{Authors note: Apologies, I published this chapter too soon forgetting to include something super important. Even if you think you've already read this, read it again 🤍}
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Once she was able to see beyond his wings, Aura understood the rage simmering behind his silver gaze. Yet— her resolve didn't crumble. Her stomach dropped, if that were worth noting... and she couldn't help but wonder vaguely if she stood a chance at making it out alive. Perhaps her epiphany had made her suicidal due to the simple fact that she was presented with an impossible enemy and it didn't make her hands tremble.
The world of hell was shrouded in a certain type of mystery where one was only taught enough to survive a face off against most of its children. However... there were beasts briefly mentioned with little to no information about them except for their appearance— noted in passing— and sometimes —if they had one— a job occupation.
Ironic isn't it.
And still... knowing all of this there was no denying what stood before them.
Fur so dark It absorbed colour, almost meticulously groomed, covered the body of the seven foot tall beast.... Saliva hung from the lips of three dark snouts like ropes of goo. Red beady eyes burned as bright as what she imagined the very pits of hell. The sight alone was enough to make even seasoned warriors shake with undiluted fear. Each of those six eyes seemed to stare straight through to her core as though seeing the very essence of her soul. Three heads on a single body, attached at the shoulders.
With every detail she picked up her heart sank to her ass.
Hellhound.
Hell's sentry had come to pay them a visit.
Dark leathery lips on the middle head pulled back into a tight grin, and it emphasised the largest canines Aura had ever seen—each one about the length of her forearm. Intrusive thoughts pushed the image of those teeth tearing her in two with a single bite.
She almost shivered.
It hummed. A smug, cynical sound as it continued to eye her.
Amos bristled beside her. His tongue forked and eyes darkened to obsidian.
"None of that now brother... I'm just here to talk." It spoke with a crispy clear accent.
The canine stretched on its haunches and yawned. "I've had a terribly long journey, pardon me."
It were as though it were trying to ease her with acts that seemed terribly mundane.
"What do you want." She bit, fighting her nerves.
Three pairs of eyes watched her lazily... she didn't stop the shivers that crawled up her body this time.
A paw inched forward. In response the swoosh of a drawn sword rung through her ears. Amos had reclined his sword arm in position to strike, his eyes promising violence.
Each head of the three headed dog seeming to have a mind of its own and reacted differently to the weapon. One was amused, one was sombre, the middle was unfazed. It was the middle that continued to address him, "I am not here for you."
Then it turned its beady attention to Aura.
Suddenly, there was an intruder in her mind.
It felt as though a pair of hands had yanked her consciousness when a voice whispered, You're a difficult one aren't you?
~
The world went dark.
A type of dark that made you instinctively strain your eyes to catch whispers of light but to no avail. The type that made you feel blind and panicked, that would have her heart racing had she not been trained to fight without sight.
Aura closed her eyes and focused on what she could sense but still, nothing made sense. This wasn't a physical world, that much she could tell. There was no wind, no scent. She even crouched to the ground to try to feel it beneath her and found herself scooping air.
But she wasn't floating.
"You're very interesting." Came that voice. Airier this time, less feel-in-your-bones intimidating.
"What have you done." She retorted, her fists clenched by her sides. "Where am I?"
"Oh don't worry, I'll return you to your other heart," It chuckled, "It was just simply time we had a very important conversation."
She didn't buy it.
"That's all this is? A conversation?" She couldn't hide her skepticism from her face. Could it even see her features?
Trickles of light started to break through the darkness until a picturesque scene leaked down the walls as though the black were but a room.
White crispy sand dunes. Her feet were buried. She could feel each granule between her toes. She stood beside a skinny tree with a rich green bark that twisted high as the eye could see, with branches that came just low enough for her to reach its pale, round fruit.
Water, she could hear water.
On her left, turquoise waves tickled the surface, pulling away as though too shy and finding its way back again with mustered courage. The sky was a pale blue, decorated with clouds that hung grey roots and carried buildings made of various ivory coloured stone.
Her heart burned.
She had never been to this corner but she knew exactly where she was.
A hound that reached her waist stood at her side. With just a single head, and sleek black fur. Its eyes, instead of a beady red, were an ordinary brown picking up hints of sunlight and reflecting gold.
"I thought I might make myself less intimating." It said, with a clear voice. "Im not your enemy Aura."
"You're a demon." She retorted. "You will always be my enemy."
The hound turned to face her curiously. Although it took this form to appear more genial, it couldnt hide the millions of years of wisdom that peered through her soul. That alone felt formidable, and almost caused her to stumble backwards a step.
