"Oh Hell"

Chapter 2

Chapter 2: "They told me Demons were a bunch of condescending assholes,but that isn't true at all"

Ella had managed to make some progress in a straight line after a while, but she still had no idea if she was even going in the right direction. Whatever had been hunting her had done one of two things. Either it had given up on chasing her or it was lying in wait. Ella's scientific brain, and general likelihood of bad luck had left her guessing that it was more of the latter. She still hadn't seen it and as far as she knew there weren't any tracks. She was on the backfoot in terrain she didn't understand, so being careful was a given. The further into this place she went, the more questions she had and no answers had been forthcoming. The information Ella had all pointed to this being something that no living human had ever seen, or if any had, then they were long dead. That in and of itself was enough to fascinate and terrify her. The scenery had eventually started to change, and it allowed Ella to reassess her earlier hypotheses. Her current ones weren't good. She didn't know where she was, but she had noticed the generally grim atmosphere and despite her best efforts she hadn't found a way out. Eventually, Ella allowed herself to sit down and rest and think everything through. After seeing things like lakes of liquid magma she was very much certain that she was somewhere she shouldn't be. As obvious as that was, it had been those very features that had reminded her she needed to think about the consequences of being in this place. While she wasn't certain, she was fairly sure she had heard screaming, but it had been distant enough that she was possibly just hearing things. Her brain had no doubt tried to section that off, made it so she couldn't be certain as a way to avoid traumatising it, screams being locked in some box deep in her mind. Her visual surroundings were still completely clear and Ella had seen more than just liquid magma bubbling. There had been bodies, skeletal ones admittedly, but she didn't need her forensics equipment to know they were real. Many had been strung up and hung, some left impaled so they could bleed out. Others had clearly been tortured and died from their injuries, and it disgusted Ella to see that. Part of her had guessed the bodies were a result of some sort of ancient battle but she had no way to prove it. She had stopped to try and make sense of things though. If it was a battle someone had clearly lost badly, and either no prisoners had been taken or they had been executed. Ella hadn't seen any settlements and so she had only been able to guess what might have happened. The most obvious, and likely the correct, theory was that whoever had won had burned one down that not even ruins or ash had remained. The second was so terrible for her personally that it didn't even bare thinking about. Terrible things had happened, but the change in scenery had been welcome. The only problem was that along with the change of scenery was the knowledge of how awful this place truly was. The further Ella walked the more she heard ethereal noises. Screaming, crying, manic and evil laughter. It was all so clear yet every time she had looked around, trying to figure out where the noise had come from they stopped. Eventually, feeling like she had rested long enough, Ella stood up and started walking. She had no idea where she was going until she mindlessly crashed into someone in some sort of line. The person. No. the creature, turned, and it laughed manically at her. "Snack time..." it drawled playfully. Ella turned and tried to run, and collapsed to the ground from the pain of her injuries, she tried to crawl away but only heard the creature laugh. "YOU'RE MINE!" it yelled and grabbed her. It was of a roughly human size, but with red skin and deformed and scarred features. It had sharp teeth and a massive maw for a mouth. It was only at that moment Ella realised she was actually about to be eaten. If asked she'd have denied it, but at that moment, she screamed in pure terror. Evidently her scream was enough to stun the creature momentarily, and at that moment, Ella nearly found herself on the pointy end of a very sharp looking sword. "Release her" said a cold voice with a familiar accent. Ella was promptly dropped to the floor, and if her luck wasn't bad enough, that's when the creature that had been hunting her all this time decided to strike as well.