A Dirge That Never Ends

The Hell-forged hammers of Tartarus were crafted in the name of art, used in ritual to make bone dust out of man and monster, mortal beasts and, on rare and delicious occasions, immortal gods. Great tenderizers pressed down over angel wings, sullying God’s finest, pinning their immaculate wingspans to the sizzling slabs like papyrus under saw-toothed anvils. Gears would turn, steam would bellow, hammerheads would fall, their tonnage compressed upon the flattened basalt, pulverizing ram skulls into fine grain, troll horns into powder, human heads into buttery ooze.

A day in Hell was bad enough, which for a demon was good enough to call home. But in Tartarus, the deepest den of desolation, the blackest hole in all of Hell, misery exceeded horror. For a demon —the purest and vilest of sadists— Tartarus was a paradise of pain, a magma-rich wasteland where torment was the highest art form. Here was the septic heart of Hell, the core of all evil, where hammers were forged with industry, where torture was poetry, where bone dust was made, inhaled, savored.

In Tartarus, the epitome of doom, sin itself slithered from a rot-seeping fissure in a spoiled, scaled egg. It flopped to the floor: another demon forged in impiety.

She was blue-black, oil-slick, with a mottled hide of blood-red splotches. Her eyes were yellow-brown, like tooth decay, like tartar. But in them gleamed a vivid ember, the flame of hate and savagery. She was wild, with foam and slather on her fangs—rather hideous, which was beauty in Hell. It was no surprise that the demon lords took notice of her large, venomous pouches, the trail of acidic secretion that ran down her armor-plated belly. It was business-as-usual, then, when the demon lords flocked and scurried, slithered and snaked their way to the newly-formed diva of death as she writhed into dark existence. These were demons, after all. And hell, this was Hell!

When in Rome, as the mortals say.

And so, the lords welcomed the newcomer in what way they knew how; they had her, one after the other, and when they were done with her they left her to get antiquated with fire, with brimstone, with the festering world of rot and ruin, horror and flame. This was her reception to Hell, to Tartarus.

The lords gave her shame and they gave her a name. They called her Abyss.

*

The egg sacks glowed faintly in the dark, illuminating what? Wet rock and rising steam, pitfalls into unknown depths and fissures that radiated with magma, far below. Abyss looked around, sore and sullied, deciding then and there: I reject this place. To Hell with Tartarus. She said these words out loud, which echoed in the cavernous chamber, the breeding grounds and egg nest where all demons were born, nurtured by malice and pain. Two hours old, Abyss was fully formed, body and mind. For it is known: childhood is a mortal affliction, a weakened, lesser state that demons bypass when called into existence by the grim sorcery of their realm.

Abyss had oozed into this world from a fermented egg, a sphere of regret plastered to the rock walls of a dingy cavern crypt. No mother to hold her, no breast to cling to, no milk or blood to sate her hunger, which would never go away. No helping hands. No warmth. No love to be had.

Abyss emerged, slick with sour albumen, festooned with tangles of blood clots and strands of slime. She stretched her taloned fingers, unfurled her spines. She stood, brand new and yet an adult, wailing at the lament of her existence.

And when the demon lords gave her their rough reception, Abyss discovered she could kick and scream with the strength of a grown adult, shout vile profanities and curses with a retinue of vocabulary, a full grasp of language. Such was the way of the wretched; youth and innocence expunged from birth. Newly born, but never a newborn, never an infant, Abyss, at two hours old, was as she would be in one-thousand years time.

She was mature of body, of mind, but not of soul, and, as such, the roots to her demonic lineage could yet be ripped from their evil foundations. In cursing the demon lords who had violated her at birth, in shunning Tartarus, the realm that weaved her into existence, Abyss became a rogue to her kind, an avenging dark angel.

In the distance, the hammers clanged, each percussive bang accompanied by sparks. Bone dust drifted on a cavern draft to fuel the wanton deeds of demons who might otherwise find peace. The hammers were a pendulum, a piston in a dreadful machine. The bone dust was a vile drug, an eternal, damning addiction.

Abyss inhaled deeply, catching the fibers of wild horses and wood dryads, spices to enliven. Next, a whiff of goblin toddlers, a pungent dash of badger, a luxuriant pinch of human. Against her will, Abyss yielded to the pleasure of darkness intoxicating her soul, the power that it lent her. But she would not let it consume her, determined to break free of its hold upon her will. Abyss would not play the demon lords’ game—certainly not by their rules.

And so, harnessing the power lent to her by the bones of the fallen, the pain and suffering airborne among the dank currents of cavernous Hell, Abyss swelled with the enhancement of her demonic lineage, deciding to use its potency against her own kind.

