Iggs snapped his mouth shut, but the fiery light didn’t go out of his red eyes as he came over to hold the war demon’s sin-iron collar while Bex cut.
It washardwork. Drox cut sin iron like paper, but he was a divine blade forged by Enki himself. Lys’s four-inch sin-iron knife looked like it’d been beaten into shape with a rock. It was technically capable of cutting the collars, but Bex had to push with all of her—and all of Iggs’s—strength to actually drive it through.
While they were working, Kirok interviewed the boys one by one. He mostly asked about patrol patterns and security, but also how things were in the Hell of War and who was in charge. Bex was focusing too hard on not letting the knife slip and accidentally cutting someone’s head off to listen, but she was certain Kirok would tell her. He might not officially be her general anymore, but it was impossible to keep that man fromgiving reports. Sure enough, when all four war demons were finally out of their collars and rolling around on the ground for the sheer joy of being free, Kirok walked over with a salute.
“At ease,” Bex said, sitting down on the stone to catch her breath after all that brute-force metal cutting. “What’s the situation?”
“Better than expected,” Kirok replied, folding his huge bronze body into a crouch so he wouldn’t have to talk down to her too much. “I mostly asked them why they were here. Guarding the Hells is usually done by constructs who don’t need shift changes and feel no empathy toward the slaves.”
Iggs made a disgusted sound, but Bex was smiling.
“I bet I know why there’s no constructs,” she said. “I must’ve slagged them all during my fight last week.”
Her fellow wrath demon leaned down and gave Bex a high five for that one, but Kirok’s bronze face was still grim.
“You destroyed many,” he acknowledged. “But even if you’d melted Gilgamesh’s entire army, the Hell of War’s forges are designed for instant troop replenishment. They should’ve produced enough new constructs to at least bring the Hells back up to operational standards by now, but the boys told me that all the young demons are still on emergency Hells dutyandthey’re running on a skeleton staff.”
“That’s good news for us,” Iggs pointed out.
“Yeah, but why is it happening?” Bex asked. “Why aren’t they making more constructs?”
“I asked that exact question,” Kirok replied, glancing at the four young war demons, who’d moved to the far side of the cliff where they were now sitting with their legs dangling off the edge, staring out into the sky. “Unfortunately, they didn’t know. All they could tell me was that Gilgamesh has had the forges in the Upper Hells running nonstop. They don’t know what he’s making since they’re not on forge duty, but it’s not constructs.”
Bex frowned. No constructs and skeleton crews of baby war demons working guard duty was great news for them, but she didnotlike the idea that Gilgamesh was cranking out thousands of unknown somethings.
“What’s that bastard king up to?”
“No way to know that except to go and see for ourselves,” Kirok said as he straightened back up. “We should proceed with the mission and see what we find. The Hell of War is the last Hell before the gate to Heaven. If your crown is in Gilgamesh’s palace as assumed, we’ll have to pass by the forges no matter what. Maybe we can learn something.”
“So long as we don’t get too far off target,” Bex said, pushing back to her feet as well. “My horns are the biggest throw of this whole mission. We need to stay focused if we’re going to get up there without raising the alarm. Speaking of, how’re we doing?”
That last question was directed at Iggs, who sighed. “Not as great as I’d hoped,” he confessed, pointing at the pile of golden armor the captured guards had stripped off. “The original plan was for us to crush a construct, put me inside the clockwork body, and then I’d march the rest of you into the Hells as slaves while Lys played our warlock, but…”
“But what?” Bex asked. “Still sounds like a good plan to me, especially since we’ve got four suits of armor now.”
“Except for the part where they’re all tiny,” Iggs said, holding up one of the golden chest plates in despair. “This thing barely fits over my horns! War constructs are big enough to fit my entire body inside, but if I put on one of these suits, I’m going to look like a dad in his kid’s Halloween costume. Also, my skin’s not bronze.” He shook his head. “Unless all the warlocks in the Hells are blind, there’s no way we’re fooling anyone.”
“I can wear the four-armed set,” Kirok volunteered.
“No way,” Iggs snapped. “That thing’s half your size! Where’re you going to put it? On your arm?”
“They might not be big enough, but we have got four of them,” Bex reminded him. “I’m sure we can cobble something usable out of all those pieces.”
Iggs winced. “We’re going to look stupid.”
“So make it look better,” Bex told him with a smile. “You brought your art kit, right?”
“Yeah, but this is a lot more complicated than painting fake slave bands.” Iggs looked at her pleadingly, but Bex just kept smiling, and eventually he sighed.
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“I’ll help,” Bex offered, grabbing the armor off the ground. “Let’s do this quick before someone notices that warlock didn’t come back.”
Iggs nodded and bent down to grab a huge handful of the golden armor pieces, bringing them over to Bex so they could get to work.
It took a lot of bending and some pretty creative placement, but eventually they managed to spread four suits of too-small armor over two demons. It would’ve been easier to just do Kirok, but Iggs’s wrath-demon horns were a dead giveaway. If they just made him the guard, though, then Kirok would have to play the prisoner, which would make them stand out even more since he was gigantic, gleaming bronze, and apparently pretty famous. He'd claimed to have been just a normal trainer, but all the young war demons were staring at him like he was a rock star.
Under any other circumstances, Bex would’ve been impressed. On a stealth mission, though, Kirok’s surprise star power was a serious liability. She and Iggs covered him up as best they could, tilting the helmet to cover his face and patching the gaps in his too-short armor with gold paint from Iggs’s kit.The result looked decent from a distance, but up close it was another story. It was still better than Iggs’s though.