It said nothing to her statement, as though it were almost disappointed.
Then it turned its snout back to the beautiful scenery that reminded her of home. Had she not been in the presence of an enemy she would've basked in the glow of light.
"Beautiful isn't it." It hummed, lowering its haunches to sit down.
Aura glanced at the hound.
It seemed to take a deep inhale before letting out a short breath.
"It is..." she responded after a while of silence.
"It would be of course... being the resting place of every good soul in existence." He tilted its head with something like feigned curiosity. "My... I wonder where they all go now..."
"That's a sick thing to say." Aura bit in disgust. It felt as though the dog were rubbing the poor fate of millions in her face when it was beyond her control.
"Is it though?" There came that creepy smile again.
"I am neither demon nor angel." It referenced her previous point. "Even if I were, it wouldn't hurt you to spare some empathy."
Hot red flashed through her body.
"What have you done to deserve my kindness?" She raged quietly. "What have any of them done?"
The dog seemed to shrug. "Touché."
"How could you even suggest such a thing?" She seethed.
The hound stared off into the distance, thoughtfully.
"Since the beginning of time, i have been a warden of the underworld." It started. "It's where my soul was forged. I was made of hellfire, given a body to protect the gates and warden the wicked. Your enemies were not. Despite the deformities in their hearts they know where they truly belong and yet instead of taking steps to rectify their mistakes and seek forgiveness, they destroy that which was denied to them."
"Denied by their own fault—"
"— perhaps. Many were simply foolish enough to be led astray. Put simply... if you were cast out of your own home and condemned to a world of fire, stripped of your beauty and turned into a heinous creature, denied love and kindness what would you become?"
Aura was at loss for words.
"In such conditions it's easy to go, 'but the sons of Adam do not suffer as we do? With their own wicked natures yet they're blessed with eternal life amongst the divine? Weak and feeble as they are.' Envy and contempt breeds it own kind of monster." The dog turned to pierce her with a stern look. "All my life with all the worlds and creatures I've seen, I digress i see children in them all. A demon is but a bitter homeless child, and as bitter children do, they lash out in any way they can because they simply want to return home."
Folding her arms to contain the chill in her body, Aura spoke quietly, "you say this as though there weren't any deeds that brought about their exclusion in the first place."
The hounds tongue lolled out of its snout as it's features relaxed. "And yet, even the worst of Adam's are allowed to repent."
Auras eyes strayed to the crashing waves.
She couldn't argue. There wasn't a single thing she could retort... as much as she wished to maintain her resolve, her heart? It understood.
"Why am I here." She said finally, after a long silence.
"Walk with me." Said the hound.
Taken aback by the sudden change in conversation, Aura stumbled on her words, only able to choke "Walk where—" and made a point to dramatically turn and reference the scenic beach around them... only to see it had disappeared.
They were now in some kind of concrete jungle.
Dilapidated buildings as tall as the eye could see, smothered in vines and plant life of all kind, Mother Nature had broken through. Whatever these buildings were once, however beautiful they had been, they were nothing but relics of another time. Obscured in green and dirt and vines. Roots climbed out of the cracks beneath floor, some reached for the grey mottled sky, others leaned against huge metal boxes as though for support.
Her childhood obsession with the human world told her these were cars, buried beneath green arms and hosting all sorts of bugs. A whole street of them. Scattered across the road, some on their back, a few caved in half as though something terrible had happened and the people that had once driven them were forced to retreat.
On her right, rusted beyond belief were the remains of a bike, it's chain loose and scattered over the ground, barely visible above the moss growing above it.
The bike was small.
Her heart tore at the thought of who it could have once belonged to.
"What is this?" Her voice was but a whisper.
"I'm sure you've wondered what became of the Adam world." The hound said. No lilt of humour to its voice this time. It started forwards, and as though drawn by an unseeable force Aura followed— too stunned to argue.
"Time is different here." He explained. "The destruction of your home came about when you were a child. Now you are at the cusp of your iluo, your body has matured but not your power. It hasn't even been a single generations worth of angel time. Here..... It's been hundreds. Billions of Adam's and Eve's born, matured, died, never having known what the world was like before this. Freedom a strange concept. Freedom a stuff of fairytales."
Aura's heart hummed with dread.
"What do you mean?"
The hound scoffed.
"What do I mean?" It guffawed as though she had asked a stupid question. "What— did you think the human world like the Shifters? Where they're strong enough to combine forces and take a stand against vampires?"