All of Hell, from first circle to last, resounded with diabolical laughter. It echoed, high-pitched and horrible—enough to chill one’s bones.

*

Her laughter drew the attention of the dark lords, the demons who had used Abyss and left her behind. They returned to her, unable to ignore the ravings of the newly hatched succubus, the rebel rakshasa who roused them with her wailing.

High-ranking demons flocked to Abyss. Like flies to a carcass, they converged to her call of heightened displeasure. She bated them with her moaning, her uproarious laughter, tempting all sinners with her bared scales and slime-slick body. The eternally damned arrived in droves, crowding the hatchery.

Among them were sultans and lords, renowned, tainted souls, like Blemish, sovereign of rot; Darkstain, the shadow prince; his mother, Goreah, the Queen of Anguish; even Balor, the one-eyed giant, who ran the forge of Tartarus, overseer to the production of bone dust that polluted Hell’s atmosphere. Abyss scrutinized those who had gathered, preparing to throw herself at them—tooth, spine, and nail. She was resolved to kill them all, or as many as she could. She was prepared to die, regarding death as mercy against the condition of living. The notion of fear was laughable; Abyss had nothing to lose. And so, with talons flexed at her sides, Abyss pounced.

Among the chaos that ensued, her laughter echoed, fevered, effusive, and feral.

*

Abyss had powder on her nose, on her lips, on her chin. Calcium phosphate caked her blue-black skin to whiten her complexion, milk-pale like the fancy lads among the courts of mortal men. Her nasal cavity and lungs were coated with the pulverized ions of centaur warriors. Her bloodstream carried the bone dust of ogre kings and faerie queens. Her high was decadent. Ironically, it sent her to heaven.

However, Abyss had little time to examine the pleasure of her intoxication. She had other matters to attend to: the wrath of demons, for one, and the rage of Balor, who descended upon her, the dire forge lord, the mighty Emperor of Hell.

But just because Abyss was a few hours old didn’t mean she couldn’t hold her own. As a child of Tartarus, she was born an expert in combat, a savant of sin. And while she may have been dwarfed by Balor, who was three times as tall as a bull moose, and twice as wide, Abyss, herself, was not exactly small, certainly not helpless. She was taller than most mortal men, and many times stronger, with assets to aid her: armor-plated scales, three inch fangs, razor-sharp spines, a glottis beneath her forked tongue that fired acid with precision.

It’s true, her odds were not fantastic —chances are she’d be torn from limb to limb— but Abyss would maim and kill as many as she might, and be slain in the throes of rapturous violence, a hedonistic haze of bone-bliss narcotic (not a bad way to go).

The first to fall was Darkstain, whose head flew clean from his wide, warty shoulders. Abyss had driven her talons under his chin, and just like that, the shadow prince was dead. His mother, Goreah, was exceedingly wroth, unhinging her alligator jaws to swallow her prey. Abyss cringed in the hot gale of rotten breath blowing from the pink gulf of a rotten reptile maw. She stared, point blank, into a noxious void rimmed in rows of needled teeth, a wide, reeking gullet about as charming as a prolapsed anus. Abyss had no plans to be devoured alive; she opened her own mouth, shooting acid to fill her enemy’s to the brim. In a pool of blood and bubbling foam, the Queen of Anguish writhed noisily to her death.

Next was Blemish, Sovereign of Rot, who reached beyond his open throat to draw from his innards a scimitar of ghostly fire. He waved its hell-forged steel, the arc of its blade trailing unearthly flames of jade. He called to Abyss, shouting degrading names and curses, mocking her, insulting her, provoking her. He masturbated rapidly in her direction. He tried to get her to rush into a heedless attack, but Abyss was no fool. Standing her ground, she took what Blemish served to her —his teasing words, his insults and provocations, his spunk— and threw it back in his face.

Blemish, it would seem, lacked thick skin against bullying words; his was thin and necrotic, sloughing off at the sides. As such, the curses Abyss had thrown his way burrowed deep into the core of his blackened heart. Beyond rage, without reservation, the Sovereign of Rot bull-rushed Abyss, hewing lesser demons in his trajectory to thwart the —his words— “obstinate whore-scum.”

Your death will redefine torment! Blemish wailed at Abyss. I will play cat’s cradle with your small intestine!

His proclamation was bold, but his blatant fury robbed Blemish of combative grace. Abyss stepped aside from the demon lord’s wild sword strike of emerald fire. With the casual grace of a cat, she dodged the sweeping kick of Blemish’s macerated foot, evading his meaty fist of open sores.

