“Adnihilo!”
The half-blood bolted upright, broken free from his spellbinding by the urgency in Adam’s voice. The pastor’s son was yet a ways off, perhaps fifty yards impeded by fissures and heat vents. Lilum and Ba’al were present as well, though well behind the desperate Messah scorching himself vaulting over ridges and holes belching smoke. Adnihilo plucked a splinter from his elbow, then one from his knee.
“Thank God,” Adam started, “we thought we’d lost you in the crossing.” He reached a hand out and helped the half-blood to his feet. “The others were worried a monster had gotten you.”
“No, just the damned tree.”
“Tree?” the Messah said, staring expectantly. The half-blood noticed his friend was conspicuously free of scrapes and bruises, not even a single splinter. He glanced toward the hollow root from which he’d tumbled then gazed the span of the barren rotunda. There was but a single structure, a petrified arch with a set of stairs behind carved right into a root winding in switchbacks into the ceiling.
Adnihilo sighed, “Never mind that. Do you know where we are?”
Adam looked up at the sky-sized mural, inhaled slowly; his nose rankled at the stench of sulfur.
“Do you recognize it?” the half-blood asked.
“Yes,” the pastor’s son exhaled, “I think it’s a painting of the Devil’s rebellion. They were angels before then, but they corrupted their forms and turned against their creator.”
“What about him?” Adnihilo pointed out the angel with the flaming sword.“ Does that one have a name? Wait—” Something had changed. He could see the face now, golden eyed and fare complected, and soft, almost effeminate. “Wasn’t that angel’s face painted over?”
Adam answered, uncertain. “I don’t think so.” His gaze fell back to Adnihilo, saw the fear in his face and at once drew his father’s rust-pocked blade. “What did you see?”
“There,” uttered the half-blood. Skittering down the dome was the shape of a spider. He drew his own sword. “What is that?”
“What is what?” inquired Ba’al. He and Lilum were just catching up as the spider reached the spot where they’d come from; or so it seemed until Adnihilo realized the vastness of the rotunda. It was miles wide, its dome rising higher than the tallest tower, its petrified arch larger than a fortress gate; yet next to that skittering thing, it looked no bigger than a hovel doorway.
The half-blood glanced from the arch to the angel’s face, estimated the distance. “How long were you searching before you found me?”
“Fuck if I know, Imp.”
“Maybe half an hour,” answered Adam. “Why?”
“That’s why.”
Adnihilo pointed his sword toward the imminent horror. Wiry furred and a blur with speed, it raced the length of the base of the rotunda on gangly legs tipped with spindly phalanges—like human hands, only the joints were all wrong—too mobile, too knobby, covered with black hair that clung to embers as they passed over fuming crevasses and glowing heat vents. The same wiry fur darkened the creature’s abdomen, its fangs as well—each large as a man’s arm—and its head save for three jasper eyes set in descending triangulation.
“Oh, shit!” gasped the bishop, fumbling for his weapon. Useless. Another second and the thing towered over them, standing thrice its height reared onto hind feet. Lilum screamed. Adam thrust his blade into the empty space between him and the monstrosity, point centered at the human face embedded on the demon’s underbelly.
“Wel, wel, welcome!” the spider stammered, wringing spindly fingers. “All of Pandemonium has been eager for your return, inheritor of fire.” The face’s eyeless sockets seemed to turn their attention from the half-blood to Adam. “And you’ve brought a dowry as well! Oh, this will be the most spec, spec, spectacular ceremony! Asmodeus will be most excited. Kimaris as well—but how shameful! I forgot to introduce myself.” The demon dropped to eight legs and dipped its cephalothorax. “I am Paimon, Master of the Arts and Apprentice Architect to Lord Astaroth—though I may well have surpassed him, but you didn’t hear that from me,” the demon whispered playfully. Standing tall again, he addressed the priestess. “And to you, our future queen, my apologies. I did not mean to frighten you.”
“You did not frighten me,” she asserted. “I was just…surprised. The Father gave me no visions as to the… ferocity of his servants’ aspect.”
“The Father? Oh, those damnable titles, giving me conniptions! You must mean King Xanthos. Yes, it is he who sent me to guide you to his very seat—though, only at the behest of the cen, centurion. Ah! There I go as well, using the old titles. He’s a lord now. Lord Beelzebub.”
Ba’al gestured with his weapon like a finger pointing at the sky. His aim was for the hornet. “Lord of Flies, right? The two of us have a contract to complete, so if you’re done prattling on, you can take us to where—” A sudden coughing fit cut the bishop off, dry at first, then wet with phlegm. And when he tried again to finish his thought, that wetness became blood.
Consumption, Adnihilo recognized.
The spider saw it too. “Prattling, yes. I do have that habit. We all do. We’ve had to
