scream so hysterically that my throat aches, but I cannot even hear my own voice.

The air I am falling through booms with the violence of a hurricane all around me, and all I can hear is relentless whooshing as my body gives up and I black out again.

This time, when I jolt back into a state of awareness, pain echoes all over my body. A broken scream escapes my stinging throat as the sensation of rough hands grabbing at me fills my senses. It is no longer pitch black, and for that I am grateful, despite the onslaught of pain as I am grabbed and pulled until my descent slows.

There is a low, flickering light from somewhere far below. The incandescent glow of fire, illuminating my path as I plummet down through the shrinking space between the jagged, dark cliffs surrounding me.

What I believe, at first, to be dead trees, turns out to be bodies. Countless, writhing bodies, with arms outstretched and reaching for me as I fall. Every time their mangled hands grab at me, my descent slows a little more, until I am slipping through a mass of thrashing corpses.

Although I am no longer free falling through a void, I am not sure this is any better. The endless rows of charred bodies are dragging me down, pulling at every limb, ripping at my now tattered clothes, and even pulling out a couple chunks of my hair as they guide me lower down.

Just when I think I'll pass out again, I hit the surface of what feels like a system of thick, wet webbing. My movement stops for the first time in… I don't know how long, and immediately every bit of stomach contents empties from between my gasping lips.

My blurry eyes struggle to focus, but when they finally do, I can see the small, smoldering fires littering a black, rocky ground below. I scream in agony when I shift my body, pain lancing through me from the trauma of my descent, but the movement I make breaks the webbing I am laying across, and I fall the rest of the way to the ground below.

Reaching my bloodied hands out in front of me, I scream something unintelligible, until a gust of hot wind rises up to meet me. The dusty tornado collides with my body, and instead of smashing into the rocky face of the floor, I am lowered gently until my exhausted body collapses in a heap.

I lay there without moving for so long, that I can only assume I fainted again. It takes me several long minutes of effort, but eventually I lift myself off my stomach and prop my body up on my forearms.

My eyes, still a little blurry, blink rapidly to adjust as I stare at my battered forearms and hands. All I see is red, my skin drenched in blood from countless cuts and abrasions. I cry out as I shift my body, and pain explodes across my nerve endings.

I should be dead. Maybe I am dead.

When I finally muster the strength to lift my head, I take a rattling breath as I survey my surroundings. Everything here is made of dark, jagged rock like tarnished obsidian. There is dust and broken bones littered everywhere, as well as pieces of flesh—both rotted and fresh.

There are small fires scattered all over the place, and the uncomfortably warm breeze carries ash and embers with it. I don't have the strength to flinch as those hot embers occasionally drift too close and land on my exposed skin.

Forcing my eyes up, I see a thick canopy looming overhead. It's the dense webbing I landed on before breaking through. I am horrified when I realize the net is made of blood, flesh, and sinew. Never in my darkest nightmares could I imagine a place as terrifying as this.

When I drop my eyes again, I scan the immediate area. I've landed in a comparatively empty clearing, one that is surrounded by jagged protrusions of black stone and menacing spires. Many of which pierce directly through the bodies of what look like rotting human corpses.

Corpses that aren't really dead. Those are people, an endless sea of them stretching beyond the reaches of my eyesight, rotting away down here. They are writhing, their mouths open wide as silent screams of agony and quiet moans gargle up through lips coated in blood and thick, black mucous.

I'm in Hell. This is Hell.

Struggling to my knees, I will my body to rise. I cannot stay here, I need to find a way to contact Stolas. My arms quiver as I push myself up, kneeling on the dark stone beneath my sore, scraped knees.

"St—" I choke, coughing as my aching vocal cords struggle to produce sound. I mutter to myself over and over again until I can speak something more than crackled stuttering.

"Stolas…" I finally manage to whisper, my voice unbelievably hoarse and almost unrecognizable.

"The Great Prince can hear you, witch, but he cannot come to save you," a dark voice responds, the shifting tones and inhuman vocal range telling me all I need to know of its owner. "My legions have him pinned down in the burning pits below, and by the time he fights his way to you, you'll already be dead."

