Chapter 122: Welcome to Hell. Where Are You?

AN: Extra long chapter!

A Devil was alive.

He was alive.

He was alive?!

How was he alive?

He opened his eyes, having shut them tightly in anticipation of the death that was inevitably coming.

And when he opened them, he saw something…how could he even express the feeling? Amazing? Breathtaking? Awe-inspiring? Or maybe the correct term was closer to terrifying. Enlightening?

It was an empty expanse of stone. An infinitely-large expanse of stone. Rock floors, bumpy, with massive craters embedded in the surface.

And nothing above.

The Devil had never truly set foot outside of the Underworld. Sure, he’d been Projected into the Overworld, but he was never really there. He was seeing the sights and hearing the sounds, but his true self still resided in the Underworld that whole time. It wasn’t the same—not at all, he now realized.

But now. His real, full self was standing in a room without a ceiling. There was just…sky. Over his head, there was nothing but a sea of stars.

His first thought was that he was in the Overworld. But he quickly realized that he was not there. First, this place obviously had a different environment. Not only was it visually different—a field of gray rock as far as the eye could see—but it felt different, too. It was cold—lethally cold, to any normal being. And the air…it was different, too. Could a Human even breathe here?

Finally, up in the sky, there was a clear difference. It was pitch dark, as a first point. Complete black above his head, nothing but the stars to tell him that there was anything above him at all. He could see the sun, which should have meant it was daytime, but it wasn’t turning the sky that familiar blue color he knew the Overworld to have. It was still black, just…bright.

And finally, there was another object in the sky. Out there, with the stars and the sun, there was one more celestial body. It was a strange one, bright blue and green, moving steadily through the sky. What was that place? The Devil had seen the sun and the stars from the Overworld, but he’d never seen this thing up there. Had he just missed it? Admittedly, he hadn’t paid much attention to what was upward during his short visits there.

He looked back down and around himself. Nothing. Just emptiness. Not even the teleporter was behind him. Not a single sign that another being had ever been here. At least, not in a long, long time.

“Hello?” He called out.

No response.

“Anyone? Are you there?”

Nothing.

“Is this some sort of test?”

The void did not answer.

“Was I supposed to die? Did I somehow survive? Where is this place?”

Nobody was there.

“Am I alone?”

A minute passed.

“Is there anyone out there?” The Devil wandered.

An hour passed.

The Devil wandered some more. Stone. Nothing but stone.

“Please,” he muttered.

Another hour passed.

“Anyone?” He asked. “Am I going to die here?”

How long would it take? He wasn’t some Human. He wouldn’t die of thirst, or of starvation. Maybe, given a couple years, he’d die from the cold? Would he just have to wait?

Another hour passed.

The Devil sat down on the edge of one of the many craters that dotted the surface of this strange place. Should he just…sit there? Until he died? There was nothing to do. No task to work on. It was just nothing.

Another hour passed.

The Devil wondered if Arlan Nota had been killed yet. Well, it’d only been a few hours. And that was from his perspective. Since time flowed faster in the Underworld, it wouldn’t have even been an hour in the Overworld yet. Or, was the Devil even in the Underworld, anymore? This was the same sky he saw in the Overworld, so maybe he’d been transported through realms.

Another hour passed.

The Devil tried to sleep, and failed.

Another hour passed.

The Devil lay down and stared up at the sun in the dark sky, trying to see how long it would take for his eyes to burn.

Another hour passed.

The Devil shouted for a while, just to see how loud of an echo he could make. What else was he to do? Nothing? Something? What did it matter? He was going to die anyway. This was an execution, right? He’d been condemned to die, it was just going to take a long, long time for the guillotine to sever his neck.

Another hour passed.

Another hour passed.

Another hour passed.

The Devil’s hopes that perhaps this was some sort of test faded away. At first he thought that maybe they were just trying to scare him. Perhaps this was just some intimidation tactic, a “this is what will happen for real if you don’t succeed this time.” Perhaps it was just them saying “this is what we have the power to do. Don’t forget that.” Perhaps it was just them saying “don’t fail us again. You are mortal.”

It didn’t seem to be what they were saying.

It seemed like they just wanted him to die. For real. If it was a test, he failed it somehow. If it was intimidation tactic, he’d been sufficiently intimidated an hour in. Really, they’d sufficiently intimidated him by the time they started dragging him toward Door 999. They wouldn’t have even had to throw him through to get him to work a bit harder.

No, this was just an execution.

He didn’t feel fear anymore. Just certainty. He was going to die.

