So it was that the craggy landscape of Elephant's Pass gave way to dunes of rust-red sand, black-stemmed spindly plants jutting sparsely from the epidermis, the third sun beating down crimson rays through the cloud cover.
The monk walked, not floated, usually; their usual glamoric flair was absent as they trudged several lagging feet behind the group. Still beautiful, of course, but a mark below ethereal. Their face was slightly devoid of color, eyes fixed forward, the rosy touches of pink which usually graced their horns slightly faded. They gnawed their lips anxiously.
They stopped at a divot parallel to the Road, wherein sprouted a nerve-plant grove heavy with fruit. Sano's stomach rumbled, for every demon's nature is to eat despite having no material need for it. She dived into the grotto and began stuffing them into her mouth as fast as possible. Beaten Dog and the beggar, who similarly lacked the particular discipline needed to abstain from food, quickly followed.
"Small ones!" the monk exclaimed, "Control yourselves! Raw nerve-fruit will turn your stomachs."
Sano, having already swallowed about six nerve-fruits whole, blinked up at the monk silently, beak dripping with endoneurial fluid.
Scowling in disapproval, the monk turned to the beggar: "Couldn't you corral them? Given you are the other adult here?"
"Why stop them?" the beggar retorted. "Who knows the next time you'll get food for free. Take it when you got it, I say."
The monk let out a long sigh. "Blame me not for your intestinal struggles to come."
"Focus on your own struggles, fancy monk," the beggar drawled before shuffling further into the brush, where the brambles went tangled and plentiful.
Sano watched the monk settle on the edge of the pit and go through their rites.
"Don't you want to eat?" She asked through a mouthful of half-chewed pulp, holding out one of the unbroken fruit though she didn't really want to.
To her relief the monk turned down her offer. "I do not. I sustain myself on morning dew, on the fiber of a single leaf when my energy is low — but most times, hunger crosses not my mind."
Sano popped the fruit in her mouth and tried to imagine never knowing the taste. It was impossible. Food was one of the best things in the world, in Sano's estimation.
"It is one of our precepts — disconnect oneself from hunger, and learn to sustain thyself on the concept of oneself. It protects thee from fading."
Sano nodded, but as it often was when the monk spoke their flowery, gentle words, did not fully understand. She did what she knew how to do, which was to keep eating.
"Would you care to hear a story?" said the monk.
Sano nodded again. Listening to stories was familiar as well. She had been told many fables by her mother, curled up on blankets next to the stove-fire. So the monk began.
—
In the time before War, there was a serene village on the outskirts of Purgatory— neither too big nor too small; nestled in a grove of mandragoras trees with great roots descending like spider's legs; and next to the grove, a river ran with water as clear and unclouded as glass.
The people of this village were simple, lovely people. They lived in the boughs of the trees, feeding each other the beetles that crawled beneath the shade, talking of simple things and loving one another.
One day a young demon decided to venture down from the tree boughs. He had eaten all there was to eat and drank from the crystal waters and wished to see the world outside.
His fellows said, 'Now why go do such a thing? Our every need is taken care of, by our trees and river, by each other.'
'I wish to see if the world outside is as beautiful as here,' the kind demon replied.
—
The beggar made a gagging sound. "Heavy and saccharine as beetle-honey, your parables are."
Serenely ignoring the beggar's interjection, the monk continued:
—
So the kind demon set off under the black sky, for there were yet no suns and moons. The ground was strange and cool beneath his feet. He walked until he came across a road, and he followed that road until he saw something strange in the distance. An old demon lay prone next to the road, its flesh half-picked as if by buzzard-flies, skin stretched thin and poked through with great holes; strangest of all, the whole of its body bled wispy trails of smoke from no visible wound, simply emitting from the flesh.
The kind one approached, and asked, 'What has happened to you, dear elder? Have you been attacked?'
'No, nothing of the sort,' replied the vanishing demon, 'I am being forgotten. I have lived an age alone, my bones and flesh old and decrepit. Everyone who once knew my name is cessated, and no one has bothered to learn.'
'How awful,' said the kind one. 'I'll speak it for you. Tell me your name.'
'I remember it not myself,' the old demon replied. There was nothing that could be done, for a demon lives and dies by its name.
The kind monk laid the old demon back and gave it a sip of sweet liquor. He spoke a smoke-prayer and closed the old demon's eyes. Thus, the old demon faded away.
The kind one thought of the old demon's misfortune. How terrible it would be to have no one remember my name! He thought. It is good fortune I have my fellows back at the village, my hatch-fellows, the elders who oversaw my growth.
But then he thought of how one day, their names might fade before his, and then he would be left with no one again.
At once, the kind one was filled with a new, terrible fear.
Thus the kind one vowed to create a world in which no name would be forgotten, so that no one would be consigned to such a terrible fate as the old demon ever again.
—
"What a crock of shit," said the beggar. "Want to hear a real story?"