My turn, Abyss whispered in her opponent’s ear, and though she did not relish the intimacy of placing her mouth upon Blemish’s neck, Abyss delighted in excavating his jugular with her teeth, savoring the taste of death as the Sovereign of Rot fell to the blood-slick stone at her feet.

Who’s next?!

The hatchling goaded the high-ranking demons who came to slay her.

Who among you wants to die?

Her eyes were fire, literal flames, white hot and rutilant.

Sorry souls and sullied sinners… You who made me, who wanted me, who used me in my first, helpless hour…

She turned her back on the demon horde and, lifting her spade-shaped tail, forcefully shat in their direction.

Wretched cum suds, the lot of you! Come on, let’s dance! Let’s raise some hell!

She crossed her arms and spat.

Shit, ain’t this the place for it?

In answer to her challenge, a champion emerged among the “wretched cum suds,” stepping forward to meet Abyss. He was three times as tall as a bull moose, and twice as wide. As he approached, the crowd fell silent, parting with each of his mammoth strides. They cast their eyes to the floor, avoiding his angry, cycloptic eye.

A satyr strummed his harp while heralding the arrival of his master:

All ye tarnished, make way for His Vileness. All ye fiends, bow before your Lord. Kneel and quake, touch your noses to the stone. Behold! His Darkness, Lord of the Forge, the Emperor of Tartarus, Balor the Wicked, King of all Hell.

*

The Fomorian King cast his evil eye on Abyss, who relied on the bone dust narcotic to fortify her bravery in the face of certain defilement. The noxious hue of Balor’s eyeball, shifting in color like oil on water, cast debilitating curses on anyone who was reckless enough —or simply luckless— to meet the Forge Lord’s gaze. Abyss became weak at the knees under the sway of the great, solitary demon peeper, which was bloodshot and crazed, shrinking all aspects of her valor with its overbearing malice.

Abyss sniffed her palms and licked her fingers, hoping for one more morsel of powered enhancement, a remnant particle from her forbidden visit to the forge. Earlier, when she had groped the mounds of pulverized skeletons —dryad skull and viper vertebrae— she felt her hatred blossom with unholy glory, her power burgeoning with orgasmic might. Whatever lingering fragments that remained between her fingers, the spare ions clinging to her palm, having lapped them up like a desperate dog, they offered nothing to augment her powers.

For Abyss, there would be no avoiding the ill-fated outcome of her insubordination. Already, her power was waning.

She looked at Balor while dead center in the long shadow that he cast in the magma glow at his back, his ungodly prowess and sickening brawn, the crimson vapor rising off his scalding flesh, and, above all, his revolting eye like some ill-begotten orb, a dying planet in a perpetual state of storms.

It became clear to Abyss: her brief and miserable stint at life had come to end.

Unless…

The plan came to Abyss on a whiff of finely-crushed coccyx, the tailbone of an Earth Realm prince whose soul departed to hell after his various malpractices in court—misdeeds to appease his sadistic appetite. It was a fine stroke of luck that his bone dust reached her nostril on a sulphuric wind. That it sparked her resolve to bait the mighty Balor.

A game of cat and mouse!

Abyss lifted her tail and bent low to expose her sex, the newborn tender flesh parting like delicately-sliced fruit. She craned her neck —absurdly long, almost serpentine— meeting Balor’s wicked eyeball with a teasing flutter of her spidery lashes. Abyss squatted, trading grace for sex appeal, spreading, fanning, flaunting herself. Now Balor was weak in the knees, his solo optic wide and focused, his hound’s mouth frothing at the corners. His erection sprang up like a mighty totem, a red-fleshed devil like a flayed man, a pulpy, grotesque monolithic boner.

Behold! What epic lust! Such ghastly, overlarge equipment.

Behold! The Lord of Hell was aroused.

Abyss knew that she was over-matched, but knew, too, that her seductive hooks sank deep into the loins of Balor’s lecherous hunger. She saw it plainly: a slick veneer of pre-ejaculate reflecting lava flow across his hooded cobra cock. That’s when she knew her fortune had shifted, that she still held a hand to stay in the game. It became clear to her then: she had Balor by the balls.

Strike while the iron is hot, so the saying goes; and how appropriate, what with the bone forge clanging and steaming in the foreground. The music of Tartarus filled the cavernous gloom. Bone dust was thick amid the sulfuric haze. The din of industry. The sounds of Hell.