A deep chill settled in her bones.
"Oh no." The chortle turned to something of disbelief. "You really didn't know how bad it was?"
Choking on her words, Aura wrapped her arms around herself and clutched her sides defensively. She wished she had something smart to say for the sake of pride but... she came up empty.
And then the world shifted around them. Colours blurred, it was all too fast to process, and then they were in a cavernous hall with a dome like roof. But Aura didn't pay too much attention to the room itself, it was the people inside that froze her body in what had to be shock.
The hall was filled with naked men and naked women, shackled and chained to one another, standing and lined up in an orderly fashion. Of what appeared to be similar age groups. Adults, but young. Co ordinated by race, she could see the features of each differing tribe the Father created. The east Asians as they later called themselves, to the left, the darker skinned Africans towards the centre, the Europeans just beside them. There were races missing, but every single person present had a dead sheen to their eyes as though numb to the core. The bodies looked healthy, skin scrubbed to be pristine.
"Hell forbid their source of sustenance be underfed." The hound growled distastefully. "I heard it affects the flavour. They organise them by race for a reason too. The way the humans used to with meat. This particular company specialises in every colour of human being you can find so not to alienate their elite clients during the auction. Catering to every taste."
Bile crawled up her throat. Aura was going to be sick.
She doubled over, covering her mouth at the thought— how twisted and vile— how she hadn't imagined— hadn't once thought—
A door opened across the hall.
Light trickled onto shackled feet.
Aura's heart clenched.
A tall imposing figure sauntered into the room. His eyes were the colour of the cold sea, black hair slicked backwards to display a devastatingly sharp jawline and angular features. His lips were thin, nose large, and yet despite the frost to his eyes his featured came together in a way that made him devastatingly beautiful despite his pale pale skin.
Aura didn't need to pick up on that sickeningly sweet scent that undoubtedly masked something dead and rotten, to know this was a vampire.
Before she could react, the hound said "They can't see you. Or feel you. You're but a ghost right now."
Aura whipped her head in the dogs direction with bared teeth. Then a thought dawned on her.
The hellhound controlled everything she was seeing right now. The beach? The street? This hall? It could all simply be a figment of its imagination.
Who was to say any of this was even real?
To what end? What purpose would it have showing her all of this?
What did this... manipulation serve?
Aura turned her back to the blue eyed vampire, and focused on the dog seated before her.
"Why am I here?" She said clearly, breathing clearly again. Because that was what this was, a simple manipulation to attempt to coerce her into something. There was a motive here.
Those intelligent brown eyes regarded her quietly for a moment. She didn't even look back when she heard a chain rattle and one set of footsteps turned into two. The hound waited until the sound retreated further away and a door thumped shut before it said—
"You must die."
There it was. She seethed inwardly. The scheme.
Aura's neck turned so fast she was surprised it didn't snap. "I thought you said you were neither demon or ang—"
"Oh child." It sighed, exhaling a strange sound of pity. Watching her with a pained look she didn't want to find the time understand. "I didn't lie to you, neither is this something I wish for you. It is simply your fate."
Aura refused to accept that as the truth. It was a lie. He was her enemy, he was simply trying to lure her into a trap.
All this time spent fighting to stay alive, she felt a rising panic climb through her throat as she choked out the words "Why?" It wasn't true. It couldn't be but she could at least hear what absurdity he could come up with.
Something to solidify her belief that this dog was taking her for a fool. That was the only truth she was willing to accept.
She couldn't help stumbling away from the dog, feeling the need to put distance as though it would attempt to bring about her death.
Its eyes creased with what she believed must have been carefully practiced pity.
Since when would a hellhound feel such a thing? Not just any, The Hellhound. The biggest dog. It was born and bred in a world without love how would it feel such as pity? How would it feel at all?
"It must happen in the underworld, my home." It explained, as though trying to break through her resolve with its manipulation. "You are far more important than you realise cheruka. Everything that lives and breathes is tied to you. Even me."
Rage bubbled through her arms, "If that's true then are you just adamant on your own death? If so then find a sword to impale yourself on."
"I will not die."
"Then what—"
"I'm letting you go." It announced. Ending what would definitely turn into an argument.
The sky began to leak away, returning to the bleak darkness that had welcomed her before. Everything trickled to black.
"It is not my duty to reason with you, I came only so you would know the truth of your fate. Laugh often and love as hard as your heart allows. Know the pleasures this life has to give you until it is your time to face death."
The hound disappeared. All that was left was the disembodied voice she felt in her bones.
He will await with open arms.