CHAPTER ONE

I am not dead–because I cannot die.

These eight words churned through Avis’ mind as the veil of darkness parted to allow some remnants of his recent history to seep into his pain-numbed consciousness.

There was a time, when he had considered that to be a blessing. To live, regardless of circumstance. But, as all who would consider themselves above such things learn sooner or later, there are prices to be paid, and masters to answer to. The pain of his twisted frame along with the agony of what once was, caused his mouth to open and filled his still tortured mind and body with silent screams.

As he lifted his left hand weakly, he realised something about his current circumstances had changed. Despite the pain that continued to course through his battered and torn frame, he had the ability to move. At some point, the chains of ice and fire had been removed and he was now lying flat, as opposed to hanging by muscle tissue.

Avis rolled on to his side to alleviate the worst of the pulsing wounds–that which had penetrated his ribs from behind and had twisted until one of his lungs had been torn from its housing. They had been merciless. Worse than any mortal tale could ever imagine. But then, no mortal had ever dared what he had done. No mortal would be so foolish. No god would be either—now, or ever again. He had served his purpose in a multitude of ways. He had been made an example of.

It was some time before he found the strength to draw apart his swollen eyelids. It had been a long time since he had been able to see anything with any amount of clarity. He couldn’t remember the number of times his eyes had been gouged out over the last two years, only to be returned when his captors sent him to The Walk to recover (if it could be called recovery) which permitted the torment to start all over again. Mortals feared this place more than anywhere else in their perceived universe. They feared each level and sub-level for different reasons. Yet, at the height of their fears, they still had no idea. At best, a mortal only dealt with a single level–the worst of their combined crimes. He on the other hand, had been forced to endure every sub-level of every level and every torment of this realm-forsaken place. He never realised until then that the Seven Deadly Sins and their subsequent punishments applied to his kind. It never had before.

In the distance, he saw an outline of a rich, deep maroon colour. Although its shape was elusive, it was large, moving and rolling in silent unison with something else that subtly controlled its movements. The shadows that rippled across it faded in with the richness of the light that streamed in behind it. He related to that something. Whatever it was. He had danced many a tune since his capture and done many a thing at his masters’ whims, if only to end the dance for a brief moment or two.

Oh, how his sombre twin brother would laugh if he had been there. For the first time since their birth, he would have laughed. And Avis, the once proud Mystallian God of Life, would hang his head low and have nothing to say in his defence.

As the blur began to leave his vision, he saw a vague outline of a curtain drifting on the light morning breeze, and groaned inwardly, as he had played this game before too. Many a time. Behind the curtain, he saw the glint of polished glass, and the marbled balcony he knew so well. He had made many monumental decisions on the real version of that balcony that overlooked his courtyard. It was the one place he could find refuge, when his family wanted the ridiculous and expected him to comply.

At least, it had been.

Now, he feared it, with all his heart. He had played this game and he knew the outcome. Different demons. Different positions. All ending the same way. ‘No,’ he wanted his blistered lips to whimper to those who stood in the shadows observing, even as his eyes creased with tears that would not fall. ‘Not this again. Anything but this again.’

But this was the game, and he knew it well. They would not heed his pleas, even if he were in a position to speak them aloud. They never had in the past. The most degrading of all his punishments was the one that began with his life before his capture. The sooner he played his part, the sooner they would move on to more conventional tortures. He had done this before-he could do it again. Ironically, this was the punishment that hurt nothing but his pride.

He forced himself on to one elbow, watching the satin sheets slip to his waist. The mattress beneath him was as plush and full as he remembered it, surrounding his body with a blanket of warmth and comfort. Not so long ago he had accepted that comfort as his celestial right. He would wake, snap his fingers, and servants of every design would jump to his whim. Not so long ago this first scene of the day was very satisfying. So much could happen to change one’s perspective in a very short period of time. So much indeed.

Still, like a perfectly rehearsed play, he knew his part. He knew they enjoyed watching it—he knew he had earned their contempt—and he knew most importantly of all he had no choice.