Another fucking demon, and likely the very reason I've been dragged down to Hell.

Although I have no physical strength left in me, I force myself to find reserves hidden deep in my soul. It is not the strength in my physical body that brings me stumbling to my feet, but strength from the bottomless well of magic newly awakened within me.

When I finally stand, swaying in the scorching winds of Hell, I reluctantly turn myself to face whoever spoke to me. Mentally preparing myself, knowing I'm about to come face to face with the horrors of another Hell-born demon, isn't enough to prevent the audible gasp when my eyes finally meet the eldritch monstrosity towering in the distance.

Much like when I first bore witness to Stolas, this demon has my mind threatening to splinter into a thousand irreparable pieces. Every inch of his monumental, towering form is something pulled out of humanity's darkest nightmares.

This entity is an amalgamation of horror, gore, and petrified flesh. Blackened as though it has been aflame for eons, every orifice emitting a dark burning light as though its terrifying framework houses nothing but hellfire and viscous lava.

"Who are you?" I manage to force out, my raspy voice small and weak in comparison to his, which emanates from his jagged jaws, booming like thunder.

"Belial," he replies, his inhuman voice contorting. "Great Prince of Hell."

Seeing the horror of the demon towering before me, I know instinctively this is no lesser entity. But a Prince of Hell? Stolas warned me there was more to banishing these entities than the ones I've faced in the past.

"Why am I—" The demon moves, stopping me from finishing my question. He launches towards me with such speed and ferocity, I don't have time to react before his massive arm crashes into my face and knocks me back to the ground.

He didn't mean to kill me, I know that much for sure. If he intended that much, my skull would be in pieces on the rocky surface beneath me. Instead, pain blooms from my skull as blood spills in heavy droplets from my parted lips.

"Do not question me, witch. Your only purpose here is to die."

I sputter, coughing out the blood from inside of my mouth, and struggle to get back to my feet. All the remnants of fear and panic died during my fall to Hell. When you accept your imminent death, and I mean truly accept it, you're liberated from those pesky emotions. What use do you have for fear when death is a promise?

All I'm left with now is bitterness and rage, and the determination to survive. I didn't die falling from grace, and I won't die now, not while the fire inside of me still rages on.

Mocking laughter, sinister and cruel, erupts around me as I stagger to my feet. Turning back to look up at the demon towering over me.

"If I d-don't kill you, St-Stolas will," I sputter, spitting blood from my mouth to splatter on the blackness of his petrified flesh. He's so close now that heat from the living inferno within his body pulses against my skin, joining with the hot winds of Hell, making it difficult to breathe.

Every breath is painful, the winds of Hell entering my lungs with each ragged inhale.

The demon lashes out with a snarl, his massive hand wrapping around my throat and lifting me up off my feet. I rise high as he brings me to eye level, his barbed jaws splitting wide as gusts of scorching air lash at my face with every word from his cursed mouth. "I will not allow Stolas to rise to power. You will die before he becomes a God!"

"F-fuck y-you," I gasp between breaths as my vision darkens, black spots popping in along the edges of my sight. His mocking laughter booms again, the volume rattling me to my core. The bones in my body vibrate from the impact of the sound.

"I will fuck your rotting corpse after I eat your soul, witch," he roars as his other arm snakes out to press into my sternum, talons gripping at my flesh with the intent to rip me apart.

No the fuck you won't.

The burning rage inside of me detonates like a bomb, bursting forth from the place his claws dig into my chest. The explosion is so immense, Belial can do nothing but release my throat as he is sent hurtling backwards away from me.

I didn't realize I was screaming, but the sound dies on my battered lips as the very winds of Hell rise up beneath my feet to cradle my body as I slowly lower to the ground. My arms are held outwards as fire erupts from my aching hands, flowing through my fingers like whips intent on avenging all the wrongs ever done to me.

I know my eyes are spilling light like lava, because everything I see is cast in a bright golden glow. The demon gathers himself off the rocky terrain until he is standing on his cloven hooves, his chest heaving, and the horrors of his grotesque face pulsating with his perpetual rage.

