Armageddon

Chapter Twenty Four

The Banks of the Styx, Fifth Ring, Hell

Chondrakerntolis rode his Beast carefully along the banks of the Styx. Something worried him about this area, not so very long before, his Beast had been alarmed by something along just this stretch of road. And then there was the mysterious death of Jarakeflaxis. They’d found his mangled body, studded with stab wounds and crucified on one of the rocky outcrops. The letters PFLH had been scrawled over his head, in his own blood. Nobody could make sense of it, or them come to think of it. PFLH? No sense at all.

Somebody was up to no good that was certain. Crucifixion pointed to Yahweh and his people but they rarely came down this way. He had heard that a delegation from Yahweh was on its way to visit Satan but who knew what for. Wise demons did not involve themselves in the affairs of those so high up for when giants fought, midgets got trampled. The most likely bet was that one of the Dukes was making a power-play, trying to expand his influence over the netherworld at the expense of Chondrakerntolis’s Duke. Now that would make sense.

Something weird had been happening recently. The number of souls that had been arriving in hell had suddenly accelerated, rising by orders of magnitude. They’d been dispatched to the various regions of hell of course but at every level the numbers were being hidden so that their essence could be used by the lower-level demons instead of restricted to those of higher caste. Was that why Jarakeflaxis had been killed? Had one of the Dukes or Greater Demons found out that human life essence was being diverted and settled for that public punishment. But if it was an example, why was there no indication of what it was an example of?

That question so Chondrakerntolis that he never noticed the thin wire stretched across the pathway. His Beast saw it but the threat it represented didn’t register. The prime characteristic of a Beast was its unthinking ferocity, caution was not a desired attribute. As a result of their inattention, neither was quite aware of what happened next or the skill with which it had been planned. The wires were attached to push-pull detonators fixed to four claymore mines, placed so that their victim was the center of an X defined by the cones of cubical metal shrapnel they generated. The wires also tripped a timer switch on four one-kilogram blocks of Semtex that had been buried under the path’s surface.

Chondrakerntolis tried to make his brain work, he was surrounded by flying mud and dust, his body ripped by wounds that sprayed his green blood around. His Beast was down, its front legs and one of its claws torn off, it’s body broken and bleeding. Even as he watched, the path surface erupted, shredding the already-dying Beast and throwing its parts around. The connection was inevitable, whatever the reason for the death of Jarakeflaxis, he was also to be its victim.

The mud and mist stirred and three figures emerged. HUMANS!. Chondrakerntolis cudgeled his dying brain into absorbing this data. Humans had done this? How? They were cattle, prey to be milked of their life essence, nothing more. They had killed him? How?

A human female knelt beside him and he heard her voice. “Somebody told us you couldn’t be killed. Guess they were wrong huh?”

Chondrakerntolis tried to reply but couldn’t. As his vision faded out, one question tormented him. What happened to demons when they died?

Watch Tower, Banks of the Styx, Fifth Ring, Hell.

The thunder, strange and mysterious had echoed around the Fifth Ring. Naxalavorsetys looked over the rim of his tower, there wasn’t much to see, just the seething of the mud in which the humans spend eternity on the edge of drowning. Just to be sure, he fired off a flare, lighting the area around the tower a bit better. Still nothing. He shrugged, strange noises were not unknown in hell. It was nothing to worry about. His shift would be over soon and he could go back to his normal life. The regular legions were all being called away and the jobs of the guards were being taken over by civilians such as him. This was something that he did not like at all.

The second blast was very definitely something to worry about. It was stunningly close, Naxalavorsetys felt the superheated air blast at his skin, felt the shock-wave pummel him. More importantly, he felt his watch-tower lurch as a major portion of the stonework on one side was blown away. His tower was collapsing and he realized what that meant even though he couldn’t comprehend how it had been done.

It wasn’t the fall that killed Naxalavorsetys, it was the wreckage of the watch-tower landing on top of him that did the job.

A few minutes later the two three-human strike teams joined up and set off for the next target.

The Division Wall of the Sixth Ring, Hell

Kerflumpus always enjoyed stretching his legs, even if just to torture a few humans here and there. Now, he was marching out of the Sixth Ring into the Fifth he proudly threw out his chest and swung his arms. News had been all over about the crushing defeats inflicted on the insurgent humans, and his legion was mobilizing to move out and continue the pursuit of the shattered human nations, to spread out and batter their world into submission.

The prospect excited him. They said that the sky in the human world was different, that it was light and dark, instead of the dull orange-and-brown striation. Well, now he would get to see it – and to experience crushing the humans and driving them before him, to taste their panic, blood, and flesh, as a member of the second army to pour from the portal into the humans' plane.

