Behind the teeth of the tortured deity, as I held on to the hilt of my sword stuck in the flesh of that being so as not to slip down its throat, I came across dozens of other mouths dotting its throat; jaws and maxillas of animals and people embedded in the windpipe of what had once been sacred. And they spoke to me.
— Stray! — roared a bony deer mouth.
— Disconnected... — bones wrapped in a thin layer of flesh whispered.
— Human? —a bear's jaw snapped, questioning.
The dozens of independent mouths continued to chatter eerily as the blade of my sword was slowly pushed out due to the high regeneration of the mutilated deity:
— ...No. Elf.
— Ragh! ELF! RAAGH! — all the mouths roared and bit and cursed, almost as if trying to break out of the wall of flesh they were trapped in and tear me apart as quickly as possible.
— But separate... different...
— Resisting?
— Fighting?
— WARRING! — the mouths roared once more, but this time with a different kind of euphoria. They celebrated.
With my heart pounding like a drum in my chest, then sweating more from nervousness than heat, I had no idea what I could do, if I could even do anything against a literal deity.
A deal, like the one I made with the Great Will?
— P-Please! I-I will fight, I will fight against your enemy! T-Then, spare me! — I begged.
— War!
— Enemy!
— NO MERCY!
The mouths spread across the divine abomination's throat seemed to be divided, barking and trying to bite each other.
— Ooh, God...! — My sword was almost completely out of the flesh of the cheek, I was losing my only point of support and would soon slide straight towards that talking crusher that was Demonia's throat. — N-No mercy! I will destroy the Great Will, I will avenge you! I will reconquer everything that was human! — I tried to promise anything that, in my head, would make sense to the betrayed human deities.
And the mouths fell silent.
— ...Great Will... — whispered multiple mouths. — NO MERCY — they all agreed in unison, growling and grinding their teeth audibly, silenced only by a bubbling coming from deeper within their shared body.
— Shit! — My sword was completely expelled from the flesh of Demonia's cheek, and I slid down its tongue.
Just before I fell into total darkness, however, I found myself suspended in the air by dozens of rough, twisted limbs: an arm-like appendage crammed with hundreds of fingers had emerged from wherever Demonia's throat led, and grasped me with one of its many digits.
Speechless, I could only watch the thing before me, whose palm grotesquely split in half, revealing a thin, pale, weakened and trembling figure, a human woman with milky, mad eyes.
The figure gently cupped my face and pulled me close to her until her lips were almost touching my ear.
She whispered something to me.
҉
When Demonia spat me out of her lipless mouth, I felt no relief at all, and not just because of what the tortured deity had revealed to me, but because of the tragic scene before me: torn bodies, so brutalized that it was impossible to even count how many were present among the guts on the floor. My companions.
Before the shock had given way to grief and I could mourn their death, however, the sole free arm of Hell's supreme deity fell upon the remains, crushing them further between its fingers and the cathedral floor.
— Waaagh! — Cruz took a deep breath, wide-eyed and drenched in sweat, as Demonia's hand relaxed, revealing that my companions had all had their bodies reforged and their souls returned, somehow.
— G-God... — Vincente covered his face with his still-shaking hands. They hadn't returned without any after-effects, however, apparently.
— Ooh... thank you, Nianda — Kangar bowed before the ascended being, trembling from head to toe despite his neutral expression.
I should have expected that, considering there would be no point in the ancient human deities revealing that information to me only to execute my friends right afterward, but still, the rational mind could only process so much information at a time, and I still felt like I was about to have a heart attack.
— W-We have to get out of here. Right now — I said more to myself than to anyone else.
— Yes. Immediately — Celestino agreed, eyes wide and jaw dropped, staring into space.
And since Demonia had not produced any convenient portal for us, the only escape route she offered us was the palm she had open, the back of her hand resting on the cathedral floor, waiting patiently.
Fighting my nerves, which told me not to approach that creature again, I climbed onto its palm. Hesitantly, my companions followed me.
Then the tortured deity lifted us up, raising its arm up and up, and once it had reached its limit, it surpassed it, simply creating new elbows and extending the length of the limb until we reached the first steps of a broken staircase at the ceiling.
Cruz and the others all hurried up the stairs, but before following them, I risked one last look at that entity marked as the supreme enemy of the ignorant elven civilization: its body was raw flesh with all sorts of weapons stuck in it, its eyes permanently wept blood, pierced by horns that grew from the sphenoid bone, its ribs were broken and its heart exposed, which it had to pump manually with one hand. Once a dozen proud deities of war, now a pitiful creature, maddened by eternal suffering.
I turned my back to it, climbing the dark staircase upward.
҉
It took us about three months to emerge back to the surface through a series of tunnels, shafts, ramps and elevators filled with strange metal structures; pipes, levers, valves and a host of other incomprehensible things accumulating multiple layers of dust and cobwebs.
We were forced to eat the flesh of blind, freakish cannibalistic monsters, navigate faded maps, and activate long-dormant magi-tech in order to open doors and ascend to higher floors via stairs or elevators, which proved especially difficult while carrying three enormous metal coffins.
Finally, and after accumulating a series of new traumas...
"Plim!", the metal elevator doors opened near the top of a mountain, and sunlight hit our eyes so intensely and clearly that it blinded us all momentarily.
— Haha... — at that moment, however, even that pain of eyes suddenly exposed to sunlight after a long time in the dark felt so pleasant to me.
— By God, finally — Vincente was the first to stagger out of the elevator, and he let himself fall onto the gravel on the ground. We all copied him shamelessly.
— Haicard, I don't know what the next step of your plan is, but please don't literally take us to Hell again — Cruz asked.
— Ah, don't worry, the next stage will be much easier than facing Demonia, we just need to defeat the Hero — I replied.
— The fact that, at this point, this goal seems realistic to me is supposed to be funny? — Celestino wondered.