Focusing all his concentration on the one action, he ground his teeth and attempted to sit up in bed. But he barely lifted his weight from the mattress before his body’s pain threshold exploded in defiance and the room around him spun. His mouth flew open as the scream raced to the back of his throat, but no sound ventured beyond that point. All strength deserted him and his supporting arm collapsed, dropping him back to the bed in a panting heap.

For a long time, he lay there, staring at the silk curtain ceiling of his bed. This was not right. His captors had always healed him completely before forcing him through this. They wanted him to know that even at the pinnacle of his personal abilities he still meant nothing to them. They had wanted him to remember every degrading moment–without a single hint of previous discomfort to fog the memory.

Yet his wounds had not healed. They had left him injured. Why?

Once over the initial shock, a sound finally penetrated the rush of blood to his ears. It was a voice—a woman’s voice—one he hadn’t heard in a long time. It had to be years. Surely it had to be years. He had been here for years … hadn’t he?

Grinding his teeth again, he ordered himself to focus. He was by no means a fool, but he had to make sense of this. In all that time, his captors had never put her image in the punishment with him. She was sacred to them—she was Hellion Highborn. She was his ex-wife.

“Clrs?” he burbled, forcing his scorched tongue to form the word, despite the shaft of pain that shot through his throat from the effort. He pawed at his covers, not trusting his waning strength to support his weight after his last effort. He had not thought of her in a long time. With scarred knuckles, he pushed his way free of the satin sheets and rolled over the edge of the bed, falling the short distance on to the carpeted ground with an echoing, timber based thud. A heartfelt groan rocketed to his brain as he landed on fleshless knees and fell to his side in a heap.

Still, no one came. No one entered the scene to poke, prod, or taunt him. He heard voices being raised in the next room and rolled on to his stomach, clawing his way across the carpeted floors, never noticing before how thick each strand was and how painful they could be when they made contact with his tortured body. But pain was something he had become accustomed to, thus they were forever thinking of new ways to inflict it. He was under no delusions that this was yet another one–even if something buried deep inside his subconscious insisted they would never use Clarise’s image like this.

He reached the edge of the open doorway and looked past into what should have been his private sitting room. Yet instead of polished marble floors, plush ochre lounge seats with high rounded backs and intricately carved timber tables and benches, he beheld a sight that had more in common with a cave. The bouldered walls and ceilings were aglow with an undefined source of internal illumination, the heat from which caused Avis’ already charred skin to prickle, even from the safety of the doorway. More shapeless rocks made up a crude altar-like table at one end. There were no furnishings as such, no great tapestries or drink cabinets, no thick exotic rugs to take the chill from the flawless marble floors. In fact, there was no marble either. The ground was packed until it had the same dull hardness that made up every other surface in the room. In the walls on either side of him, he saw two deep crevices, each about the depth of a forearm’s length, running the length of the room, but otherwise nothing noteworthy.

However, it wasn’t the room that absorbed his attention. His eyes, still gazing at ground level, fell upon the flattened, spade-like ebony tail, and the lower quarters of the reverse standing legs that, with the aid of the tail, balanced the body mass on two tri-taloned feet. The tail was twitching angrily.

“I will not accept this from you, Cora,” the female demon said.

Somewhere between the demoness and the wall, Avis heard the thump of a taloned heel as it struck the compacted ground in frustration. “But you know why I want nothing to do with him, mother!” a young voice hissed, full of demonic rage. Her young leather wings expanded to their full height until Avis could see them around his own ex-wife’s plated sides. “It is not fair!”

The tempo of Clarise’s thumping tail increased. “I will not tolerate that tone of voice from you either, young lady,” she said, in her usual, calm way, despite the movement of her tail. “And I would advise you not to stamp your feet at me again, unless you want to feel the flat of my tail on yours.”

Avis heard the repetitive clack of the young demoness’ mandibles as she fought to keep her temper under control, until finally, she hissed in anger and stalked from the room. “Do not embarrass me, Cora,” Her mother warned the empty space where Cora had been. “You are Hellion Highborn. Above all else—remember that.”

Avis dragged his weight to one side, and used the timber architrave between the rooms to drag himself partially on to his buttocks. Pride was no longer something he had in abundance.

