I didn’t realize how hard I’d been concentrating on Semyazah until the conversation stopped. Talking to another living being was like being sucked into a different whirlpool of light down here. When I look around we’re surrounded by souls. I recognize a lot of them. Most at the front are military men and women I killed. Azazel, my old slave master, the Hellion who made me into a killer, is there. Beelzebub. Amon. Marchosias. Valefor. Maybe a dozen others. There are members of Hell’s nouveau riche in ghost furs and jewels. Beyond them are rows and rows of other Hellions and human souls. More than a hundred. I’ve never seen them in one place before. I had no idea I’d killed so many down here. They press in from all sides, trying to crush me. But Tartarus has reduced them to empty spirits with no substance. Shadows on panes of glass. I manifest the Gladius for a second and they stumble back, leaving a no-man’s-land around me.
“What a lovely trick. If I’d known you could do that, I wouldnheiI would019;t have bothered giving you the key,” says Azazel.
“How’s retirement treating you, boss?”
Azazel is the Hellion general who put the key to the Room of Thirteen Doors in my chest. I used it to move around Hell and kill for him. I slit his throat before he had a chance to ask for it back.
“I wondered if I’d ever see you down here someday, and here we are. Reunited at last.”
“Don’t get too choked up. I walked in on my own.”
“I showed you your power. I made you what you are,” he says. “You could show a little gratitude.”
“I could have tortured you to death, but I killed you quick.”
Semyazah’s eyes narrow.
“You came into Tartarus voluntarily. Why?”
“To get you.” I glance at the crowd. It’s still packed with dead generals. I speak louder so they can all hear. “I’ve got good news and bad news for you. The good news is that you won’t have to suffer down here much longer. The bad news is that Mason Faim is going to burn the universe to the ground. He doesn’t care about Heaven. He just wants the high ground for his attack. And he’s probably going to do it in the next few hours.”
That gets their attention. I hear whispers and then actual voices from the crowd.
Semyazah says, “You intend to take me out of here?”
“Yes.”
“That’s absurd. Tartarus has been here for hundreds of thousands of years. If it was possible to escape, someone would have done it by now.”
“That’s the great part. Who do you think Hell’s armies would rather follow, a mortal who made a lot of promises but hasn’t delivered on anything or the biggest baddest general ever? The only Hellion who ever walked out of Tartarus.”
That starts the chatter again. Generals lean together like they’re forming battle plans.
“So how can we do it?” I ask.
“You can’t,” says Azazel. He looks at Semyazah. “You can’t trust this creature.”
“Why should they trust you?” I ask. “They all know you sent me to kill them. Now you want to keep them in Tartarus just because you can’t get out?”
“How does this place work? Is this meat locker Tartarus or is the machine?”
Semyazah says, “The place and the furnace are parts of a single punishment device. Tartarus is the machine that runs the universe. It provides heat and energy to light the stars, Heaven and Hell, and every place where mortal and celestial life dwell. And we’re the fuel.”
Mammon gives a mad, gleeful little nod. He says, “We’re the souls judged so worthless or relentlessly vile that the universe has no more use for us. All we’re good for is fuel for the fire.”
Did Muninn, Neshamah, and his brothers think up Tartarus on a particularly good day or a bad one? Did they mean to create this place or is it another one of their mistakes? I’m going to have to reconsider whether the demiurge is evil or not because this place is on a whole new scale of evil.
I watch the Metropolis proles working away at the furnace and boiler. Gears and pipes and valves stretch from the floor, spread to the three enormous pipes that disappear into the ceiling.
This is it. God’s ultimate revenge for his kids letting him down. Eventually we’ll all end up down here. Right now it’s only the most monstrous souls, but Muninn and his brothers will get tired of watching humanity fuck up and we’ll end up cordwood, too. So will the rest of the angels. Even Humanity 2.0, 3.0, and 100.0 will eventually disappoint them. When there’s no one left to punish, why would they keep Hellions around? We’ll all end up in the furnace, warming the brothers’ palace, a tiny dot in an empty universe, while they sit around arguing like old biddies for the next trillion years. Or until one of them gets fed up enough to crack open the Big Bang crystal and put them out of their misery, too.
The furnace workers cut down more souls from the conveyor and toss them in the fire.
“We can’t get out the way we came in, but what about up there?” I point to the machine. “Are there any maintenance areas or access tunnels? Someone built this place. Someone has to maintain it.”
“No. God in his infinite wisdom built the furnace well,” says Semyazah. “It might be his greatest achievement. His perfect creation.”
Even Mammon doesn’t argue with him.
When I think about leaving Alice with Neshamah, I get a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. He knew what I’d find down here. Wouldn’t it be the biggest joke in history to have survived Hell, Lucifer’s games, and Mason’s bullshit just to have God murder Alice while my back is turned? I can’t even go back and check on her. All I know is that they’re in a paroo.;re in king lot in Eleusis. In L.A., gosh, there can’t be more than fifty of those in the area.
“Has anyone tried attacking the workers?”
