Magic - Chapter 57

This is the second book in The Godsverse Chronicles, a portal fantasy series with mythological roots and action-adventure tendencies. You can search through all my work on my website.

Ollie wasn't looking for trouble, but after she saved the Antichrist from being slaughtered, it came for her.

Ollie lived by one rule. Never get involved with anyone for any reason; humans, demons, fae folk, it didn't matter. They were all trouble. Keeping her distance was how she survived in the criminal underworld for so long.

Keep your head down and don't piss anyone off. That was her motto, especially since her clients all had access to powerful dark magic.

She thought she had a flawless system for keeping her nose clean, so how did she wind up in a stolen car, with a demon spawn in her back seat, driving away from her ex-lover and a gang of demons ready to skin her alive?

That's a good question.

And why did she agree to help save the demon's life so she didn't get sacrificed to open the gates of Hell?

An even better question.

She had one rule. One stupid rule. And tonight...it goes right down the toilet.

Now, the only way for Ollie to get her life back is to save the girl, prevent the Apocalypse, and track down the people who betrayed her.

They will pay. Oh yes, they will all pay.

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Dis was nothing like I had imagined. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it was a happy place, but the monsters living there certainly didn’t seem any more miserable than they did on Earth. I even saw several of them laughing and smiling. It was a complete and utter mind screw.

Blezor must have felt the same way. “How can these monsters be…happy?” he said as we followed Charlie through the city.

“What’s not to be happy about?” Charlie answered. “They get to punish the same humans that hunted them to extinction. They get a place to live. They get friends. They have steady work. It’s kind of a paradise if you think about it the right way.”

“I never want to think that way,” Bob said as the street widened into a city square. A high wall served as a backdrop while monsters streamed in and out of the gate cut into it. Huge piles of black muck swayed back and forth across the horizon, blocking my view of anything past them.

“What is that?” I pointed to the wobbling black towers.

“Souls,” Charlie said. “You all have been breeding like rabbits out there, and we’re running out of places to put you, so we end up just shoveling you into big piles while you wait. It’s becoming a problem, and it’s getting worse.”

Souls. What a horrible end. Charlie didn’t give me time to let it sink in before he started moving again. He led us to a large wooden wagon yoked to a pair of oxen near the wall, then reached into the back of the hay-lined wagon and grabbed a quill.

“Roll up your sleeve,” he said. We did, and he wrote 8-431 on our right arms. “Anybody asks, you are new recruits for pit eight, annex 431, got it?”

I nodded. “Got it.” The others nodded dumbly as well.

“Lovely,” he said. “Get in the back. Hide your armor and weapons under the hay.” He pointed at me. “You, up front with me.” 

 When we were all loaded up, he snapped the reins, and the oxen began to move forward, slowly.

“Where are you taking these…monsters?” A glowing blue banshee said as we neared the gate.

“New recruits for pit 8,” Charlie said.

The banshee looked down at her clipboard. “We don’t have any recruits scheduled for travel today.”

Charlie reached into his pocket and pulled out a roll of parchment. “I don’t know what to tell you. We’re short-staffed, as you know, so lots of things are slipping through the cracks.” He handed the parchment to the banshee. “I think you’ll see that the paperwork is in order.”

The banshee unrolled the parchment and read through it. “I see. Very well. You know the way. The pit annexes are—”

“Yeah, yeah. I know. I’ve been there before.” Charlie snapped the reins again, and we started moving through the gates.

“What are the annexes?” I asked as we pulled away from the banshee.

“The main pits on the other side of Dis have been filled for years, so we started digging annex pits out—well, there’s quite a bit of unused space in Hell. Unfortunately, as fast as we build pits, there are still more humans coming than we can handle. Thus, the towers of souls.”

There was a sound on the air, a gurgle, low but persistent, that filled my ears as we moved closer to the souls. “What’s that noise?”

“The worst part of this whole thing,” he said. “That’s the sound of souls waiting for their final rest.”

Aimee shuddered. “It’s horrible.”

“It’s Hell,” Charlie replied with a shrug. “Now, in about ten miles the road forks. You take the high path to the Black Gate and Lucifer’s castle. The low road leads to the lava river Styx, where Charon ferries people to Lucifer’s castle. We have a stop to make first.” He looked back at the team. “All of this fuss seems like a bit of overkill, honestly. Hell’s not that dangerous a place.”

“I beg to disagree,” I rasped. The dry air of Hell was burning my throat.

“Well, I’ll beg you to shut up about things you don’t know about.”

He had a point.

“And where is Et’atal’s castle?” I asked.

He chuckled. “I was wondering when you’d ask that.” He pointed to his right. “Opposite side of Hell. He’s leading the expansion efforts right now, and he’s none too happy about it. It’s not glamorous work. If somehow you could see past all these bodies, that’s where Et’atal’s castle is.”

I filed that away for later.

“Now, just sit back and relax. You’re with Charlie now. Nothing can go wrong.”

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This is the second book in The Godsverse Chronicles, a portal fantasy series with mythological roots and action-adventure tendencies. You can search through all my work on my website.

Paid subscribers can access the entire archive of this series from the beginning, along with other series and every article I’ve ever written.

If you are not a paid member, you can read everything with a 7-day free trial, or give us a one-time tip.