“You littleshit.”
The voice was warped and twisted, but Iggs still recognized it as the Prince of Hate yanked his body—Iggs’s fully transformed, ten-foot tall wrath demon body—off the ground like a piece of trash to dangle Iggs upside down in front of him. Leander had warned him the Prince of Hate would get stronger as he took damage, but this was ridiculous. Iggs didn’t know how long he’d blacked out for, but the prince was now twice the size he’d been when they fell down here. The only reason Iggs didn’t give himself up for dead right then and there was because wrath demons didn’t give up, and because the Prince of Hate lookedterrible.
He was clearly teetering on the edge of what his body could take. His olive skin was stretched so thin over his bulging muscles that every blood vessel was visible. He hadn’t escaped the fall entirely unscathed. His right hand was still curled into a useless fist from where Iggs had crushed it earlier, and he was standing with all his weight on one leg like it hurt to use the other. But while Iggs was stoked to see that his efforts had made some kind of impact, the giant prince was definitely still in killing form as he swung Iggs over his head like a club.
“This is why I hate working in the Hells!” he roared as he slammed Iggs’s body into the dusty stone floor. “You demons are allanimalsconstantly biting the hand that feeds you! Even when you’re beaten, you never know when toquit!”
He smashed Iggs into the stone two more times before hurling his body across the bottom of the stairwell into the pipe-covered wall on the other side. If the pipes hadn’t been made of sin iron, Iggs would have torn right through them. Instead, hebounced off like a pinball, flying halfway back toward the prince before landing on his face in the crater they’d made when they came down.
“I’m going to work you for all eternity,” the prince promised as he hobbled forward on his broken foot to grab Iggs again. “I won’t let you die, I won’t let you rest. You will know nothing but slavery for the rest of your miserable existence. You’ll never have a second of mercy, not even if you beg for it on your knees!”
“That last one I actually agree with,” Iggs said, tucking a broken tooth back into place with his tongue as his body pulled itself back together. “Because wrath demons don’t kneel.”
The prince stopped to give him a sneer, and Iggs took his chance, shoving his still-healing arm into his knapsack for the ace he’d readied earlier. He had to add his other hand a second later, moving his arms hand over hand as he pulled and pulled and pulled out the nine-foot-long barrel of a 30mm rotary cannon, the biggest gun that would fit inside of Solomon’s Armory.
It was an unwieldy beast of a weapon, and Iggs hadn’t even attached the separate ammo cart yet. It was probably still in the bag somewhere, but Iggs didn’t bother looking for it because he had no intention of shooting. He’d already learned that bullets did nothing against Heaven’s monsters, but even without its hydraulic-fed loading mechanism, the rotary cannon was still six hundred and seventy pounds of titanium-and-steel construction. That basically made it a nine-foot-long metal bat, and Iggs used it accordingly, lunging to his feet the moment his broken legs were healed to slam the multi-barrel chassis straight into the overgrown prince’s knee.
It was an easy hit to see coming. If the prince had been in better condition, he almost certainly would have dodged it, but he wasn’t in better condition. His giant body was insanelypowerful, but it’d been clear to Iggs from the start that he didn’t know how to use it. That was why he’d smashed through all seven walls of Leander’s Seven Walled City instead of just going over the top, and why he couldn’t get out of the way now. His lumbering body had barely even started to move when Iggs crashed the butt of his beautifully engineered and probably insanely expensive gun into the prince’s kneecap, shattering the joint with a delightfully satisfyingcrunch.
The prince roared with pain as he staggered, but he didn’t go down. Both of his legs were injured now, but he was still on his feet, glaring at Iggs with all the hate he was named for.
“You’ll pay for that,” he promised, thrusting his not-shattered hand into the air. “Princess of Hate! Return to your master!”
The words rang out like crashing bells in the dark, but nothing answered. There was no clatter of chains, nowhooshas the white sword flew back to her master. Just a deep silence that grew even quieter as a worried expression stole over the prince’s distorted face.
