Chapter 332: Hell (3)

The White Snowfield was a realm so warped that calling Hell kinder did not feel like a joke. In a land like that, the thought arose of how the barbarians had endured long enough to be called a people rather than a memory. Ketal answered without ornament.

“Barbarians are stubbornly resilient,” he said. “Ordinary wounds don’t claim us, and even deep ones heal faster than they should.”

“I know that much,” the Tower Master replied. He had studied the barbarians’ regenerative power with a scholar’s relentless curiosity. “I’ve seen one survive with a pierced heart, with limbs hanging by threads, even with a body torn from shoulder to hip—and not just survive, but heal.”

He paused and rubbed at his jaw.

“No, heal is not the right word. It is less regeneration than reversal. It is not a common strength,” the Tower Master continued.

Ketal shrugged, as if to say there were worse things to argue about.

“It’s a mix of things,” he said. “The short of it is that we do not die easily.”

Helia listened with the stillness of a priest at a bedside.

“According to what I have heard from the Tower Master,” she said, choosing her words with care, “the barbarians of the White Snowfield think in a way that is very... direct.”

“You can say ignorant,” Ketal answered, and his smile did not reach his eyes. “As you say, even those stubborn ones drop like flies inside the White Snowfield.”

The contradiction was plain. A human child spent years learning to walk without falling, and longer still learning to fight. For a soldier to be deemed worthy of the line, twenty years was a modest span. No matter how exceptional the barbarian blood, the thought arose of how they could have kept a tribe alive in a place like that.

Ketal offered a different sort of answer.

“There is nothing to do inside,” he said. “Not much to enjoy.”

If there were no games, people would invent other ways to pass the time.

“They don’t understand the need for contraception,” Ketal said, his tone flat and impartial. “So they bear many children. The carrying time is short, and they grow quickly.”

He did not soften it. Inside the White Snowfield, a pregnancy ran its course in a single month. Within five years, a child was sturdy enough to matter in a fight. That, more than any legend about heroism, was why the barbarian clans had not vanished when Ketal was still a name from nowhere.

“Is that truly human?” Helia breathed. The words escaped her before priestly discipline could rein them in. A month’s pregnancy and a five-year path to usefulness did not fit the boundaries of any scholar’s chart.

Ketal did not claim the name human for that change. He could not. The truth did not bend to wish.

“Why did they become so different?” the Tower Master asked Ketal, and this time his curiosity had a gentleness to it. “The first barbarians who entered the White Snowfield were, by every account, ordinary humans.”

“I do not know,” Ketal said. “When I met them, they were already as they are.”

He lifted a shoulder, then let it fall. Even so, his gaze had the cast of a man who had a thought he did not wish to press into words.

“You have said it yourselves,” Ketal went on. “That place is hostile. It is strange. It refuses what we are. Surviving there is close to impossible. Yet the barbarians survived.”

“Then they adapted,” the Tower Master said. “They changed to meet the harshness of the White Snowfield.”

“Likely,” Ketal answered.

The White Snowfield was not a winter pastoral. It was a severity given the shape of a world, a cold that thought ill of life. To live there, the barbarians bent, and when they rose again, they were no longer shaped like other men.

“The barbarians who came Outside are one thing,” Ketal said. “The ones who stayed deeper carry stranger traits. There are things about them that do not fit the world beyond the White Snowfield.”

“I see,” Helia said, though what she saw made her voice thin.

“Then I have a question, Ketal,” the Tower Master said. “Do you carry one of those traits yourself?”

He meant to ask whether Ketal harbored something strange—whether he carried a power that did not belong to the order of things. Ketal did not answer at once. Silence entered, stood between them, and left when he let it.

“I do not lack for such a thing,” Ketal said finally.

He had used it against the Primarchs and the last opponent of the Quest that had opened a path to the Outside. Since stepping into the Mortal Realm, he had never called upon it again.

“Are you planning not to use it now?” the Tower Master asked Ketal.

“No,” Ketal answered. “Because I am human.”

He hummed a little and glanced up into the red-dark sky.

“I live here,” he said. “This world is my home. I am done with the things that do not belong here.”

Helia and the Tower Master recognized the stubbornness in that quiet and let it be. They turned the page together.

“So that’s the White Snowfield...,” Helia muttered.

It was a land twisted so far from the common course that even Hell felt civil by comparison. It belonged to neither the Mortal Realm, nor heaven, nor Hell, but followed a warped axis of its own—a true demonland. They accepted the truth for the second time, as if repetition might help it sit in the bones. Ketal brought them back to the present with a small movement of his hand.