"It's not me that will die here today, Belial, Prince of Hell," I call out, the strength of my voice renewed now that the inferno of my magic is running rampant through every cell of my body. Awake, alive, and ready to serve.

The great demon roars, his voice bellowing with so much force it moves the blistering air between us, before he breaks out into a run. The monstrosity is barreling my way like a freight train, the stony floor beneath my bare feet quaking and rupturing as he draws near.

I lift one of my hands, the once-bloodied palm facing towards him, as flames shoot and spiral out from my fingertips.

Belial is made of hellfire, and that is mine to command. My power may be born of celestial fire, but my roots through Stolas run deep into Hell. As I am bound to the Great Prince of Hell, the forces of Hell are also bound to me.

"Come, hellfire," I chant in a whisper, my own burning magic erupting from me and spilling out into the dark space, lashing like the tails of a whip as it explodes forward to meet the charging demon. "Bend to my will."

Belial collides with the wall of fire radiating out from me, and his face contorts with shock as it reaches deep into his being and wraps tightly around him like a python striking out and imprisoning its prey.

He bellows in absolute agony as his atoms are torn asunder by the tendrils of my white-hot fire, ripping and tearing and drawing his evil into me like a siphon. Belial's essence floods me like a tsunami, crashing into my starving soul and willingly feeding the insatiable well inside of me.

The feelings of brutal starvation wreck havoc inside my soul, and my desire to consume all of Hell has the attention of every demon affixed to me.

This new, maddening addiction burns brightly, as bright as the demon Belial as he slowly disintegrates before me. Every bit of his infernal power feeds into me, merging with my own until there is a nuclear bomb capable of destroying worlds lodged in my chest.

A soundless scream breaks free from my throat, just as the shadowy forms of lesser demons begin to materialize everywhere around me. Legions of demons, tasting of Belial's dominion, emerging from the burning pits below. Their enraged screams, full of madness, echo around me like a sickening cacophony.

When the last vestiges of Belial dissolve into my body, a strangled gasp leaves my trembling lips. Battered and war-torn, I collapse to my knees, hands gripping at my chest. Though the fire singed the blood away, the wounds remain. The biggest wound ripped across my very soul, as Belial threatens to take up permanent residence inside of me.

His mocking laughter echoes in my head, and I know without a shred of doubt that I must obliterate Belial by exorcizing him from my body before he destroys my soul. My soul that is bound to Stolas, my soul that sits dead center of a catastrophic bomb—a bomb created when my power collided with Belial's.

"Stolas. STOLAS!" I scream, feeling the fabric of my physical body threatening to split open. I cannot contain this energy, not without my demon's help. If he cannot hear me, I am going to die, and the calamitous detonation may take all of Hell with me.

Belial's lesser demons roar in my direction, lumbering towards me, intent on helping rip me to shreds for consuming their master. My vision darkens, and my body trembles as power radiates in dizzying pulses from me.

The ground is rumbling beneath me again, dark stone fracturing and cracking wide. My skin burns with the pain of all I am holding inside of me, and in that moment I am certain that I am dying.

Until the tranquil wave of Stolas' dark lifeforce crashes into me, knocking me away as a large fissure splits the ground beneath me. My vision returns just as tendrils like thick, black smoke descend upon me.

"Stolas…" I whisper, falling to my back as those dark tendrils snake around me and engulf my body. Before darkness descends on my vision, I see the terrifying manifestation of Stolas charging towards me.

A cool calmness captures me, just as his massive arms wind tightly around me and pull me up and against his heaving chest. My sight returns in flickers, coming and going, giving me glimpses of Stolas and the black blood dripping from the countless wounds that adorn him.

"I'm here, Selene. I'm here," his voice is deep and dark, soothing despite the inhuman fluctuation of its tones.

He must have bulldozed through the legion of Belial's lesser demons descending on us, because when I gaze through a gaping hole in his colossal body, I see an opening in the festering crowd. An opening leading down into the fiery pits of Hell, where Stolas' own war-torn demons rise to join us.