“Mother, why is Cora so mad?” a second demoness asked. Avis had completely missed her in his initial scan of the room. She was lying inside the crevice beside her mother’s head with only her legs and tail protruding. Her young frame, like that of her mother’s, was covered in sharp strong, ebony plating and tucked in behind her Avis could just make out the vague outline of equally dark reptilian wings. In the skull of the girl, Avis saw eyeless recesses with a finger of unattached flame where her eyes should have been, and her beak, when she spoke, opened in three directions.

The elder of the two sighed and turned to her young offspring. “Cora is angry because she has too much of your father’s blood in her veins to allow herself to forgive him.”

Avis nearly choked at those words. He only had one daughter to his knowledge, and his ex-wife had gone out of her way to hide their demonic nature from him. The second must have happened when he …

A torrential wave of guilt swept over Avis. No wonder the Hellion Highborn had hunted him down with such unbridled fury. Yes, he had been drinking rather heavily at the time of their separation, but he’d only done what he had afterwards to drive her away. It looks as if he had succeeded better than his worst nightmare.

“Forgive him for what, mother?”

“He did something very bad a very long time ago, before he went away, and Cora has never forgiven him for it.”

His shame escalated with Clarise’s borderline truth. She could have damned him in the girl’s young eyes. No—she should have damned him—damned him the way both their families had, by leaving him to suffer eternally at the hands of Hell’s masters: a fate he had earned with his own callous actions.

When the child’s head tilted and she clicked her mandibles, Clarise quickly added, “It has nothing to do with you, sweetheart. Your father is a very good god, and a very powerful god, and you should be very proud to have him as your father.”

That was a blatant lie. He’d lost all interest in what was ‘good’ and ‘bad’ eons ago. The only thing he’d concerned himself with for a long time was his own raging desires, and his determination to make his wife and child … children, he reminded himself, suffer for the inconvenience of being in his way.

“I am, mother. But why did he go away for so long?”

“He did not leave us deliberately, Columbine. He had to go away, but he is back now and we should be thankful for that.”

“Why is he hurt so bad?”

“He was captured by some very dangerous people who did some very mean things to him.”

For Avis, that was the last straw.

“Tell -r trufe’,” he slurred through his broken jaw as he clutched the architrave, determined to make himself heard. Clarise’s reasons may have been honourable, but the child had the right to know and if she wasn’t told now, someone in the very near future would correct her delusion out of sheer spite for him. He buried his fingers into the joints of the timber and attempted to balance himself without the strength to succeed.

Clarise swivelled on her rear left toe and gasped. “Avis!” she scolded, leaping into the air and flying the short distance between them. In a single fluid movement, she had him scooped off the ground and back into the replica of their bedroom. “You should not have left the bed, beloved.”

“T’ll -r!” Avis insisted, clutching the cartilage of her chest plate. His eyes burned with the conviction he longed to express, if only his broken body would allow it. “T’ll -r!”

“Later,” Clarise promised, as she drew back the covers that Avis had abandoned with such indifference before easing him back on to the bed. She then drew the covers around him, and ran a taloned claw down his cheek. “You must get well first, beloved.”

Avis looked up at her. This was not the form that he had bedded, all those years ago. This was her natural form. He had never liked it—believing it inferior to his own. Dark, impenetrable plates that over-locked the body joints and huge demonic wings that swayed with her every movement were the last thing Avis had wanted to see at the time. He had banished it totally in his presence and that decree brooked no exceptions. The one time she had made the mistake and ventured beyond her quarters looking like this, she had paid for it with the flat of his hand and every curse he could rally.

How fucking idiotic he had been.

Then, as her exact wording penetrated his thoughts, he looked up at her in wonderment. Beloved? After everything he had done to her—their children? He opened his mouth with great difficulty. “… c’n y’shtill …?”

