That made sense in hindsight. If comms functioned down here, Lys would’ve been yelling in her ear this entire time. Bexdidn’t know if the problem was magical or mechanical, but seeing how no outside sound or light seemed able to penetrate the Lowest Hells, her money was on magic. The rope was still tied around her waist, though. So, since she couldn’t call to let them know she was alive, Bex reached up and gave the line a yank instead.
She’d just been trying to communicate to Lys that she was okay, but since she’d jumped down here without setting up a signal like an impatient idiot, her first tug triggered a frantic attempt to pull her back up. Bex was ten feet off the ground before she caught her balance and pulled back, giving the rope a series of long, calm tugs until Lys—or more likely, Iggs—got the message and stopped trying to reel her in.
Once Bex was back on the ground and, more importantly, confident she’d stay there, she let go of the rope and resumed her search for all the not-pride demons she’d come down here to find. According to Desh, there should’ve been a ton of them, but all Bex saw were more rows of twitching void demons. She was starting to worry this whole idea was a bust when she spotted something odd in the tiny circle of light from her still-glowing hand.
It looked like a giant pile of old clothes, but as Bex walked closer, she realized they were demons. Not void demons—the last line of those had stopped a few feet back—but every other sort imaginable. They were all lying piled on top of each other in a giant heap like they’d been dropped there from the ceiling over eons. Just like the void demons, their eyes were squeezed tight and their faces were contorted with fear, but where the void demons lying on the ground were all wearing the same prison tunics as the slaves upstairs, the piled bodies were wearing a random assortment of clothing from every era of human history. Bex was still trying to make sense of the chaos when her eyes landed on a familiar face near the top.
It was a war demon. A fully transformed one who’d recently lost all four of his arms. The twiglike replacements had been frozen before they could finish growing in, but it was his dented bronze face that Bex recognized. That was the war demon who worked for the Spider, the one who’d attacked her in the train yard, Trinaeous.
She could only shake her head after that. Of all the demons she could’ve found, it had to be the one who’d almost killed her. Still, even though he’d run her down and tried to drag her back to his master, Bex couldn’t help feeling sorry for the loyal bastard. Lys had told her all about how the Spider had still banished him to the Lowest Hells despite Trinaeous telling him the truth about Bex’s identity, which was just unfair. Even traitorous bootlickers deserved better than that. He was also on top of the pile, which made him the easiest demon to reach without straining her rope.
Since she could already feel Iggs twitching to pull her back, that turned out to be the deciding factor. Before she could change her mind, Bex wrapped her arms around Trinaeous’s comatose body and gave the rope three hard tugs.
She’d just finished the third pull when Iggs yanked them both into the air. Kirok must’ve been helping him because Bex scarcely had time to duck her head before she and her rescued war demon were hauled through the hole in the ceiling and into Lys’s arms.
“I thought you weredead!” they wailed, squeezing Bex so tight her ribs creaked. “Why do you always have to jump into every strange hole you see?”
That had been inconsiderate. Saying sorry would only make Lys angrier, though, so Bex kept her mouth shut and hugged them back instead, giving her faithful, traumatized demon gentle, reassuring pats while Iggs finished rolling her catch onto the floor.
“Whoa,” he said when he saw who she’d brought up with her. “Why’d you grab a war demon?”
“I think it was a logical choice considering we’re in the middle of a war,” General Kirok replied, leaning over to get a better look at Trinaeous’s dented face. “I know this one. He was one of my trainees a few decades ago before he went to work as a bodyguard for the favored warlock known as the Spider.”
“Not that jerk again,” Lys groaned, glaring over Bex’s shoulder. “Why’d you grab him?”
“Because he was closest,” Bex said as she untangled herself from Lys’s stranglehold.
“Big bastard, isn’t he?” Desh said, reaching out to push Iggs back. “We’ll want to give him his space. Coming back from the Lowest Hells can be a shock. I know I came out punchy.”
“Howdidthe prince get you out?” Bex asked, suddenly curious. “Can Gilgamesh’s sons walk around down there?”
“Gods no,” Desh said. “I got pulled out the same way they put me in: banishment. So long as you know a demon’s name, you can move them just about anywhere in the Hells. I understand it costs a lot more quintessence if the demon isn’t right in front of you, but paying to call them up is still a damn sight better than going down yourself. Even princes can’t set foot in the Lowest Hells without falling under its curse, or so I’ve been told.” He gave Bex a funny look. “How’d you manage it?”
“Because she’s a daughter of Ishtar, you dolt,” Lys snapped.
“That did help,” Bex admitted, pushing Lys and Desh apart before anything regrettable happened. “But the main reason I made it was because the pride demons let me through.”
Lys and Desh stopped glaring daggers at each other to gape at her.
“Pride demons?” Lys repeated in a skeptical voice.
“I thought they all turned into void demons and died,” Desh said at the same time.
“They did change,” Bex said, keeping an eye on the shadows where she’d last seen Nemini. “But they didn’t die. The whole tribe is locked up below us. That’s why the Lowest Hell is so bad. Gilgamesh used the vortex of fear and suffering caused by the loss of the pride demons’ names to create a prison no one could escape from. He’s also collecting sin with their unconscious bodies because he’s a greedy asshole who never met a demon he couldn’t exploit. There’s no bottom to his behavior, and I got so mad about that that this happened.”
She raised her left hand triumphantly. When no one reacted, she explained, “It’s glowing.”
“Is it?” Lys asked, squinting against the light of Desh’s small lantern.
“It’s a lot harder to see when it’s not pitch-black,” Bex admitted. “But it’s definitely there.” She looked at her barely-glowing fingers with a grin. “You know what this means, right? My fire’s not entirely gone! Even without my name, I’ve still got a few embers left. That’s how I convinced the panicked pride demons to let me throughandit’s how we’re going to get everyone else out as well.”
“How?” Iggs asked nervously. “I mean, it’s not exactly a bonfire.”
“It’s not,” Bex agreed, lowering her hand. “But this light still lets me navigate the Lowest Hells without getting sucked in. So long as I can do that, we can win, because Desh was right. Thereisan army down there. Banishments to the Lowest Hell must drop everyone in the same place, because I saw a huge pile of demons. If even half of them want to fight, we should have a distraction big enough to empty Heaven itself.” She turned back to Iggs. “How many guns are in that bag Felix gave you?”
“Enough to cause the guards upstairs a major issue,” Iggs said proudly, patting the ancient knapsack he hadn’t let out of his sight since they arrived.
“Great,” Bex said. “Start unloading. Kirok, you get the rope and be ready to pull me up. How many demons do you think you can lift at once?”