What was this place? Who knew. Who cared. It didn’t matter. It was his gravesite, that was what it was. It was a place Demons went to die, and that was all that was important to the Devil.

Another hour passed.

Another hour passed.

Another hour passed.

The Devil wondered what that blue and green sphere in the sky was. What were the stars? What was the sun? Were they gods, their brilliance so radiant that they impressed light upon a dark world? Were they the Demon Kings of old? Having finished their rule of the Underworld and ascended into a new form? Were they just some meaningless balls of fire?

But no matter what he decided the sun and the stars were, he still couldn’t decide on what the blue ball was. If the others shined because they were Demons or Gods, why was that one dim? If the others were made of fire, what was that one made of? Why was it colored? What was it doing there?

Another hour passed.

Another hour passed.

Another hour passed.

Surely, the Devil would die sooner than he’d first assumed, right? Surely, he’d die in a matter of days, not years, right? Would he just have to kill himself? But why would he kill himself, when he still had life left to live? But why would he live the rest of his life, if it was full of nothingness?

Another hour passed.

Another hour passed.

Another hour passed.

The Devil got back up and kept wandering. Maybe he could find a way back to the Underworld. If another Demon got pushed through a teleporter in another Door 999, maybe the Devil could slip back through in that very moment. Even if he couldn’t, at least then he’d have someone to talk to.

Did anyone know where those teleporters led to? He didn’t know, his colleagues didn’t know, his underlings didn’t know. Who would? Did his superiors even know? Maybe they did. Someone had to have put the teleporters there. But maybe the people who put the teleporters there were all dead by now. Maybe everyone just knew that Door 999 was where you put someone when you wanted to kill them, so when a Demon wanted to kill someone, they just used Door 999. No questions asked.

But surely the higher-ups had to know, right? Teleporters required maintenance occasionally, or they’d break down. Someone had to fix them.

Ironically, the Devil knew that someone out there knew where Door 999 led. He did. In his lowest moment, the lowest of Demons knew where it went. He just couldn’t tell anyone.

Another hour passed.

Another hour passed.

Another hour passed.

The Devil stopped wandering. He didn’t find anything, as he thought he wouldn’t. Why would he find something? Why would he think he’d find something? He lay back down and stared back up at the sky.

The blue sphere continued to move across his sight.

Twenty-four hours passed.

The Devil lay there for a while, trying to see how long he could stay still. Maybe if he stayed unmoving for long enough, he’d get swallowed up into the ground, or something. Maybe one of the things that had made all of these craters would come by and crush him. But nothing happened. As usual. Nothing happened for twenty-four hours.

Why was there nothing up here? Surely, if Demons were regularly teleported into this place, they’d leave some sort of sign that they were there.

Well, it wasn’t like there was anything around to make a house with, or whatever, but maybe they’d arrange the rocks into their name?

Though, the Devil hadn’t done anything like that, himself. Why would he? To comfort the next Demon that got pushed through Door 999? It wouldn’t offer him any solace to help out some other person he’d never see. He wanted to help himself.

Though, if he was out here for another six months, surely he’d eventually get bored enough to make some sort of rock formation. Or, at least, that was what the Humans he’d watched had done. He didn’t realize that people did that sort of thing—the Humans were the first to show him. What had the Humans called it? …Art?

Yes, he’d make art. He laughed, thinking to himself. A Demon! Creating art! A completely pointless, worthless activity that accomplished absolutely nothing of note! Such a Human thing to do.

He sighed. Those Humans had grown on him. Like little rats running around in his hallways that he’d eventually grown fond enough of to call his pets. They were still rats, and he still thought they were gross and disgusting and stupid, but couldn’t he appreciate the inanity of their little lives sometimes?

Art. What a silly concept, he laughed. What was the point of such a thing? A Human gets bored and paints a picture of themselves. Then what, they sell it to the other Humans for some money? Okay, perhaps then it was time worth spent, if they got some money out of it. That raised the question of why the other Humans were buying it, but still.

But why would a Human make art if they weren’t going to sell it? He’d used divining tools, he’d watched their little lives as they ran around. He knew some of them still did that. Why? For status? To impress themselves upon others? Maybe, maybe…

But some of them still did it for no reason other than for the satisfaction of making a piece of art. To leave their mark on the world. So that, after they died, or even just when they weren’t in the room, someone out there would think of them. Someone out there would look at the thing that they created and think, “Wow. What a work. What expression of skill. What expression of creativity. What was the artist thinking when they made this choice? I’d love to speak with them about it.”

Was that why Humans created art?