Clarise’s dark carapace melted and warped before his eyes. The ebony plates lowered to her bust-line and blossomed almost as if they were alive into a floral backless dress, contrasting beautifully with the snow-white Mystallian skin of her shoulders, neck and arms. Her legs were hidden within the folds of the dress that flowed to the floor and the talon that stroked his face melted away into a slender, perfectly manicured nail, on an even more perfect finger. But, as always, it was her eyes that captured Avis’ desire for conquest. In this form, Clarise had the most beautiful golden eyes he had seen on any female creature, and the long jet-black hair that normally flowed to the middle of her back was rolled in a loose bun at the base of her neck with a matching black petalled flower protruding from the centre.

Avis lay there, absorbing the sight of her. ‘Fool’ didn’t even begin to cover the way he felt about himself at that moment. He’d had in his possession the kind of wife most men of any persuasion dreamed of—slim, beautiful, powerful, good bloodlines, the ability and willingness to manipulate her shape to fulfil any of his wildest fantasies and most importantly, she was completely and hopelessly obedient to him. Hellion Highborns were the most sought-after females by any pantheon, and Clarise was one of the best they had to offer. And he had recklessly thrown her away.

As if seeing his thoughts, she drifted her arm down to his, and rested one of her two marriage bracers over his. The gold in their wedding bands matched that of her eyes. “I married you for life, beloved. I am yours, body and soul, and when you fully recover you will then decide what is best to tell our children. But for now, you must gather your strength, for you have one last journey to undertake.”

Avis’ brow creased and he whimpered, not certain he liked the sound of that at all. He was in no condition to undertake any kind of journey. He couldn’t even make it out of that room, and he had really tried.

“Columbine,” Clarise called, twisting side on towards the doorway.

The small, petite demoness from the crevice appeared moments later, with her wings folded in below her shoulder-line and her head tilted to one side. “Yes, mother?”

“Have Diviten see to it that you are made presentable, then go to your studies.”

“Yes, mother.” The demoness bowed with all the grace that came of the Highborn ladies, then she rose and disappeared from the doorway.

Clarise waited a few minutes before raising her hands and clapping sharply, twice.

Two gangly creatures materialised in the doorway. They were almost reptilian, with their leathery hides and their elongated limbs that stretched out the full length of their prone bodies, except that their heads were extremely small, almost infantile and covered with fur. Two sets of wolf-like ears twitched and their eyes glistened with the constantly shifting blood. The proportions were all extraordinary, but Avis knew that nothing in this realm was, as it seemed. “Milady,” they rasped as one, bowing their miniscule fore-heads to the ground.

Clarise rose from the bed, clasping Avis’ hand in hers and squeezing it slightly to settle his fear as she faced the kneeling servants squarely. “Your Lord is now awake and his injuries must be seen to.” Without releasing his hand, she added, “The sooner he has journeyed through The Walk, the sooner he will truly begin to heal.”

Avis’ mouth opened in pure terror as the two creatures came forward and lifted him from the bed. No! By the realm, No … No! He shook his head and tried to push away their helping hands. No! He would heal! He would heal all by himself! He didn’t need The Walk! His panic enabled him to contact their arms several times, and he twisted desperately as they lifted him onto his unwilling feet. “No!” His lips finally managed to squeal, as he lowered his centre of gravity and dragged his feet against the ground. “No!”

“Wait,” Clarise commanded. The two demons froze, allowing their lady to step in front of them. She took her husband’s trembling face with both hands and pressed her forehead into his. “Calm yourself, my love,” she crooned, as his heart hammered and his voice ebbed through his blistered lips in audible whimpers. “The Walk will heal you. Nothing more.”

If only Avis could cry. Oh, how the tears would have flowed at that moment.

Despite Clarise’s reassurances to the contrary, Avis continued to whimper and struggle as her servants assisted him through the rock corridors that made up the bulk of the Highborn Hellion Marital Chambers. There were no torches to light the way—as the walls continued with that maddening internal illumination. He didn’t want to go back out there. Not amongst the Damned! Let me stay! I’ll do whatever you say, just don’t make me go out there again! He wanted to plead, his panic surging with each step they took towards that dreaded place. Don’t!

Clarise couldn’t have known what was really involved with The Walk. Unlike the other demons that inhabited this feral realm, his ex-wife didn’t possess a single sadistic attribute in her entire being. If only he could utter the words to make her realise why he was resisting: why the nine levels of Hell were so unbearable for outsiders to endure and that once tortured, even for a few minutes, a damned individual would do anything to escape it.