Abyss did not wait for another hammer to fall, for a new volley of sparks to rise from the great block of basalt. She stowed away her sex, sauntered toward the Devil. She took Balor’s dick in her arms, leaned against its elephant girth, swaying like a slow-dance partner. The King of Hell did not lift a ham-sized fist to thwart the hatchling as he watched her touch him from the vantage of his eighteen-foot stature. His giant eye raised to the stalactites dripping guano, lost in the back of his skull. He was in heaven, touched by an angel, stroked by a demoness with a deft hand for pleasure. Abyss brought him to the edge, to the precipice of perfect despair, then let go, bringing him back down to earth, right back down to Hell.

The scent of acid-scourged flesh filled the cavernous space, blending with the smoke and decay, a rotten egg aroma. Balor looked down to his defiled manhood, his butchered demonhood, groaning like a gutted mammoth. His cock fell apart like melted wax, a toppled birthday cake in the wind. In profound rage —a level of badassery mere mortals could never know— the Fomorian lord ripped his penis from the joint of his groin, throwing it at Abyss, who fled with speed to the forge.

*

At the forge, steam bellowed, vomiting in high-pressure bursts. Hammers fell, steel heads as large as mountain yaks. With their heads chained and bolted to the guts of the mountain, the forge golems of Vulcana slaved away at their eternal labor. Their unrivaled strength and dim wits were perfect for the job: rise, strike, rise, strike. The music of Tartarus never ends.

The titans were blind, their eyes scarred with the sparks and ricocheted fragments of rock, iron, and bone, the scathing arcs of flame and splashes of magma. Their unwieldy hammers were fused to their hands, their grips joined to the shaft of the instruments they bore. Torment came with the job, and the job never ended. The sole relief offered to a forge golem came in the instant the hammer hit stone, when the bones that were sandwiched between them made blessed/cursed powder to narcotize the demons who enslaved them.

Delirious, blind, and eager to strike, strike again, over and over as fast they may; it is no wonder the titans failed to notice their King. It was no accident, however, on part of the tactful hatchling, Abyss, who drew Balor near to the forge, baiting him with her pungent wafts of sex and provocative slurs. The Fomorian King, whose sexual extremities lay bubbling, separated from his body and bleeding at the stump, had nonetheless found room to be filled with arousal for the insubordinate whore who lured him to his final damnation. His was a lust for revenge, for obliteration and desecration. With arms as strong and girthsome as oxen, he reached across the slab of basalt to take hold of Abyss. He aimed to crush the demoness, to pulverize her into formless gore.

But alas, the hammers fell. The titans struck. And when the forge golems raised their ghastly, overlarge tools, Balor was gone, dripping from the risen instruments in clods of meat and a shower of blood.

Again, the hammers fell. Again, the titans struck—over and over and over.

Lord of the Forge, the Emperor of Tartarus, Balor the Wicked, King of all Hell; there he lay, a splatter of modern art, messy and indecipherable. His remains spread out over the crude anvils of basalt like tomato sauce over bread. The forge fires roared, its steam screaming in triumph, charring Balor’s remains to dust and ash.

The crowd of demons, watching it all, had vomited in uncontrollable expulsions of shock. Moaning away, they sloshed in their upchucked guts up their ankles. Throughout the spectacle, Abyss was smiling, plunging her hands into the mounds of dust—all that remained of Balor’s entity. She was careful to avoid being crushed by the falling hammers, scooping up the grains of bone in well-timed swoops. She brought her cupped hands close to her face, balancing the erstwhile emperor below her nose.

And now, mighty Balor, I devour you.

But the Devil’s bones were too much for Abyss; the inhalation of his pulverized ions went straight to her soul. The hit was savage, a blend of rapture and anguish. It blew out her brains, like cannon fire up the nose. It vaporized her lungs, like napalm on a naked newborn. It taxed her heart beyond its mechanical means, but before it exploded, Abyss loved every second of it, savoring all three.

The dark world around her went darker. Everything went black.

*

In Tartarus, the epitome of doom, sin itself slithered from a rot-seeping fissure in a spoiled, scaled egg. It flopped to the floor: another demon forged in impiety. She emerged, a tragic horror, a blank slate to be marred and defiled. Her memories had vanished like exorcised spirits, her mind totally wiped clean. Her scars had been erased, but her torment began anew.

She emerged, blue-black and oil-slick, writhing in the cold albumen on the rough basalt. In the background, hammers fell, the din of industry, a dirge that never ends. Silhouettes rose on the periphery, figures outlined in a mute glow of magma at their backs. The demon lords flocked and scurried, slithered and snaked their way to the newly-formed monster. Aroused and eager, they offered her their accustomed reception.

They gave her shame and they gave her a name. They called her Abyss.