Page 3 of Hell Sent

They were mortals.Azreth stared at them in disbelief.

The taller of the two lifted his chin, glaring out at Azreth imperiously. “You. Come here.” He said it like an order. Awfully presumptuous, considering Azreth could probably crush him with one hand. The man thought he was safe behind whatever magic he’d used to open the window.

He was not the first demon to be summoned by a greedy mortal. Naturally small and fragile, mortals lusted for power the way demons hungered for lust. Their mages only reached across the planes into the hells when they wished to enslave a demon.

That was what he’d heard. But he had never been so lucky as to see it happen. This was the sort of opportunity that came only once in a lifetime.

He walked closer. The mortals shifted, practically vibrating with excitement and fear. Avarice shone in their eyes as he stopped in front of the window.

“Good,” the taller one said, approving of his obedience.

The shorter man wore a plain black robe and was shaved bald. But the taller one wore elaborate clothing with metal and fur details and many different colors of thread. His long hair was perfectly cleaned and combed, smoothed with oils or tonics. Azreth wondered if he was someone of high status, or if all mortals had the time and means for such frivolous things. Maybe they were all this arrogant, too.

Both of them were pale and small. Frail. Breakable.

“I have an offer to make you, demon,” the taller man said. “Serve me here in the mortal realm, and I will ensure you never go hungry. Would you like that? To have unfettered access to an entire plane of mortals? Come to me, and you can kill and feed to your black heart’s content.”

They thought they were clever. And they thought he was an imbecile.

They were right about one thing: he wanted them. How could anyone resist the opportunity to go to a plane where emotion ran free and wild, waiting to be devoured? It was a thing demons dreamed of.

The only problem was that mortals were clever about their summonings. There would be a cage waiting on the other side of the portal. That was how mortals worked. They summoned demons to trap them and force them into service—until the demon found a way to escape their servitude, at least.

Azreth looked around at the stark landscape—his awful home. He looked downstream, where Nariel had sunk beneath the flames of the river. He thought about the times he’d starved for weeks, the surprise attacks by other demons in the night, having to lie on his back and grit his teeth through feedings, and all the betrayals from kin he’d wished he could trust.

What was hell if not one enormous cage?

Perhaps even a life in a mortal’s cage would be better than a life in the hells. Or at least, it couldn’t be worse.

After all, demons were ageless and infinite. He could wait a long, long time for his freedom.

The taller mortal glanced over at the shorter one. “Does it understand? Perhaps they don’t know our language.”

Azreth stepped forward. The mortals started and backed away as he climbed into the window.

Two

The whistling of air and magic being squeezed through too little space increased as he entered the portal, and wind rushed in his ears. Somehow, even as he climbed inside, the mortals on the other side didn’t get any closer. As he passed through the entrance, the portal expanded, turning into a long corridor in front of him. The walls were both featureless white and filled with flashes of color, a contradiction he couldn’t explain, and he could not be sure whether they were collapsing in on him or unfolding to become larger.He sensed infinity expanding on every side of him, as if he were standing at the edge of a thousand cliffs, falling past a million skies. He pushed onward, even though the ground had disappeared beneath him and he couldn’t feel his legs.

Abruptly, the infinite space shrank again, and he burst through the window, face down onto a cold, stone floor. The portal snapped shut behind him.

After the howling of the tunnel between planes, the quiet of this place was deafening. Soft footsteps rushed around. Someone was chanting.

“Hurry up,” hissed a familiar voice. The arrogant mortal.

As Azreth looked up to take in his new surroundings, magic came to life around him. The chanting of the shorter mortal had activated a spell. Walls of magic rose up around him, enclosing him in a small cell: the cage he’d been expecting.

He was inside a dark, cavernous room made of stone. Perhaps it was underground, for there were no windows. It was empty except for the two mortals and himself, as if it existed only to hold him.He wrinkled his nose. Inhaling the air here was like eating meat that had gone cold—slimy and stale and unpleasant. He wondered if all of the mortal plane had this scent, or if it was just this room.

His magical cage was a transparent barrier of solid magic, not unlike the spell he used for his false arm—which was gone. He glanced down at his shoulder. He’d lost concentration on the spell when he’d traveled through the portal, and he didn’t have the magic to expend on it now, anyway.

It didn’t matter. He wouldn’t need to fight any of his own kind here. He could face humans just as easily with one arm as he could with two. With mortals, it was their minds that were dangerous, not their bodies.

The taller mortal stepped closer to the barrier. “I am Lord Nirlan Han-gal. I am your master.”

Azreth drove his fist into the barrier. The mortals flinched.

It felt like punching air, but there was a sharpbangas the magic stopped him from passing through. He tried several more times for good measure, but it had no effect on the barrier. He hadn’t thought it would work, but it would have been foolish not to try, wouldn’t it?

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