'Ah, Lilith ... ,' the Prince said.
She looked up, then, into his face. It was a beautiful face, Adramalik thought, an uneven split of human and fly, the greater influence leaning toward the insect. This time, he noted, Beelzebub had fifteen eyes; it was a number that changed every time he appeared.
Adramalik could guess what Lilith thought when she looked into that face, softened, as it was, with the unforgivable love its owner felt for her. Personally, the Chancellor General could not fathom that emotion. Lust, no matter what the form, he understood, but not the additional embellishment; that he regarded as a sign of weakness and vulnerability. Not that he would have ever explained that to Beelzebub.
Adramalik watched Beelzebub, as he had so many times before, reach out a clawed, bristled hand, palm up and coaxing. She took it, unhesitatingly, unflinchingly. She had learned, Adramalik thought, smiling approvingly, remembering all the hard lessons. The millennia had taught her. That and the Scourges.
The Prince drew his Consort close. He towered over her and it was only after the flies at his joints separated somewhat that he could bend to reach her. And when he had, he tenderly held her head in his hands, guiding it toward the long proboscis that depended from the center of his face.
Lilith closed her eyes. She had learned that, too.
He kissed her, the long, thick tongue reaching downward, its hundreds of glistening black flies dancing in her throat.
Throughout the long embrace Lilith held herself rigidly still; Beelzebub either did not notice or enjoyed her resistance. Adramalik found himself unable to look away.
He knew that, somehow, she had found ways to ignore Beelzebub's paranoia, his strict authoritarianism, his delusions, his rages. These things, Adramalik reasoned, she could forgive. But, he knew, she would never forgive Beelzebub his affections.
Adramalik continued to watch; he found her unwillingness beyond exciting.
Chapter Nine
DIS
Eligor's spirits sank with every step he took. He, Sargatanas, and Valefar had landed before the Western Gate—the so-called Porta Viscera—and stood, for a moment, at its foot. It, like its four counterparts, was an angular edifice reaching up five hundred feet, constructed of slate-gray native-stone towers, each linked by broad, blank walls. Imposing as they were, there was an additional feature upon its surface that made Eligor's mouth open in amazement. Protruding from the stone, every foot or so, was an L-shaped iron spike, each adorned with withered, impaled human organs. Most were hearts— that most superfluous of organs in Hell—but there were other bits and pieces of forsaken human detritus. Entrails, sexual organs, even eyes decorated the walls, all buffeted in the stiff wind and giving the impression of a vertical carpet of moving life. Among these gruesome trophies scuttled a variety of small climbing Abyssals whose sole purpose, it seemed, was to pick at the remnants. As Sargatanas, Valefar, and Eligor passed under the gate's arch, he watched as waves of the many-legged creatures ebbed and flowed across the wall's surface, plucking, pinching, and tugging on the shredded flesh. As they passed beneath the gate's arch, fragments skittered down the wall narrowly missing them, clumping in the wide passageway only to be swept up by attendant souls.
They exited the gate onto the broad Avenue of the Nine Hierarchies that dipped down a few miles distant, offering a wide, panoramic vista of the ancient city. Valefar led the small party's progress, guiding them around the foul detritus that littered the streets. Everywhere, in sharp contrast to Adamantinarx, lay bones and discarded chunks of humanity. These were wrestled over by the wrist-thick worms that slithered through the back alleys and boldly emerged from the gloom when food appeared. Once found, a meal was hotly contested, and hundreds of the hook-headed creatures converged, twisting and coiling among themselves for even a tiny morsel. Any soul caught in this frenzy was reduced very quickly to even more morsels; most knew to shrink into the shadows. Eligor, who was used to Abyssals of every description, was repelled by these, intentionally crushing many under his bony foot when he had an opportunity.
The city's chaotic sprawl reached to the distant horizon, where it faded into the smoky haze that hung low in the air. Only the twinkling fires and the columns of smoke in the far distance belied the true extent of Dis' margins. It was a vast city, many times the size of Adamantinarx, with many times the population. From his vantage point he could easily see a dozen or more huge personal glyphs hanging above various city-sections, indicators of entire large neighborhoods governed by powerful deputy-mayors within Dis.
BEELZEBUB'S KEEP
Beelzebub's Keep - (unpublished work, acrylic on Gessoboard) - There is no single construct in Hell that typifies the monolithic evil of its rulers more than this enormous edifice. Thousands of feet high, surrounded by lava and blanketed in a thick mantle of necrotic flesh, the Keep is an artificial mountain that encompasses the infernal seat of power. Built above the living tomb of an imprisoned Watcher, it is a labyrinth of claustrophobic tunnels and corridors that would take a lifetime to explore - if one had the courage. At its center rears Prince Beelzebub's Dome, the largest domed structure in Hell, beneath which is its feared Rotunda, the Prince's audience chamber. Whispered rumors do not begin to tell of the horrors it has witnessed, nor of the terrible orders which have issued from within its confines.
At its center, dominating the Plain of Dis, was Beelzebub's Keep, a structure nearly two miles high that looked all the more lofty for the flatness of the surrounding terrain. Mulciber's Miracle, some called it. Eligor thought it the perfect symbol of its owner—overblown beyond any reality. It rose improbably toward the cloudy sky, an archiorganic mountain, polyhedral in plan with each side slanting, flat, and smooth save for the gigantic sustaining organs that broke the surfaces. The thick, heavy mantle of flesh on its upper surface was cleft by numerous black spires and domes, one of which, far to the right of the famed Rotunda dome—the Black Dome—was alight. Piercing its narrowest section was an immense arch through which flowed a lava stream—part of the glowing moat that encircled the entire artificial mount. At the base of that arch was the great portal that led into the Keep from a single gargantuan bridge. Eligor knew from the past that this was their immediate destination. Once there they were to be met by one of Prime Minister Agares' secretaries, who would guide them through the vertical labyrinth that was the Keep's interior.
Eligor trod heavily through the streets. He wondered, hopefully, when Sargatanas would tire of the endless rows of sullen buildings, when they would again take wing and truncate the unpleasant journey to the base of the citadel. Both of his companions were silent, each bearing an expression of distaste, Eligor suspected, for their surroundings.
