group, we ignored their carnage and their rocks ignored us.
***
Over the second fence brought relief from the burning sand, but no respite from the incessant grief. The land was burnt black, and over it was a startling yellow sky. Littering that crusted surface was a congestion of pikes standing twenty feet tall; each with an individual impaled and wincing down it.
'Abominable!' gasped Harmony, feverish. 'No more of this!'
Eddinray mirrored his angel's repulsion while Kat and I shared hopeless expressions. Couching through the spears and the skewered, we criss-crossed toward the next white fence. Bloodied hands reached down for my hair causing me to bend even lower. Spears were stained red and those impaled were so ravaged that they could only choke at our passing them by. There was no order or obvious pattern here, but there was plenty of land, and many unoccupied spears left to fill.
'I shall never murder again,” uttered Eddinray. 'Unless provoked of course.'
Black angels threw young and old onto fresh pikes, followed by excruciating gargles as lances drilled through spine or neck or bellies. 'Down!' exclaimed Kat, suddenly.
We three dropped terrified from a beast now jinxing its way through the vertical poles — a podgy, four-legged dog. 'What now?' whispered Harmony.
This animal came to chew on the flesh of a man who had slid completely through his spear to touch the ground. Rottweilers like it joined in the feed and we peacefully passed as they gnawed on dead meat; no match for our weapons, dogs no match for a Kat.
The harrowing pits of erotic fire came next — thousands of open graves. Our threadbare route trailed between the pits, and we would have to pass over hundreds before the next white fence roughly three miles away. Already exhausted, I passed the remnants of my canteen for all but Harmony to drink — the angel content with her ordinary barrel water. 'Watch steps here,” said Kat, taking the lead over this tightrope.
Arriving at the first pit, I gazed down and volcanic temperatures assaulted my eyes. Moaning and near blinded, I placed my hands on Kat's shoulders in front to keep me upright. That hole below squashed at least fifty souls standing, all ablaze from the chest down. Pit walls were also ensnared with climbing ripples of fire, making escape or rescue impossible.
To hold those miserable bodies intact, invincible starlight rained aplenty over this staggered torture field, but it could not disguise the vile stench of constantly cooking flesh. 'If I fall,' gasped Harmony, balancing before Eddinray; 'then I want you to leave me knight. Do you understand?'
'I do not,' he replied, perspiring; 'and I will not!'
'It is my decision!” she said. “I am determined! I would leave you without a seconds thought! Do you hear? I would leave you Godwin! Do not sacrifice yourself here — it is worthless to lose two for one. That is my final — '
Suddenly, a fountain of flame flared up from one pit, drowning those below in a screaming vat.
'I pledge my soul to you angel,' stuttered Eddinray, holding onto her wing clasp; 'it is not whole without yours.'
She reached back to thoughtfully squeeze his hand, then continued their uneasy course at my heels. To make things more difficult, those suffering watched us pass from their pits, and like the wall of tears, they pleaded and pleaded for our assistance.
'How can you ignore us? How can you?'
'Have pity!'
'Raise me! Raise me from this Hell!'
We could do nothing for them, so moved forever between pits with the screams, smells and heat getting under all our skins.
'You there! Help us! Lower me your hand!'
'God Almighty, save us!'
30. The Crown Wearing Cadaver
Dropping over the final fence, we landed a world away from those gruesome vistas.
This was a mine of charcoal rock, its glassy edges glittering like diamonds. Frosty breath left our lungs and an eerie echo of unseen axes could be heard chipping away at stone. Shivering, we stood before a long and teetering bridge of stone, extending over a chasm. 'Delve further?' a dull voice asked.
With the portal closed at our backs, the keeper of this bridge prevented our passage. Waiting, he was a scrawny figure at the bridge's halfway point, with gangly arms gesturing us closer…and closer to him.
'What is this?' I said, overwhelmed.
'Mindful,” warned Kat.
We fell behind our leader, and I couldn't help but glance over the bridge's side to a cavernous carian pit, a great mouthful of wind and darkness. In the walls around this hole, the toiling souls broke rocks with old tools, digging private tunnels presumably, and their own way out of Hell.
'That's no man.,” sneered Kat, scrutinizing the bridge keeper.
'Goodness gracious,” whimpered Eddinray. 'It's…disgusting!'
His insect infested appearance brought us friends into a huddle — the beetles, the flies, and the maggots filling up insides like blood. Gelatinous eyeballs gazed down on us from a height of twelve feet; most of his skin was gone and I could see through his chest to an un-beating heart; his nose was a meagre flake of cartilage and his greedy looking mouth revealed a set of rotten teeth. Kat was right: he was no man at all, not anything any-more. Harmony shuddered understandably, and a drained Eddinray found some strength before he might stumble and fall over the side.
The skeleton wore a crown of gold over his puss-leaking skull — a dazzling coronet of unreachable wealth, but its opulence was tainted by the maggots spilling over top like an overflowing bowl of cornflakes
'Who are you?' I asked him, his decomposing stench matching the odious sight.
The crown wearing cadaver swat at flies then raised his hand for us to wait. As we did, a person appeared from behind us. Nearing his fifties, this man was completely naked, morbidly obese, and utterly unsurprised to be in this predicament. I grimaced at the unsightly scars criss-crossing this person’s portly back and buttocks — not an inch of him was free from these blemishes. He was an ordinary looking man like any other granddad, but when he turned his face back at me, his perverted smile made me wince.
Although he had jumped ahead of the cue, we kept our mouths shut while the naked man bent to his knees before the bridge keeper. Promptly, a golden parchment unravelled out of thin air; the keeper then offered him a quill and beckoned for a signature. The elderly man eagerly scribbled his John Doe, and the parchment rolled up with the sound of crisp satisfaction before vanishing. Strangely, the naked man was ecstatic, clapping his hands and hurrying across the bridge with a manic spring in his overweight step.
'Masochist,' the creepy corpse hissed at us. 'His soul seeks deeper pain and ecstasy with it. He will not be disappointed, or have long to wait.'
Even more repellent up close, the bridge keeper chuckled slightly then eyed us over with relish. 'And what of you?' he asked, a yellow larva dripping from his nostrils. 'The bowels of Hell await — tell me what you seek?'
'The 9th Fortress,” I answered, before Kat could. The corpse bobbled his head unsurprised, and a creamy shower of maggots trickled from crown to toes.
'And where are your black angels?' he asked us, intrigued. 'Why aren't they dragging you there by the hair?'
'We are not inmates!' Kat said. 'Get out the way!'
'Do not encourage trouble,” Harmony told him. 'There are other ways to the bottom of this Kat.'
Eddinray added to the samurai's vexation with his own warning, before taking it upon himself to question the corpse. 'Pray, how does one go about crossing your bridge? What payment is required? I tell you I won't be taken advantage of!'
The foul thing approached on stick legs and we recoiled. Suddenly, four parchments of golden paper appeared in his emaciated hand then stretched out to each of ours.
