But there were many good days for Asmodeus and Rosier — many, many of them.Rosier detested television and still struggled with anything electric, but he'd enjoyed a bulky tablet with simple games on it and often laid his head on Asmodeus’ lap as he played.They'd somehow never run out of topics to discuss, to laugh about — not as angels, as demons, in Heaven, in Hell, nor in all the earthy cities.Most mornings, they dressed each other, and they kissed constantly, as much as Rosier would allow.They fucked less often, as much as Rosier would allow.
The young man at Asmodeus’ feet grunted, shifted, tried to lift his body, then slumped back down onto the flesh.“Fuck.”An arm slithered across his torso, clutched at the white tank beneath his open green jacket.“Ah—” He twitched at his own breath, and if the duke could recognize anything, it was the sound of pain.Trembling, the man tilted his head up.“Who are you?”The duke hesitated, then pulled back the hood over his head.“What are you?”
“An angel,” chuckled Asmodeus, his accent minuscule, tongue particularly good with romance languages, “like the one you were with.”He leaned down and offered a hand.“You were with that angel, weren’t you?Did he abandon you?”
Brows furrowing, the soldier breathed, lifted his body to sit, and groaned in pain once more — but he didn’t take the demon’s hand.“No.The angel was with… this other guy.Tadeo.That’s his name.”Asmodeus quirked a brow, lowering his offer, watching as the man wobbled to his feet, doubling over, clutching his stomach, knees knocking together; any minute now, he’d fall back over.“I don’t know him so don’t bother asking me shit.”He looked up at Asmodeus through a dark fringe.“You’re not an angel.This is Hell, isn’t it?”
“Hm, well Iwasan angel once.”There was some demonic shouting nearby, maybe Baal.
“Whatever you say,” Dante droned, turning back to the gape from which he’d been rescued.“The motherfucker left me, didn’t he?I saw the angel go in after him.Then— Then, they flew.They fucking flew and left me falling.”Asmodeus’ eyes flickered behind him, but there was only fog; Baal was almost definitely furious right now, probably hunting him down.“Look at this—” Dante waved the bandaged stump where his left hand was supposed to be.“That fucker did this.He did this, and then he abandoned me down here in goddamn Hell.He thinks he’s a fucking saint, but he left me here?—”
‘It’s a good thing,’ Dante almost confessed, ‘that I’m going to betray him.’
Slowly, however, the duke began to shrug off his cloak, revealing the dark robe he wore beneath, and the soldier jumped.“What are you doing?Get back.I have a gun.”
Just as the soldier started reaching into his pants, Asmodeus threw his cloak over Dante’s body and said, “Be quiet.”He turned back, then jerked his head.“You can stay here and get tortured by Baal or you can follow me down.”
“Down—?”
Asmodeus chuckled at the soldier’s yelp, knowing he'd just noticed the pyramid of flesh.“Don’t mind that.It’s just bodies.If it hurts them, they’re all used to it.Hurry.”He began to step along carefully, not bothering to avoid the human faces or their desperate, grasping hands.“Don’t lose sight of me or you’ll get lost forever.”
“Wait,” called Dante.“Wait!”He panted as he limped over the mangled spew of people, his face twitching, nerves tightening at his throat.“Motherfucker, I said wait.”He nonetheless pulled the demon’s hood over his head, then tightened it at his waist, tried to tie some of it at his side so that it wouldn’t drag on the floor.“Who are you?Where are you taking me?If I’m in Hell, how do I know you’re not taking me to get boiled alive?”
“Maybe I am, but what choice do you have?”Asmodeus hopped over a limb, stumbled, felt a whip of pain climb up his spine, then winced.“If the other demons find you, they’ll bring you to Baal.You don’t want that.”He raised his head, saw that the ground was faraway, pale.“Come.There might be a way across from here.”Clenching his jaw, Asmodeus walked again, but his foot was now trapped in a churning cycle of pain.
Dante breathed, then followed, obediently bowing his head.And with an apparent good intuition, said, “Your foot fucked up?”
