That was news to Adrian. He’d been all over the palace today, and he hadn’t seen a single construct. The real question on his mind, though, was “Does this mean the Hells are short-staffed?”
“Of course not,” the prince huffed. “Golems are convenient because they don’t need sleep and never talk back, but we ran this place using nothing but war demons for eons.”
He sneered over his shoulder at Adrian. “I know that’s disappointing news for someone who used to be the Coward Queen’s pet witch, but I’d advise you to stay on task and not get any funny ideas. Just because Father can bring you back from the dead doesn’t mean you’ll enjoy the trip.”
“HowdoesGilgamesh bring his princes back?” Adrian asked, completely ignoring the threat.
“Call him ‘Father’,” the older prince ordered. “And he’s able to bring us back because he’s the greatest sorcerer who ever lived. There’s nothing he can’t do, but that also means there’s nothing hewon’tdo if you make him angry, so I advise youstop talking before you draw his attention.”
Adrian smirked at the prince’s golden back. “You’re really afraid of him, aren’t you?”
“Everyone’s afraid of the Eternal King,” Prince Demetrios replied as he motioned for the war demons to start closing the doors they’d just pushed open. “Usefulness won’t save you, either, so don’t think you’re safe just because you’re his new favorite. Just ask that suck-up Alexander how quick Father is to blast his sons to bits because he knows he can just put us back together.”
The prince’s normally sneering voice was legitimately grim by the end, and Adrian swallowed. He wanted to ask more—despite phrasing everything as an insult, Demetrios had given him more actual answers than anyone else since he’d arrived here—but the prince was stomping faster now, dragged forward by his mad princess as she scrambled down yet another enormous set of stairs.
Adrian had to bite back a groan when he saw them. No wonder the prince was so desperate to get teleportation back. Going by what he’d seen today, Adrian was convinced the afterlife was fifty percent stairs by volume.
At least these stairs looked different than the endless towers he’d climbed earlier. The moment they passed through the sin-iron doors, the relentless white of Heaven was replaced by a black stone tunnel going down in a spiral. The stairs themselves were wide with a groove worn in the middle by thousands of years of feet. The only light came from torches on the walls that burned with a deep, reddish-orange glow that reminded Adrian of the real Bex’s eyes. Unfortunately, the light they shed was so bad he could barely see the stairs under his feet, and he couldn’t tell where they were going at all. Thanks to the hallway’s spiral, Adrian could no longer see the doors to Heaven behind them or anything that lay ahead. Just darkness pierced by little embers of red and the soft clomp of war-demon hooves as they carried sin iron up by the armful.
“Do they transport everything by hand?” Adrian whispered.
“How else would they do it?” Prince Demetrios replied at normal volume. “We’re not going to build them a conveyor. An idle slave is a problem slave. You have to keep them working every hour of the day or else they get ideas.”
The war demons walking past them definitely looked overworked. Their four-armed bodies still gleamed like polished bronze, but their eyes were dark and downtrodden. They moved surprisingly quietly, their hoofed feet falling as soft as leaves on the worn stone. The prince, by contrast, went down the stairs like a dropped metal cup, his armor clattering offensively loudly down the long, curved tunnel.
“How much longer until we reach the Hells?” Adrian asked when his ears couldn’t take the noise anymore.
“We’re already there,” the prince replied. “This is the central stair that runs through Upper Hell where the war demons live. It’s enclosed to keep the fumes from the sin-iron foundries from leaking into Heaven and poisoning our air.”
Adrian blanched. “What about the war demons’ air?”
“What about it?” Demetrios asked, shooting a smug glance over his shoulder as he clattered down another few steps to a black wall Adrian hadn’t even noticed in the dark.
This turned out to be another sin-iron door that covered the entire width of the expansive staircase. There was a small opening on the side that the line of war demons was transporting sin iron through, but once again, Demetrios made them all stop and open the whole thing for him. It was absolutely ridiculous and a waste of everyone’s time, but at least it gave Adrian a chance to gawk at what lay below.
The first half of the stairwell had been enclosed to keep out the smog, but the part below them was an open spiral going down through the middle of what appeared to be a fortified stone tower. The walls were so dark, Adrian’s first thought was that the whole thing was made of sin iron. When they finally made it through the door, though, he realized the stone here was just stained from eons of black smoke.
Everythingwas smoky. There must have been sorcery etched into the door they’d just gone through because while the air in the tunnel had been the same as it was up in Heaven, the air on this side was a toxic miasma of ash, smog, and what smelled like burning sin iron. The walls of the tower were still enclosed, so he couldn’t actually see the forges, but he could hear the bang of hammers and the sizzle of molten metal through the doors at the tower’s base, which were currently propped open so the line of sin-iron-carrying demons could keep moving.
Other than that, the tower was empty, though it clearly hadn’t been intended to stay that way. The outside of the spiral staircase ran along the tower wall, but inside of the spiral was an overlapping fortress of covered galleries where archers could stand and shoot down the tower’s open center. This arrangement meant that anyone coming up from belowwouldn’t just have to do so under constant fire, they’d also have to go behind the soldiers’ positions to climb the tower. The shooting galleries even had walls that could be swung out to block the staircase, turning every firing position into a potential chokepoint. It was a lot of overlapping security for a place that had supposedly never had a rebellion, and seeing it filled Adrian with hope.
“Have you ever had to use this tower?”
“Never,” Demetrios replied, walking at an angle with his princess’s chain wrapped around both arms to keep her from pulling him down the stairs. “Leander was a lovesick fool, but he ran a tight ship. This stairwell used to be an office like the one in the Middle Hells below, but then the Coward Queen had a particularly destructive few decades, and the slave population started getting ideas. Leander couldn’t have that, so he had this tower remodeled into a fortress. Just knowing what awaited them was enough to crush any whispers of rebellion, and his record continued to be unblemished.”
The prince shook his head. “It’s such a damn waste. Leander was a clever strategist and the best sorcerer of us all. He could’ve challenged Alexander for the position of Crown Prince, but he never could get his loyalties straight, so he ended up rotting down here.”
“Where is he now?” Adrian asked, trying not to sound too curious.
“Only Father knows that,” Demetrios replied, then he frowned. “His princess was playing the harp at our last family dinner, though, so I doubt he’s still alive.” He glanced at the ivory figure thrashing at the end of his chain. “Perhaps I should put in for an upgrade.”
Adrian’s princess growled at that, making him jump. She’d been uncharacteristically silent since they’d entered the Hells, but she seemed to take personal offense at Demetrios’ssuggestion that he trade in his princess. Adrian didn’t know if she was mad over the insult to her sister or the general idea that princesses were interchangeable, but she was looking very Princess of Wrath by the time they reached the fortress tower’s base.
“This is the main floor of the Hell of War,” Demetrios announced, tilting his head at the sooty, reinforced doors that now had a backup of war demons waiting with sin iron in their arms since no one apparently wanted to walk up the tower’s narrow stairs while two princes were coming down. “Pleasesay the thing you’re looking for is here. I’d like to eat dinner sometime this century.”
Adrian already knew it wasn’t, but he made a show of checking his finding spell before he shook his head.
“Farther down, I’m afraid,” he said as he returned the cat to his pocket. “One, maybe two levels?”