“The White Snowfield is sealed for now,” he said. “The barriers may be cracking, but we still have time. It’s better to focus on what lies before us.”

“You are right,” the Tower Master said. “If we do not address this accursed realm, the Mortal Realm will be the one to end.”

The talk wound down. Ketal rubbed his chin. Speaking of the White Snowfield had pulled old memories forward.

He had told his tribe they could follow him only if they killed one of the three Primarchs. The ones who came out into the Mortal Realm had failed to finish the work but had left one half dead. The three Primarchs had been locked together since before Ketal entered the White Snowfield and were still grinding at each other when he left. If the Ugly Rat and the White Serpent had been right, the Primarchs’ fight had begun before the first sunrise. However, one of them had been brought low.

Perhaps that ancient struggle had shifted. Perhaps pressure on one side had finally found a seam. The thought came and went like a shadow of a hawk over snow, and Ketal let it fly. Hell did not wait on a man’s speculation.

They finished their sweep and then advanced together. Hell did not stretch without end. By Ketal’s guess, it was the size of one of the four continents, which was to say, a world to any sane measure and small beside the space between worlds. To men like these three, it could be crossed in days.

And yet, however far they walked, they found nothing with a face. At this rate, the land would eat their hours and return no understanding. They stood at a small rise and chose.

“Do we withdraw?” the Tower Master asked the group at last, “or do we risk the deep?”

The answer rose without struggle.

“We go in,” Helia said.

They could not step back now. Hell had pressed its brow against the Mortal Realm days ago. Whatever the demons were shaping, they had to see it while it still had a shape that could be seen.

“The Celestial Bell,” Helia chanted, extending her hand.

A word no longer than a breath, and a golden bell rested upon her palm, simple as a shepherd’s instrument and more sacred than a crown. Ketal’s eyes warmed with interest.

“A holy relic.”

“I am the Saintess of the Sun God,” Helia said. “I can wield all their relics.”

Until now, she had held back. If she rang the air, the demons might answer at once. However, if they had decided to move forward, there was no point in caution. She set the bell swinging.

Its chime did not puncture the ear. It rolled outward like light over water and passed through stone as if stone were only a slower sort of air. Waves of gold crossed Hell, and as they moved, their touch revealed. By Helia’s measure, a quarter of the realm lay suddenly under her sight. She sorted what the bell brought back. For an instant, something in her eyes broke and mended again.

“Oh,” she said.

“What is it?” the Tower Master asked her.

“I feel holy power,” she answered.

Ketal’s brows rose, and the Tower Master’s mouth opened and closed.

“In Hell?” he said.

Helia swallowed hard, the sound barely audible. Her hand, steady even in the face of storms, was trembling now.

“A god is here,” she said.

Ketal’s smile flashed. The Tower Master looked as if someone had tugged the floor from under him.

“A god...?” he repeated.

“The God of Wrath,” Helia said. “I can feel their power. I am certain.”

“According to Ketal’s speculation, the gods should be attacking Hell,” the Tower Master said. “Do you think the God of Wrath stayed to keep the assault going?”

“No,” Helia said at once. “That is not it. They are alone. No god would enter Hell alone. And... the holy power is weak. Very weak.”

If a god had truly descended with force, Helia would have known at once, with or without a relic. However, she had known nothing until the bell rang. That meant something was wrong.

“They are hiding from the demons,” Helia said. “They need help.”

“Then we help,” Ketal said. His eyes shone like a boy’s for a moment, honest and bright.

A god had entered Hell. That meant only one thing to him.

I can see a god’s true form,

Ketal thought. He had once glimpsed Ferderica’s true form, but only from too great a distance to discern any detail. The gate then had been a narrow slit, not an open door. He had seen only power and outline—and he wanted more.

“We should move,” Helia suggested.

They raced toward the place where holy power lived. The distance was not small. A normal pace would have measured it in days. The three of them belonged among the handful of the Mortal Realm’s strongest. Even moving carefully, they swallowed ground. At their current speed, they would meet a god within minutes.

Just then, the world shouted. Far off, a roar tore the air. Something with the weight of a tower crossed the sky at a speed that outpaced sound. Ketal turned and met it with his fist.

The impact scraped like stone. The thing was the size of a house, black as coal, shaped like an artillery shell. It struck his knuckles, and he rolled his shoulder and cast it aside. It carved a trench in Hell’s soil and came to rest only when the ground remembered how to stop.

“That’s heavy,” Ketal said, flexing his hand.

“Then it begins,” Helia said, and her mouth tightened.

The next wave came as sound before it became sight. The sky filled with black shells—hundreds, then thousands—an iron rain heavy enough to resemble falling mountains.