Kerflumpus was in the second platoon of his legion; ahead and to his left, the commander, a Greater Demon, was swaying with the gait of his Great Beast as it stepped off the Styx bridge. Its arched tail curled over his head, and he was sitting in the saddle with a bored look on his face when, with a sigh, his head exploded. Kerflumpus caught it out of the corner of his eye, and swung around with horror, as every other demon in the unit did.

Suddenly, something similar happened to the demon next to him: there was a whistling sound, and then they were both staring in horror at the fist-sized hole that had opened up in his chest. Spattering green blood all over Kerflumpus, he staggered a few steps and fell over the parapet of the bridge into the slow-moving, murky Styx below. All across the bridge, it seemed that demons were falling at random every ten seconds or so, and the situation was proceeding nicely toward absolute pandemonium: the head of the legion was held up at the forward edge of the bridge by the dead commander, milling about with no idea what to do; the tail of the legion was crowding into the bridge with no idea what was going on. Meanwhile, the legion ahead of them was marching off along the road into the mists of the fifth ring, with no idea what was happening behind them.

There was obviously some wizardry at work here, heretofore unknown in hell. In sheer, undiluted panic, Kerflumpus charged his trident and loosed it off the bridge. He was watching the head-sized ball of magic zip across the river toward the far side when the air punched him, blanking out all sound as he was thrown up, spinning in midair. All around him, he saw other demons thrown up, some weakly flapping their vestigial wings; it was almost comical, and it was the last thing he saw before the masonry fragments and shrapnel shredded him.

Across the river, Lieutenant Kim whistled as the bridge blew. It was more spectacular than she'd expected; the initial flash of detonation was impossibly fast, and the blast wave ripped apart the bridge as though it were made of sand, sending Baldricks flying. She nodded back at McInery and Tarrant. “Good work placing the semtex, Mac and Bubbles.” The two were grinning ear-to-ear.

Behind them, two of the other three members of Tango-one-five were setting down the M107s. “Good shooting to you guys, too,” said Kim. It hadn't really taken much; the Baldricks had been tightly packed on the bridge, and all they'd had to do is fire into the crowd. The. 50 caliber Mk213 bullets had done a fabulous job. As usual.

After surveying the scene for few minutes and letting the two pilots – both avid big-game hunters before their units were called to Iraq – pick off a couple of more bad guys and the commander of the next brigade-sized unit, Kim hoisted a satchel of webbing onto her shoulder. It had about two dozen more bricks of Semtex, the detonators, and several boxes of ammunition. “Okay, boys. We're done here. Let's head out and get the next ambush set up.”

Adjusting her webbing straps so they didn't chafe her through the mud caking her body, Kim led Tango-one-five back down the Styx toward their supply cache and the rope bridge they'd strung across the river. Once on the other side, they would set about making the Dis-Dysprosium road a hell within hell, one that Baldricks would fear more than they feared Satan himself. Kim already had a name for it. La Route Sans Joie.

Palace of Satan, Infernal City of Dis, Sixth Ring of Hell

The banners of kingdoms long conquered swirled in the red mist as the Akropoulopos approached the diamond throne of Satan. He had always known being a messenger was a bad idea, and now he knew that his life was a couple of minutes from ending. “Oh mighty prince,” he began, “overlord of the innumerable legions of – ”

“Get on with it,” snapped Satan irritably, clicking his claws against the hewn gem. “What news have you brought me of Abigor's brilliant success?”

“Sire, the messengers from Abigor are silent. I bring news not of Abigor, but of terrible happenings much closer to your throne.”

“Well, what is it? Hurry up; my time is not your kidling's plaything.”

The messenger swallowed and groveled. “My lord – I do not know how to say this. The bridge leading to the road to Dysprosium has been destroyed.”

Satan stopped clicking his fingers. “What?” His voice was quiet, which was even more terrifying than the hysterical fits. “Repeat yourself.”

Akropoulos was shivering uncontrollably. “Your invincible eminence, the bridge across the Styx has been destroyed. Those legionaries who were there report that it burst into many pieces with the roar of ten thousand demons. Flying stones killed many, and -”

“What,” asked Satan, cutting him off with a word, “do my advisors think to be the cause of this… outrage?” Still silkily smooth and quiet.

The court was silent, save for the shuffling of feet as some of the more perspicacious demons positioned themselves so that the inevitable rage would not claim their lives.

“Speak!” roared Satan. “I COMMAND you all, SPEAK!!”

One demon timidly cleared his throat. “Um, Sire, none of us can think of any explanation, save…” He trailed off, but not in time to save himself.

“Save what?” screamed Satan, balling his hand into a fist and pounding it on his throne.

“Save… uh… save, perhaps, most improbably, a bit of stray human magic?”

Satan's glare squashed him into an unimaginably horrible pulp. “You will all find us the cause of this outrage! You will ensure that it does not happen again! This is our domain; our immortal, invincible will decrees that no human mage shall ever work his magic once more in this infernal pit!”