“Princess of Hate,” he said again. “I command you! Come back to—”
The command turned into a scream as Iggs bashed him in the knee again. The prince did go down that time, crashing to the floor like a toppled statue.
“Princess!” he bellowed as Iggs hit him again. “Inora, I command you by your name! Come to—”
His voice cut off for the last time as Iggs smashed the giant cannon into his face. The first hit shattered the prince’s jaw. The next cracked his skull. The third caved in his cheek below the eye, but it wasn’t until the fourth that the hulking monster of a man finally stopped moving, his giant body falling still in a rapidly spreading pool of his unnatural white blood.
Iggs slumped against the gun he was using as a club, his own body heaving with the force of his ragged breaths as he braced for whatever was coming next, but his enemy didn’t move again. He was still breathing, though. Iggs was working up the strength to swing his weapon one more time and finish the job when he heard the unmistakable, blood-chillingclickof carved bone feet landing on the stone behind him.
He whirled around with a stagger, struggling to lift the enormously heavy gun to face the new enemy, but the princess, who’d just landed at the bottom of the stairs, wasn’t even looking at him. Her golden eyes were locked on the distorted body of her downed prince as she moved toward him, dragging her black chain on the floor behind her as she walked right past Iggs to kneel beside the prince’s still-breathing body.
For ten long heartbeats, she hovered over him like a kneeling statue, her golden eyes staring at the spreading pool of his white blood from behind the cage of her sin-iron muzzle. This went on for so long that Iggs was seriously considering just leaving her like that and going back upstairs to find Lys and Leander when the princess suddenly raised both her fists with a scream before bringing them down on what was left of the prince’s battered face.
What happened next was so brutal even Iggs had to look away. The Princess of Hate tore her prince’s body apart with her bare hands. Her shrieks got louder with every piece she ripped off, rising higher and higher before they suddenly stopped, leaving only a wet silence. When Iggs finally peeked out from behind the pole of his gun, the princess was standing in a white splatter that went all the way to the walls of the stairwell. There was no sign of the prince’s body left, but his princess finally looked at peace.
“I hated him most of all,” she whispered, gazing at the white blood that coated her chained hands before she slung itaway. She looked at Iggs next, and her lovely face split into a thankful smile behind the cage of her muzzle.
“You made this possible, demon,” she said in a croaking voice that sounded like it hadn’t been used in centuries. “In return for that great gift, I will kill you quickly.”
“Or you could not kill me,” Iggs suggested, backing away.
The princess shook her head. “You have to die. Everyone here must. It’s the only way to escape this hated place. I’m sure you understand.”
“I really don’t,” Iggs said, stalling hard as he scrambled to think of a way out of this, because he didn’t think beating a princess with a giant metal bat was going to work as well as it had on a prince who was already mangled. “Why don’t you explain it to me so I can—”
The rest of his bullshitting was drowned out by a high-pitched whistle. It sounded like the sound effect movies used for a charging plasma cannon, but when Iggs jerked his head up, he saw it was Leander. The former prince was standing on the spiral above them with one arm braced against the other and what appeared to be a miniature black hole floating in front of his palm. His mouth was moving like he was speaking very quickly, but Iggs couldn’t hear a word. Whatever it was must have taken all Leander’s concentration because the prince was sweating buckets. When he finally said something loud enough for Iggs to hear, though, his voice was steady and strong as steel.
“Royal Verse Fifteen,” he said as he aimed the crackling black ball at the princess. “Heavenly King’s Eternal Banishment.”
The whistling sound grew louder with every word, but when Leander’s spell finished, it ended with apop. The black hole vanished at the same time, flickering out from in front of the prince’s palms like a snuffed candle. Iggs was still wondering what all of that was supposed to do when he realized the princesswas gone. Not crushed, not blasted into bits. She was simply gone the same way the orb was, and in the place where she’d been standing lay a woman’s severed hand.
“Holy Ishtar,” Iggs muttered, staggering away from the empty place where the princess had been. “What in the Hells wasthat? And why didn’t you do itbefore?”