Asmodeus didn’t reply, shuffling along, squinting his eyes, searching for a tunnel in a wall that he might never find.He had no patience for this.He had no patience for Hell and its eternally twisted ways, its ticking body, its constant rearrangement.Some of Heaven had been like this, though it was difficult to remember now.‘There's a saying that the humans have, something like: There are years where nothing happens, and there are days where decades do.’Asmodeus felt that he’d lived mere days as an angel, but he’d lived a billion years since the fall.And in this life he had now, he didn’t like the meandering about that the inferno demanded, even when he finally came upon a dim blotch that seemed indicative of rock channels between the walls of Hell.But only the walls here — it was different above, and it was different below.It was cold somewhere, it was wet elsewhere.
The place of damnation was quite accommodating, in a sense.
As the demon and the human stepped into a narrow corridor, the soldier whispered, “So, do you have a name?”He immediately hacked hoarsely, stumbled on the ground, which was rapidly turning to stone beneath them, as it took on an incline to the left.
Asmodeus stepped onto the incline, followed it to the left, until he’d stepped on the wall, moved along it, then he was walking on the ceiling on the cave, or rather the ground of it.Assuming the young man would follow in his steps, he answered, “Asmodeus.”Up ahead, there was light.“I’m a duke of the demons.”If all went well, the inferno would be leading Asmodeus home; if it chose to be kind to him, at least.
“Asmo…de...us,” the man sounded out.“Huh.Alright.”
Asmodeus glanced backward.“Never heard of me?”He snickered; this wasn’t out of the ordinary, but he would have assumed someone who came to Hell with an angel at their side was likely the religious sort.“I’m in the Testament of Solomon.The Book of Tobit.I’m in plenty of books, films.”
“Whatever you say.”
Asmodeus couldn’t help a laugh.“And what’syourname?”
“Dante.”
“Ah.Of course it is.”
The soldier cursed, again, as he stumbled up against the wall, put a knee on it, as his sense of gravity tilted slowly “Slow down.You didn’t tell me where we’re going,Asmodeus.”
The way he rolled histongue on the infernal name was taunting, but the demon took no offense, setting a hand on the edge of the rock, peering out and sighing at the sight of more fog.This could mean he was headed the right way, but it was impossible to know.Low, hollow moans sounded — non-sexual, something more like groans but too airy and tormented.“I would answer if I could,” Asmodeus said with a grumble.“Hell takes you where it thinks you deserve.”With that, he planted his clawed foot forward, breathing shakily, limping forward, feeling something crunch beneath him.Asmodeus opened his mouth, about to warn the human that this was almost certainly bone and excrement before deciding he didn’t need to know.
Nonetheless, Dante scrunched his nose and lifted some of his shirt over his nostrils to ignore whatever the pungent scent might be.He blinked a thousand times, annoyed at how much fog there apparently was in Hell, how that didn’t even make scientific sense.Dante was not a stubborn man, though, and he’d already witnessed shape-shifting and angels and, apparently, a ‘very famous’ demon.He was going to shut his mouth now, then.Carefully, he crept into blindness, focusing on the shape of Asmodeus head, listening to each sting and throb of his body, particularly when he filled his lungs.In fact, the pain was so bad that he was forced to take small, short breaths.
‘Bruised rib,’ Dante diagnosed himself.He’d had a friend in the military college, one of the few that spoke the same local language as Dante and who’d insist on speaking in it even when Dante would reply in the national language.His friend had suffered a broken rib after training once, and Dante had sat beside him that night, listening to his rasps.Two sergeants had kicked his friend’s chest in, and they looked away when he tried to kill himself four weeks later.Nothing unusual for the place.
At his peripheral, Dante noticed a shadow, which he would have normally ignored, but then it slumped to the ground with an oddclink.It was a figure, doubling over, taking clumps of what appeared to be white shards and sand into its hands, then shoving it into its face, presumably a mouth.It was not a demon, or a human, or even an animal — in every sense, it was afigure.Gray specks composed its body, which was in the rough shape of a person, though it had no other features anywhere, no face, no clothing, no genitals.With every movement, trickles of its composition climbed up and away from it, like smoke from a burn.Perhaps, ash.
Dante, heart stuttering, twisted his face forward again, hurried with a shuffle, but only now did he hear all the groans around him in, what he believed to be, hunger.From every direction — it was coming from.Sharply, he breathed, then flinched when it stung in his chest, but a hundred figures were appearing, walking without direction.One figure of ash ran into another, and then fell and, before they’d hit the ground, they both withered away, disappeared into the fog.The other figures, though, paid no mind, most doubling over to feast on the bone-earth.