The Highborn Hellions protected their ladies from the truth of life—protected them from everything—including themselves. They were the perfect breed of females and existed for one purpose only: to bow to the will of the men in their lives. From the moment of their anointment they were trained in the art of pleasing their eventual husbands. Nothing else mattered to them. Not even the choice of husband was left to the ladies themselves. If the lords of other realms wanted a Hellion Highborn lady as a bride, they must first petition the father of the female, and only once the suitor could prove his worthiness would a marriage then be arranged. The lady’s wishes were never an issue, although in Clarise’s case, Avis was far from the ideal choice they had wanted for her. At the time, Avis had never approached Clarise’s father for her hand. The thought never entered his head, because he had never wanted a wife—subservient or otherwise. Clarise was the challenge of the time—nothing more. He had managed to seduce women from all walks of the celestial pantheons over the eons, and every god knew the greatest challenge of all was to see if anyone could coerce one of the Highborn Ladies to break with their near-psychotically pretentious upbringing and venture to their bed out of wedlock. And not just any one. Lady Clarise, eldest unmarried daughter of Lord Belial, supreme ruler of all Chaos.

He probably would have gotten away with it too–if she hadn’t fallen pregnant. That mistake and those that followed were what he had been paying for with every minute he had been out there—amongst the Damned. But he had paid for his indiscretion and heavy-handedness thereafter in full. Surely he had. Clarise had only been with him for three, maybe four months at best before returning to Hell in tears with their newborn daughter, whereas he had been here for … years? Yes … yes it was years. That child of theirs … what was her name again? Well, whatever it was, she was older now. And the other one, the one he didn’t even know about, she was no babe either. It had to be years.

Although he continued to slide his feet hopelessly in the opposite direction, Avis kept his eyes downcast all the way and never once lifted them to gaze upon the faces of those that moved around them. It was a lesson he had endured early in the Damned Levels. He was no longer a god worthy of being in the same company as those that dwelled here. He was nothing. He was less than nothing. Nothing was free.

A furred paw appeared around his throat from nowhere, and the smoke-filled, feral growl that followed caused Clarise’s two servants to release him with a subservient jerk as they bowed to the ground. The pawed hand had no difficulty in suspending Avis’ body in midair.

Avis knew not to resist in any way—resistance always brought more pain. Better to accept in silence, than cry out and make yourself a target. His hands hung limply at his sides, accepting the will of his Hellion masters. “You would not be defying the wishes of your betters now would you, slae-el?” a male voice snarled, breathing heavy smoke into his face. Without a word to his defence, Avis’ head rolled numbly from side to side in a negative manner between the thumb and forefingers of the one who held him. No, he wouldn’t. He knew better.

“Ludovic, unhand him at once!” Clarise commanded.

That smoky breath moved away from Avis’ face. “Clarise, you have embarrassed our House enough with your despicably shameful actions of late. Despite your claim to this wretch, I forbid you to compound the problem any further. Return to the Ladies’ quarters immediately,” the demon lord commanded, making a general sweep towards the far entrance at the other end of the stone corridor.

If Avis were not her husband, he had no doubt Clarise would have bowed to the will of her younger brother and left them as commanded. But Avis was her husband, and it was something that the Highborn Hellion males were not happy about.

“My conduct is no longer under scrutiny, brother, and I am within my rights to undertake these actions without House repercussions. Avis is my husband, and the father of my children, and I have already invoked marital rights before the High Court where his safety is concerned. By Hellion Law I am entitled to safeguard him and defend him with my life if necessary.”

“He is unworthy of such devotion!” Ludovic spewed, shaking Avis’ lifeless form to emphasise his point. Avis barely groaned.

“That decision is not yours to make, Ludovic. He is my husband, and I am within my rights to defend him as such. His worthiness or lack thereof is no longer an issue either. Only your compliance with our father’s laws.”

