"Fucking heaven, what was that?"
Safely far away from the center of the blast, surviving hell-dwellers peered at the rising white cloud. The weak and the low-level had been incinerated instantly; the mid-tiers who had been further away sported minor burns, their tough hides already starting to scab over. A massive, bull-headed demon, his muscles like steel beams, nudged a nearby creature.
"Should we go see what fell this time?" he asked, finding himself both intrigued and terrified in equal measure.
The creatures around him all hesitated. Normally, they were the most fearless beings in creation. When they invaded other worlds, they fought with a total disregard for their own lives; they knew that if they perished their soul were protected by the mark, they would simply wake up back in the pits of Hell, ready to fight again.
But now, they were already in Hell.
"I saw it," replied the other creature, a fragile-looking thing with four dragonfly wings and eyes like a housefly. "I think another angel has fallen into Hell."
"Since when do fallen angels wipe out cities when they fall?" the bull-demon snorted, wiping soot from his armored chest. "If that was the norm, we'd be hiding underground forever."
He narrowed his eyes, peering through the settling ash toward the shimmering crater. "Pateronisa, is the feathery bastard dead?"
The fly-demon hovered a few feet away, its four wings blurring into a nervous hum as it adjusted its multifaceted gaze. "Well, it certainly isn't feathery."
Pateronisa chirped, its voice clicking with every syllable. "And it isn't moving. But you know how dramatic those high-and-mighty fallen angels can be. For all we know, it's just a recently fallen angel having a mood swing."
"I'm not approaching that thing," the Fly-Demon added, its wings buzzing faster. "Better not risk a 'True Death' for a look-see. Let's send in the Vermin first. If they don't disintegrate the moment they touch the glass, then we go in."
Sotrabus shifted his weight, his heavy tail lashing behind him. "I don't know, Pateronisa. I've got a bad feeling about this. Let's leave the unfeathered cunt where he lies. It feels... wrong. What if we step in there and he just blinks us out of existence? What if he's listening right now? They're at their most temperamental when the grace is still burning out of their veins."
The buzzing sound stopped abruptly. Pateronisa landed, scuttling close to the bull-demon until they were eyes-to-eye.
"Sotrabus, how long do you want to rot in this gutter?" the fly-demon hissed, pointing a jagged, scythe-like limb toward the crater where Alex lay.
"We've been rotting at this rank for centuries, Sotrabus. Don't you want to descend? Don't you hunger for the deeper layers?"
Pateronisa leaned in, his multifaceted eyes reflecting the bull-demon's hesitation. "Imagine it: succubus harems catering to your every whim, legions of lesser dregs bringing you choice souls until you're bloated on pure power. That 'unfeathered bastard' down there? He isn't just a fallen bird he's our ticket out of the dirt."
The fly-demon clicked his mandibles, a grotesque mimicry of a grin. "Besides, where is the risk? We send the Vermin in first. If they shrivel and die, we tuck our tails and vanish. But if they survive... then we walk in and claim our future."
"Fine. Send in the vermins," Sotrabus grunted, yielding to the itch of ambition.
He wasn't the only one. Across the jagged rim of the crater, other survivors had reached the same conclusion. In the Pit, 'Vermin' were the ultimate workforce.
low-intelligence dregs, warped animals, and stunted, humanoid husks that infested every shadow. They were endless, expendable, and easily broken. A few lashes of a whip or a psychic shove was all it took to bend them to your will; if they died, there were a billion more waiting to be kicked into service.
Soon, a tide surged down the glass-slicked slopes of the crater. It was a chaotic carpet of skittering limbs and panicked chattering, malformed insects the size of hounds, weeping bipedal things with stitched-shut eyes, and feral, multi-headed curs.
Their masters stood on the ridge like vultures, gripping their rusted blades and notched black-iron pikes. Their predatory eyes never left the unmoving figure at the center of the crater.
They were perfectly poised; if the fallen angel proved to be a ready meal, they were prepared to fight it out with their equals to claim the prize.
The moment the first creatures crossed the invisible boundary, their low-intelligence shrieks choked into gurgles. Their hides blistered instantly, their eyes smoking and melting in their sockets. Within seconds, the first wave of the horde disintegrated.
The rest of the swarm recoiled. Despite their hunger, the remaining Vermin shaking with a primal, instinctive terror turned and scattered in every direction, desperate to put distance between themselves and the searing white light.
From the ridge, the masters watched their expendable army dissolve and flee. The ambitious glint in Pateronisa's eyes vanished.
Before the figure in the crater could even stir or open his eyes, the ridge was empty. The masters fled into the dark, leaving the silent, exhausted soul alone in the center of a scorched graveyard.