screamed, her form glowing with witchfire. She exchanged a long stare with her opponent before he decided that it wasn't worth risking the count's wrath. At a silent signal from their commander the growling lesser demons began to file back through the black disc and disappear. “And take that wretch with you!” The last demon in line dragged the human through the portal, which promptly shimmered and vanished.
Her flickering aura relaxed as Megaaeraholrakni released the psychic force. In truth, she could not have done much more; her kind were not built to fling lightning the way the naga were and it had taken her millennia of practice just to achieve the limited aptitude she had. No need for lesser beings to know that of course. She made her way to the staircase and from there to the highest floor of the crumbling building (a disused storehouse perhaps? she couldn’t tell and didn’t particularly care). A large section had collapsed completely, revealing a panorama filled by more nondescript boxy buildings, all made of the humans' odd artificial stone and many in a similar state of disrepair.
Like Lakheenahuknaasi before her, she recoiled in distaste from the telepathic clamor which filled the humans realm. Megaaeraholrakni was undeniably the superior witch though, or perhaps just less interested in comprehending the human babble, for within ten seconds she had pushed through the barrier to contact her waiting queen. It was time for this place to burn, so that this silly rebellion could end and she could get back to her studies.
Free Hell, Banks of the River Styx, Fifth Circle, Hell
You Are Now Entering Free Hell
The sign meant that they’d done it. For the first time in its history, there was an area of Hell where humans ruled. After the assassination of Asmodeus, the baldricks had stopped their advance and dug in. A de-facto border now existed, on one side of it the Baldricks continued their network of fortifications, on the other, humans had established their own administration. An uneasy truce existed between them, one that could be summarized from the human point of view as “don’t put your hoof over the border and we won’t blow it off”. It seemed like a small, practical agreement but in an insurgency there was no such thing as a small agreement between the government and the insurgents. Any agreement at all reflected a level of equality between insurgents and authorities and that made it an epoch-defining defeat for the baldricks. They’d been forced to deal with the dead humans as equals and concede ground to them.
“Friend, if I could speak with thee for a moment. I have a request for thine attention.”
The archaic language snapped Captain (deceased) Jade Kim's attention back to the reality of Free Hell. For a moment, she thought that it was one of the recovered dead, but the breathing mask showed it was a volunteer from Earth, one who had come to help with the task of finding the victims of this place and rescuing them. Behind him she could see another one of the crosses being hauled out of the swamp and figures starting to work, freeing the poor soul attached to it. Kim remembered her own time nailed to a cross and drowning in sewage and she shuddered.
“There’s a problem?”
“There is friend. Many have been rescued from the swamps and have recovered enough to travel. Some wish to stay here with thee to fight.” The speaker’s voice showed his dislike of that concept. “Others, they wish to leave this place. Can thou contact earth and arrange a way out for them?”
Kim relaxed, this had been anticipated. “Some don’t like our company huh? They know they can’t survive on Earth, right?”
“They have been told this, yes. And they understand but still wish to leave.”
“Well, they can. The plan is we’ll portal them back to Earth and then they’ll be relayed straight back to an area of Hell that’s under human control.” To her amusement, her companion looked around in alarm. “No, not like this one. We’re holding a pretty big area between the Phlegethon River and the sea, its called the Martial Plain of Dysprosium. There’s refugee camps being set up in there for the people we rescue. They’ll be looked after until we’ve won. I have no idea what will happen then, I don’t think anybody has. The catch is, I can’t contact out, DIMO(N) has to contact me. We have a schedule for that. Next contact is in a few hours, get the evacuees ready to move then.”
“Thou are kind. Thank you.”
The man turned to leave but Kim was seized with curiosity. “Excuse me, but could I ask a question of you. A personal one?”
“Certainly friend. I will answer if I can.”
“How come you people didn’t just die when we got The Message. A lot of religious people did, too many of course. But none of your people. Why?”
He smiled gently beneath his mask. “Friend, hast thou ever heard of Testimony of Integrity?” Kim shook her head. “It is one of our central beliefs. It says that we should always tell the truth but it means more than that. It means we should always deal fairly with people, we do not believe we should trick others by making statements that are technically true but whose meaning is false. It is our belief that this is how God deals with us and we deal with others. When The Message came, it did so as an inner revelation at our meetings. Those who received it stood to testify but at once there were doubts as to whether this was a true revelation for it ran against the Testimony of Integrity. How could a God who had for so long demanded we base our lives around the concept of fair dealing countenance such an enormous betrayal? Surely this could not be so and The Message was a trick, perhaps by Satan himself. So our meetings all decided to wait and see what would happen. Then the fighting started, we saw the baldricks invade and we heard what they did. We still do not believe that The Message came from Our God but it does not matter. The Message was true and we must wait to see what the whole truth is. Before then, our beliefs, the Testimony of Peace does not allow us to fight but it does allow us to come here and aid those who have suffered for all too long. So here we are.”
Rather you than me Kim thought to herself. Better to fight baldricks that spend the time here scrambling around in the mud, finding the souls in torment here then rescuing them. Unconsciously she shifted the M115 on her shoulder. Especially since modern weapons gave her such an enormous advantage over her enemies. The baldricks had numbers but even that advantage would fade as more and more souls were liberated from the torment in which they were held. And that, of course, raised issues all of its own.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a long rolling thunder, one that was very far away yet she could still feel the vibrations through her feet. Her companion was standing politely beside her, waiting for her to speak again, but the sound made him glance up.
“I did not know that there were thunderstorms in this place.”
“There are not.” Kim spoke absently. “That’s artillery fire.”
Chapter Fifty Six
Command Post, Northern Front, Phlegethon River Bulge, Hell
“My Lord, this is against all our traditions.”
“And humans fighting back is not? If they defeated Abigor, then they are adversaries worthy of note. Abigor’s description of the great battle was quite clear, the Beast charge at the start of the fighting was a disaster for his cavalry. We must learn from those mistakes. Even if we can never admit the source of our learning.”
Lapradanultrox looked out across the array of forces now moving down on the northern flank of the great bulge in the Phlegethon river. The sight was a strange one to demonic eyes, the great square blocks of the legions divided into much smaller groups. Even more oddly, the cavalry legions had been completely broken up, dispersed amongst the infantry. One Beast supporting each group of 27 foot-soldiers. Behind the hills that ranged along the river, the great flock of harpies, almost 180,000 of them were waiting to launch their attack. This was also unprecedented, the mores of demonic warfare were clearly established. The Harpies reconnoitered to find the enemy, the Beasts charged to crack a hole in the enemy defenses, the infantry closed to destroy the broken army.
That was the way it had always been and that was the way Abigor had fought. And his army had been destroyed in the most catastrophic defeat ever inflicted on demonic arms. Not even the Celestial Enemy had ever done the damage the humans had inflicted on Abigor. Lapradanultrox appreciated Beelzebub’s desire not to repeat the same experience on an even more cataclysmic scale but to cast away every basic principle of warfare? Beelzebub’s decisions were courageous in more ways than one. Such a break with the past would be heroic, if he