Instead of being released, Avis felt his entire throat constrict as Ludovic’s great paw tightened sharply and his mouth flew open in reflex. But then it was gone, and he was dropped with disgust to the ground. Lying on his side, Avis’ silent gaze moved from his brother-by-marriage’s feet to his irate face. Unlike Clarise, who balanced on reverse bending tri-taloned claws in her natural form, Ludovic’s feet consisted of their father’s cloven hooves. His legs bore the same exterior ebony plating as his sister, however his hips thinned into smaller scale-like pieces of cartilage. A tail roughly the thickness of Avis’ thumb and forefinger whipped ferociously in and around his legs as he battled to understand his sister’s motives. Thick, tanned fur covered his upper body like a carpet, extending to his paw-like claws that were presently fisted against his hip joints. His triangular earflaps were flattened against his skull and the lips of his muzzle were curled to expose his glistening canines. He was the most animal-like of all Belial’s children, and in the dark he might have easily been mistaken for one, if he didn’t bear the same flame filled, eyeless recesses that Avis had seen minutes before on his own younger offspring.

Furious beyond belief, Ludovic rolled his head in a wide, disbelieving arc, and caught sight of Avis staring up at him from the floor. Before Avis could avert them, the demon lord lashed a hoof at the cowering god, collecting him squarely in the face – not enough to knock him out, but enough to break his nose and cheekbone. “Get your eyes back to the ground before I claw them out of your realm-damned head!” he bellowed.

Stars swam through Avis’ vision as he sharply twisted himself into the ground at Ludovic’s feet, covering his head with one arm to hide it from Ludovic’s view.

“Ludovic!” Clarise cried. Avis then heard a combined shuffle of hooves and Mystallian shoes until he felt the soft fabric of her dress-hem drape across his body and he caught the scent so strong it was more like a taste of his ex-wife’s …wife’s distinctive lavender perfume. He didn’t dare raise his eyes again. “Your language and actions are appalling! Leave my presence, if you cannot behave in a manner befitting your bloodline,” she commanded.

Avis heard Ludovic’s sharp intake, but instead of speaking, the demon lord turned and stalked away.

Long after the click of Ludovic’s hooves on the stone floor became a distant echo, Avis felt a Mystallian hand touch him on the shoulder and he cringed with a whimper, curling himself into a foetal position. “Be at ease, beloved,” Clarise whispered. “They will come to terms with what must be. They must.” He felt her hand on his chin and trembled. “Shhh,” she crooned, when he made an effort to speak. “Everything will be alright. Once you have healed in body, then you will heal in the mind. You are a god, Avis. An established supreme god in one of the most formidable realms in existence. In time, you will remember what that means, and then you will not hide your face any more.”

Avis allowed her to turn his face towards her. How honestly she meant that. He could hear the overwhelming sincerity in her voice and her eyes shone with the unconditional devotion her kind was renowned for. Why? Why, oh, why had he mistreated her? And why was she being so exceptionally forgiving now? He certainly wouldn’t have been even if it had been years since his incarceration. Had their roles been reversed, he would have been the one to kick her in the nose and not think twice about it.

At Clarise’s silent gesture, her two servants came forward and once again lifted Avis to his feet. This time, he offered no resistance. He had already resigned himself to The Walk. Ludovic’s arrival and consequential actions had only reiterated the Hellions’ ownership of him.

They carried him past the conservatorium where Avis had made his first advance on Clarise, so long ago and down a long corridor. Avis knew this corridor. He knew it, even though the last time he had laid eyes on it he had swaggered through it laughing loudly with an entourage of grovelling servants in tow as Belial’s personal guest. This was the corridor that connected the private chambers of all the Hellion Highborn to the High Court of Hell where all visitors were greeted and assessed by the Lords of Chaos. Unless they were seeking a bride, very few celestials of other pantheons bothered to make the journey through Chaos to meet with Belial and his sons. There was little point. Belial usually knew his mind before any communication could be entered into, and his sons were dedicated to upholding the will of their father. Despite the nature of what was here, never before had Avis seen a more unified family committed with such singular clarity. Combined with its ancient age and subsequent size, Chaos was the single most powerful realm in the Known Realms. Lord Belial was too powerful, and that show of superfluous power made most visiting celestials very nervous.

________

CHAPTER TWO

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