…Maybe. It seemed plausible enough. Really, the Devil could see the appeal in it, to a certain extent. Maybe…

He looked around. There were some loose stones, all scattered throughout the place. Maybe he could do something with them. Not because he wanted to make art. Of course he didn’t. He would never want to leave something out there, so that maybe someone who came after him, someone in his same scenario, would have a bit of an easier time. He didn’t want someone to see what he made and think, “Woah, I love what he did when he put that stone there. Ooh, when he placed that stone in that spot, it really brought the whole piece together for me.”

He would hate that. Of course.

He was just doing it for…science. Or something. Just to see what would happen. Maybe he would arrange the stones in the correct formation to open a doorway back to the Underworld, or to summon an ancient deity.

Or something.

He began gathering stones.

An hour passed.

Then, once he had enough, all piled up in a crater, he began arranging them. He was a Demon, of course he’d want things to be orderly.

An hour passed.

An hour passed.

Once all of the stones were in perfect order from largest to smallest—he measured this by weight, of course—he got started. Working in a big, flat area—not that there was any other type of landscape out here—he grabbed some rocks and started arranging them. First, he got some of the larger stones and put them in some basic locations to create the thing he had in mind.

A big, flat slab here, and then he put a slightly smaller slab on top, to create some depth. He looked back to what he was trying to create a replica of. Yes, yes, that looked correct. Another slab over, across from it, with a bit of a gap in between. Another slab to the south of them both, and another slab beside that one, creating four little masses, just how the real thing looked.

Then, he got some of the smaller stones and used them to start decorating. Adding details, bumps and ridges where there were supposed to be bumps and ridges. He even used his fingers and teeth to carve the stones into the perfect size and shape when there wasn’t any that fit what he had in mind.

An hour passed.

An hour passed.

An hour passed.

Finally! The Devil had finished up the detailing. By the end, he really hit his stride and began to really feel like he improved. He’d even gone back and retouched on some of the first things he’d done, using his newfound basic proficiency to make things look a bit better.

Finally, he just had to add on the last bit. Using a special pile of stones he’d set aside just for this, he went in and created a large circle around the whole thing, the four islands of rock surrounded by a perimeter, making it a big ball with the islands on the inside.

It was the ball in the sky. The blue one, that he was still a bit confused by.

He didn’t know what it was, but it had a certain beauty to it. The pale blue, the lush green, it rippled and waved as it moved along the sky, like greeting an old friend. The replica of this strange cosmic body that the Devil had made was imperfect, of course—it was his first ever work of art—but it was something he was proud of.

Maybe the next Demon that came out here to die would come across this replica of that blue sphere, and they’d see that someone out there cared. Even if the Devil was long gone, they’d see a legacy he left behind. In a way, he would never truly die, right?

The Devil blinked. W-well, he wasn’t creating the art for that reason, of course. It was an experiment. To see if he could understand why the Humans did what they did.

Oh well, he told himself. Experiment over. And since the experiment was over, and he didn’t care about the art—not one bit—he would destroy it.

He would destroy it.

He would destroy it.

The Devil looked at his replica of the blue ball. He’d spent so many hours on it. The painstaking detail. The little bumps and ridges in the stones to recreate the green parts that seemed to be raised up above the blue parts, everything with its own texture.

He wished he could go there. He wished he could explore the blue sphere, instead of this place. Surely, dying out there would be infinitely more enjoyable and interesting than dying here, on this empty, gray wasteland. There was nothing here. Nothing to see. No color, or variations in the terrain. No people.

But he wasn’t there. He was here. So he destroyed the replica. It was imperfect. Not the blue place. It was just some awful wish to have what he didn’t have.

He tore it apart, tossing everything away and shattering the large rocks into pieces. It would never be created again. A curse of his life. He would never create art again.

Twenty-four hours passed.

The Devil tried his hand at creating art again, just to pass the time. He wanted to see if he could make something else. This wasn’t because he wanted to, of course—that would be ridiculous, for a Demon to waste his time on something worthless and pointless. But just to test his skill. Yes, that was why. He wanted to test his skill at creating something.

Creating that sculpture before, it had taken lots of fine motor movement, see? And he had noticed that his proficiency had increased quite a bit while working. So he wasn’t “creating art” like the Humans did, he was just training. He was working on his motor movements, and his abilities of visualization. That was what he was doing. It was really one of the most productive things he could do, out in this wasteland.

This time, he decided to create a replica of his own hand. How more appropriate could things get, creating a portrait of the thing that was creating the portrait.

Twenty-four more hours passed.

And the Devil worked some more.

Maybe eventually, he thought, he would create something worthwhile. Perhaps he could even find out where he was.