—
It were blazing scarlet dawn when the boys and I went off to war. Sun perfectly red and bloody like a peach. Of course I were fresh-faced, newly minted rotten soldier. All the lads were, fresh on the scene all cocksure, proud to serve Mother dear. Nawt their faces but their names I remember...
Under the command of our general, who were some fowl-headed with a wattle longer than his neck, we marched till the sky curdled like milk and separated into layers. Up the golden road we walked — me, Skinny, Eshka, Old Horse — jittery with nerves and pep-drink from the morning. Neath our robes our boney limbs trembled. 'Be not afraid to die!' they told us. 'For to die you shall be remembered!' Yet still, we were afraid.
I were but a scrawny nymph back then, barely big enough to fill my military britches. Like everyun else were I from nowhere, had nothing, swooped up by a whitemaskman 'fore my third tern. So were we all. Each sword were carved on the handle with our rank — centipedes, we were deigned, made to scuttle along the dirt. Meant to feel out the ground and report back with its composition, what parts could be eaten. Silt and sand-worm, peat moss, bedrock. Skinny liked to pick the shiny bits from ir teeth and keep 'em. Gleam-prizes from the dirt.
All up in a line we marched. In the distance were drum-beats — you, girl, who know nothing of war, wouldn't know the drums of Hell. Massive things. Bigger than two Elephants. And at the top, a drummer, tapping out the rhythms of war. You'd hear it night and day. Anyway, we marched, mouthbreathing knuckle draggers the lot of us, following the command of our general with not a clue where to and wherefore we were headed. Happy to be stupid, as you should be, girl.
Old Horse were our horn-blower, who were to signal the rest of the lot where the army would march, for which we scaled the highest point the sky would reach. It were less real then, all-matter, less defined and touchable; some things would become pliant like soft mud, as long as you walked far enough. We reached our stopping point when Skinny got a tetchy splinter in ir hoof, and our general decided we were high enough along anyhow. So we rested and waited.
Hellhorns make sound that fire like an arrow, straight ahead through wind or rock, it don't matter. From a hundred yards away can ye hear a Hellhorn bellow. Old Horse had a bad leg that bent backwards and rotten gray teeth but oh et had lungs that could outcry a mandrake whale. Et played one note, cause one was all you needed — a note that made our teeth rattle in our skulls and our eyeballs buzz. Lower than low. And then at their call the army came.
I only heard stories of the snakes before — of course I never saw the Mother's formation Herself, low I were on the ladder — but this I saw, I'll never forget, and if you saw it you'd never forget it either; the memory is woven through my dreams. The snake formation were taught to us by Mother Herself. Twas her preferred way of eating the universe. In Her serpent form, She would do Her cosmic dance through space with open jaws to swallow all that would fit, Her maw three universes wide, nothing escapes; while She dances Her children dance around Her. All of us reaching, Her reaching, no one can stop us. Our might rivals Heaven.
Of course without Satan the snake formation isn't near as strong. But the wrath of a hundred thousand devils is still mighty fearsome. We can still eat.
We felt the rumble before anything— different from the bone shaking tremor of the Hellhorn, not one big sound, but a thousand coalescing. In the distance like a swarm of locusts, a great cloud of indistinct shadows. Wriggling and writhing. I was once told true soldiers of Hell go into a fugue state as they march, the dance whipping them into a frenzy. The rhythm of the drums is what does it, tap tap tapping a beat so infectious and enthralling it sends demons out of their mind. Tis the pulse of the snake, my general once said, and the devils the fangs. And so they came.
The sky went dark as they blotted out the sun. A hundred thousand devils in snake formation, of all colors and parts, all blending together into a singular, massive, bubbling form. All their eyes were white and wide and rolled up in their heads, fear-less, mind-less. Even if all of them were to meet the edge of an angel's spear, they would feel no fear. If a thousand fell, a thousand more would fly forward.
I never seen anything like that in my life. None of us had. We stayed frozen long long after they passed overhead, stupid, slack jawed. We were entranced by the beauty of it. The dance of the universe's end. The little frail demon bodies rejected by Heaven for being too soft, too weak, too asymmetrical — what destruction those bodies now wrought! That day I understood why the first devils gave their lives to Satan's wrath. I knew so did everyun else.
There were never something as beautiful as that sight. And nothing since.
—
"That's what you believe to be beautiful?" the monk said. "Wanton violence and destruction?"
"Yes," said the beggar.
"Unbelievable," said the monk, shaking their head.
"If you saw it, you'd say different," the beggar said with a wide, honey-flavored smile.
"I had better continue telling parables of the Kind One," sniffed the monk. "Of everyone here, the one who needs them most is surely thee."
"In Hell, you understand," was all the beggar said before it calmly went back to enjoying its nerve-fruit.
Sano pondered the two stories for the rest of their short respite, weighing each against the other and the old tales she used to listen to. Till the beggar became paralyzed from the nerve-plants' toxic shocks, forcing the others to help it get untangled, she played them in her mind, over and over again.