"I'm going to die," I whisper, my body suddenly shivering violently as though I've been dropped deep into the coldest level of Hell.

"No, little witch, I forbid it," he growls, rocking me soothingly against his otherworldly chest, while the power radiating off of me scorches him everywhere my skin connects with his. "But you must cast Belial out."

I shake my head, dizzy from the pulsing waves of energy from the unstable bomb inside of me.

"I c-can't. Don't kn-know… h-how," I respond as my teeth chatter ruthlessly. Have you ever felt so cold, it burned? That's what my entire body feels like as Stolas cradles me against his inhuman body, shielding me from everything but him.

"You must release it, Selene. Let it go, cast it out," he tells me urgently.

"No… everything… destroyed…" I manage to say as my teeth clatter together so hard they must be chipping.

Stolas growls, and we both know time is running out. Or perhaps he knows, and that knowledge is also mine by right of our bond. "Listen to me, little witch. Trust that I will hold you together. Cast him out, do it now!"

I'll kill him. I can't do this. I can't kill my Great Prince of Hell. He saved me, he showed me that I can be strong, and gave me the vengeance I could not give myself. He found me in the darkness, just like he found me dying here in Hell.

Belial's dark laughter fills my mind, the remnants of this infernal entity interwoven with the power I consumed. He's inside of me, festering like a parasite, threatening to take hold.

I shake my head, and his voice booms around me with unyielding authority. "You are mine, Selene, and you will obey. CAST. HIM. OUT!"

Stolas' darkness sweeps inside of me, no longer needing permission to invade. His possession of me feels so different from Belial, so comforting and safe where Belial wants to destroy me just as I've destroyed him.

Stolas pushes at the fragile trigger inside of me, and the sensation has me gasping. My trembling hold on the explosive force my body is failing to contain gives out, and my eyes open wide as the bomb detonates.

The force of the blast breaks the sound barrier, and the brilliant gold light of the shattering inferno is silent until the sonic boom strikes. A rippling wave of immense pressure sweeps out in the wake of the explosion, colliding with the horde of demons. The nuclear fission is ruinous, ripping the demons apart on impact – until they are nothing but particles of ash disintegrating in the blaze surrounding us.

Everything in the bomb's path is leveled. The obsidian structure of the terrain, the tormented souls lanced upon the cruel spires, and even the canopy above is incinerated. Darkness descends and swallows Belial's dominion in Hell, leaving nothing but dust, ash, and demolished rock.

The entire realm trembles as Belial's power decays, his place in Hell utterly destroyed.

When the damage is done, my wide eyes flutter closed against the creeping nothing that sweeps in to take up residence here.

I feel like I am a dying sun trapped in the depths of Hell, my skin made of plasma as radioactive decay has gentle pulses of unstable energy wafting out from my ruined body.

"St—" My throat burns until something cracks, and his name dies on my tongue.

"Shhhh," he soothes, this eldritch horror of a demon holding me securely against him as he lowers his strange mouth to mine. What I recognize as lips press against my own, absorbing the blazing heat emanating from me at devastating temperatures.

His dark power slithers further inside of me like an insidious serpent, dark tendrils like living ink slipping between my scorched lips from the cavernous depths of his jaws. He fills me from head to toe, taking full possession of my body, sinking in deep where Belial once took hold.

Demonic possession isn't supposed to feel like ecstasy. When I consumed Belial, he took root inside of me and poisoned everything he touched. It hurt like being struck by lightning, over and over, searing my nerves endlessly.

Stolas' possession is the polar opposite. He takes hold of all that I am, and tucks it safely away, the spirit of him a balm to my soul. Euphoria is all that I feel now. If this is death, I accept it gracefully. Giving in to his possession is orgasmic. He is filling me with his love, his tranquility, his knowledge. All that he is, weaves itself into me.

"I've got you, Selene." His voice is in my head. Quiet, comforting. Safe. "Sleep now, give yourself to me."

I smile warmly as I drift away.