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I was about to get the bag up past my eyes when I felt someone’s hand on my shoulders. They spun me around so I was face down in the dirt, undoing all the work I had just done. I was about to protest when that person spoke right next to my ear.
“Don’t move,” came the new voice. “I’m going to undo your bindings, and you’re going to come with us.”
“Who are you?!” I said, “I’m not going with anyone.”
“You either come with us, or you take your chances with these monsters.”
Whoever this was, they took the time to slide a blade into the gap between my hands and cut the bindings holding my wrists together. Another moment or so, and they’d cut the wraps around my wings and feet, freeing all of my limbs.
I wasted no time taking the bag off my head and tossing it aside.
The demon I saw looming over me had skin the color of a bruised plum, sharpened canines, and eyes that burned with an emerald fire. He also had thick horns that ran up and along their skull; white horns that ended in reddish peaks.
I had questions.
So many questions.
But my burning desire to get away from Azaroth and his band of idiots was greater than my need to ask those questions and get answers. I picked myself up off the floor, took a moment to gather myself, and started to run after the demon who had just freed me.
He had wings that at one point looked like they had been feathery, but those feathers had started to mottle and fall off long ago. Still, this demon was more than capable of using those wings to take flight.
“Azaroth!” yelled Skrix, “It’s getting away, look!”
Glancing around my shoulder, I watched Azaroth—a knife in one hand, a whip in the other—turn to face me. He pulled back his whip-arm just as I started to run. I heard it crack in my direction, but I was fast enough to duck and roll my way out of its reach. As I came back up to standing, I used my wings to propel myself off the ground and take to the air, following the demon that had freed me.
It wasn’t long before I was joined by the others who had been keeping Azaroth and his minions busy. Each of them was monstrous in some way. They were demons, I knew that much. However, I owed them my freedom, though whether or not they allowed me to keep that freedom was a different story.
But even in Hell, flying through the air beat being dragged around on a cart any day of the week.
CHAPTER FIVE
Soaring through Hell was unlike anything I had ever done before. It was a barren, desolate wasteland where the only light came from the florescent rivers of lava flowing freely from the volcanoes. There were barely any signs of life beneath us—no plants, and certainly no animals to be seen.
In fact, the only sign that anything could survive here at all was the one, small, isolated pocket of what might have been a settlement in the distance. Our flight group intentionally avoided them, choosing to take the long way around them rather than fly overhead.
The clouds above us looked so thick they were almost solid, and they reflected the green glow below giving them a strange, sickly hue. I had no doubt that flying into them would mean death, choked by the volcanic fumes they held. The air under them was no better; hot, difficult to breathe, and even harder to fly through as I kept gliding through thermal drafts and finding myself much higher—and closer to the clouds—than I had intended to be.
The demons—rebels—ahead landed on a cliff nestled in between other craggy mountains and valleys; one spot out of countless others, unmarked and uninspiring. There were no lights here, no demonically made structures, no natural landmarks that would make this place stand out.
In other words, it was the perfect place for a secret rebel base.
I landed, looking around for some hint of a door or entryway, but was stopped by my new hosts, who had begun to encircle me, drawing their weapons as they did. I raised my hands and spun around, taking stock of just how many demons looked ready to skewer me with their blades.
“Hold on, now, I thought we were on the same side,” I said, trying not to sound threatening.
“That remains to be seen, angel,” came the voice of the demon who had freed me. He approached, the other demons making room for him to enter the circle I found myself in.
“Then why rescue me if you’re only going to kill me?”
“Kill you?” he repeated, “No one has said we are going to kill you.”
“Then why all the weapons?”
“I think the weapons make my point for me, yes?”
“You mean ‘take one step out of line and you’ll be on the receiving end of one of these points’ sort of point?”
“Exactly.”