***

“Arcane Aegis,” the Tower Master muttered.

“Radiance of the Angel,” Helia chanted.

Power stood up around them. Mana and holy power nested together until they formed a dome so dense the air bent to accommodate it. Most Heroes could strike such a thing until their bones broke and see nothing but a scratch for their work.

The artillery rain advanced toward them, each shell striking with the weight of a hurled hill. The dome shuddered, and a lattice of cracks spread across its surface like ice fracturing beneath heavy boots.

“They built these to break us,” the Tower Master said.

It meant one of two things. Many ranked demons stood at a distance and fed power into their weapons, or a terrifying number of devices had been primed for this single task. Helia and the Tower Master poured more strength into their shields. However, the shells did not tire. They fell in sheets, and the ground rode the concussion like a ship rides a storm.

“They’re wasting our time,” the Tower Master said. “We can move under cover, but we cannot make speed toward the god while guarding against this.”

“I will clear the sky,” Ketal said, lifting his chin.

“Please do,” the Tower Master replied.

Ketal stamped once. The soil split and fell away as if his foot were a hammer. He launched himself toward the source of the barrage. Even Helia lost him in the distance for a breath.

The land answered a moment later. A shock rolled through the plain. Far away, a mountain of black glass shuddered as if it had remembered that it was only held together by habit, and then it came apart. The shells buckled and shrieked and died.

“I have heard the stories about how powerful Ketal had become,” Helia said, “but hearing is not the same as seeing.”

“He defeated Necrobix,” the Tower Master murmured. “He belongs to a scale that does not fit my measures.”

“At this rate, even the Sun God could lose to him,” Helia said, then smiled at herself. “Do not tell them I said that.”

“You serve a generous god,” the Tower Master said.

During the small talk they allowed themselves, the shells ceased. Whoever had controlled them had turned to face Ketal and so left Helia and the Tower Master to their purpose.

“Robe of Light and Shadow,” Helia said.

She flung her hands outward. A cloak that was both brilliance and darkness at once fell over them. It tasted like starlight and smelled like old incense.

“Another relic?” the Tower Master said.

“If we wear it, demons cannot mark us,” Helia said. “If it is stained, its grace fades quickly, so we must be swift.”

They ran down the sloping path as it curved into a low ridge, where a dark opening yawned in the rock ahead.

“I can feel their holy power inside,” Helia said.

They entered the cave. Its throat went down a little way and then opened into a chamber not much larger than a noble’s parlor. A figure of a woman sat there with their head bowed and their hands on their knees. Their hair fell like a curtain around their face.

Helia’s eyes lowered, and reverence entered her voice. “Mesereka...”

It was Mesereka, the God of Wrath. The Tower Master let out a breath that sounded almost like a groan. Mesereka held their power so tight that the cave might have been empty, and still Helia felt the pull of holiness. The urge to kneel rose uninvited, as natural and irresistible as a yawn.

This was the true form of a god. Mesereka did not stir. Whether they slept, gathered strength, or hid from some listening will, they gave no sign. Helia approached as one would approach an altar.

“O Great Mesereka,” she said softly. “I have come.”

Even at arm’s length, Mesereka did not move. Helia reached out and touched their shoulder. The god fell sideways, boneless as a dropped cloak.

“Wait,” Helia whispered.

The curtain of hair slipped away from Mesereka’s chest, revealing what lay beneath—a wound. It was a clean, terrible cut that ran from the breastbone to the left and then downward, splitting the flesh with surgical precision. Helia fell silent.

“Hold,” the Tower Master said, but his voice had gone hoarse.

Before they could open their minds to the shape of the catastrophe, a man spoke from deeper in the cave.

“So, you’ve come. I wasn’t sure you would... but everything went according to plan,” the man said.

Footsteps drew near, and a figure emerged from the deeper dark. He looked like a man left too long beneath the sun, his flesh parched and shrunken. In one hand, he carried an unadorned sword.

“How...?” he managed.

Helia had swept this place with her holy power. She had used a relic to lay the whole region bare. Any demon that had hidden should have gleamed in her sight. Only a thing so pitiable and small that it did not deserve a name could have slipped the net.

Then, the Tower Master’s mind offered one possibility, and he rejected it because it made his skin cold.

No,

he thought.

Surely not.

He raised his hands to cast, but the man was already beside him. The sword moved once. The sound it made was not loud—sharp and exact, like the note of a chisel freeing a piece of stone from the block it belonged to.

Something fell.

For an instant, the Tower Master saw the cave from a new and impossible angle. He watched his own body become a thing without a head. He had the small, absurd thought that he should be surprised, but there was no time left for surprise. The world blinked, and he was gone.