As the court demons hastened to obey, scrambling around the wide hall, Akropoulos took the opportunity to scuttle unnoticed away. As he hurriedly left the palace, he promised himself to try again to join the legions; messengering was too hazardous a job.

Fifth Ring, Hell

The road, large flat paving stones laid atop a low causeway of dirt, wound through the foggy swamps. The half-muted groans of the eternally-drowning souls crucified in the mud echoed dimly through the stinking air. McInery surveyed it with a grim smile. “You think we can actually blow the causeway, ell-tee?”

Kim shrugged. “Why the hell not try, Mac? Bubbles, you got the Semtex?”

“Aye, ell-tee, right here.”

“Let’s lay it.” Kim directed the other members of Tango-one-five recon flight to lay eight Semtex bricks on each side of the road, spaced several hundred feet apart. The bricks were pushed down into the soft earth, no more noticeable than large rocks.

As Tarrant finished pushing the electronic detonators into the last brick, McInery hurried up to where Kim and the rest of Tango flight were standing. “Ell-tee, we have contacts coming from that direction.” He waved behind him.

“How many, Mac?”

“Didn’t count; just saw the torches and heard the voices.” In the distance, dim chanting floated through the mist toward them.

“Everyone, off the road!” she hissed. She grabbed the last bag, slung it over her shoulder, and waded into the bog after the others. They made toward a low granite outcropping just within view of the road. As they hurried behind it, stumbling past several submarine crucifixes, the chanting grew louder.

“Pie Iesu domine, dona eis requiem.” The tramping of the feet, all in step, grew, and the first torchbearers appeared through the mist. Kim suppressed a gasp; they were not Baldricks. These were honest-to-God Cherubs, dressed in pure white that seemed to glow like pearl through the thin fog, and they were chanting something – was it Latin? Whatever it was, Kim had enough of a musical ear to note that the singing was perfect, the pitch exactly correct, the timing exquisite. She couldn’t have emulated it herself, when trying to sing, she hit all the right notes, she just hit them in the wrong order.

In the midst of the Cherubs – all chanting, all bearing torches, and all wearing swords at their sides – were greater humanoids head and shoulders taller than the others, with flawless skin and, damningly, white wings folded across their backs. “Mac, how many you count?” whispered Kim.

“I got seven angels, ell-tee, and seventy-seven cherubs.”

“We’re at war with heaven and hell both, right, guys?”

There was a mutter of affirmation from beside her, and a brisk, quiet, “Let’s take them!” from one of the big game hunters, who had been a devout Catholic up until The Message. Kim nodded and thumbed the detonator.

The concussion knocked the breath out of her, even at this distance. The blast tore the heavenly emissaries apart, spattering white and red blood and body parts along with the dirt, mud, and chunks of rock. After, where there had once been a road, there was a giant gaping hole filling with vile, gurgling swampwater. The group of angels and cherubs was scattered in many pieces through the surrounding swamp.

When she got her breath back, Kim was last in line as Tango flight trooped away from the carnage as fast as they could, quietly jubilant. Then a stray thought crossed her mind. “Boys, we’re going to need some more Semtex.”

The Banks of the Styx, Fifth Ring, Hell

Rahab looked at the dead Beast and its rider in horror. The Beasts and the demons who rode them were invulnerable, everybody knew that. Those few who had tried to kill them had died deaths that were terrible even by the standards of hell. Yet those new arrivals had killed this pair. She knew who had done it all right, nobody else would have the gall to even try. And if that wasn’t enough, the letters PFLH written n the Beast’s side in its own blood were enough.

Were they insane? Rahab’s stomach clenched with fear at what was likely to happen. Once these deaths became known, there would be revenge, reprisals. The demons would come down here by the legion, searching every inch of ground for those who had done the deed. In the process, they would find all those who had escaped from the pits over the millennia and, at best, return them to torment. Thousands of souls doomed to return to their agony because these six decided to upset the natural order of things. When she had left them in the underground room, Rahab had been sorely tempted to ‘arrange’ for them to be found by the guards and returned to the pits. She had dismissed the idea, believing that their comments and stories had been just wild boasting. Now, she guessed they were not and she bitterly wished she had betrayed them. Condemning six souls was better than dooming the tens of thousands of escapees.

She’d been searching for them for days, trying to catch up with them and bring them into shelter. Now she had found this. She agonized over the decision, what to do? At that point another fact penetrated her bewildered mind. She had seen no flares from the watchtower that lay close at hand. Fearfully she made her way to where it had stood, only to be appalled by the sight that loomed through the mist. The watch tower was a blasted stump, its wreckage spread all over the paths, some of it sinking into the mud. And on the stump were the letters PFLH. Written in the blood of the watch-demon.

What else had these mad humans got in mind? And what to do about them? In Rahab’s mind was another question as well. Was it time to join them? And did she have any choice in the matter?

(Appreciation to Surlethe who wrote most of this part).