The dragon's harem

Matilda walked through hell’s gate and winched, immediately bursting into a painful cough. She could feel her lungs burning, her eyes refused to open, and her ears started ringing. Behind her, Gamond, Lunara suffered from the same pain. Sara was the only one unaffected, but today she didn’t look like she normally did. She instead had two long black horns on her head and massive red and leathery wings.

Maharaja gave them four fangs, so four people can withstand hell’s punishment without dying and being chained by it. Soon, the three of them seemed to recover as the fangs’ power started rushing through their bodies. The first to sigh in relief was Lunara, followed by Gamond, and lastly Matilda a while later.

The last fang was left for Mira’s father. They can’t bring him out with the chains still binding him. That would just cause Hell’s Gate to open and shatter the whole castle to snatch him back. They have to break the chains here, and the key to doing that is the fangs.

Right now, they were standing in the middle of a nightmarish forest of black, charred trees, embers still burned in them. Upon a closer look, those weren’t trees but ancient black bones. The soil beneath them was red, searing hot to the point that Matilda thanked the living gods that Sara advised her to wear fire-resistant boots.

Their mission is to find Mira’s father in this hell, the ninth layer of hell, Asmodeus’s domain. This is the place where the worst of the worst get punished, ancient villains, primordial evil, men so vile that speaking their mere names can land a mortal a spot in the upper layers of hell.

“The sinner here… are special.” Sara looked at them with a worried face. “I’ll walk in the front, and you follow me. Look only at my back, don’t look at anything else, especially the sinners. They won’t approach us.”

Everyone looked at her with worried faces, but soon Gamond sighed, “Aren’t they chained sinners? What could they do? I bet that I can kill a few of them.”

Sara shook her head, “Evil dragons, those who surpassed twilight are usually devoured by Tiamat in the first layer of hell. But that isn’t because they can’t be punished. Here.” She looked up, “Someone of your power might end up being imprisoned in the eighth layer above us.”

The horrors in this layer weren’t something that Gamond and Lunara could face; at best, they could grab everyone else and run.

The girls followed Sara’s advice; she was a devil, and her knowledge was the reason she was now with them. The four walked slowly, and soon Sara took a step out of the bone forest, followed by Gamond.

Immediately, Gamond called everyone, ordering them to stop. Sara looked back and saw that Gamond had closed her eyes. Then Gamond turned to the other two girls, “Close your eyes.” She grabbed Lunara’s hand, and Lunara grabbed Matilda’s hand.

The two were confused, asked her what the matter was. She simply shook her head. What she saw, she would rather not remember. And she is sure the two of them would rather not see it as well.

Sara grabbed Gamond by the hand and guided everyone through a desolate hellscape. Wails of tormented screams, searing flames, begging cries, the sound of flesh being crushed and bones shattered.

They walked and walked for what felt like eternity. The sinner’s pleas assaulted their minds, and with each passing second, the desire to take just one peek started building up in Lunara and Matilda’s heads. If not for Gamond’s constant growls reminding them to keep their eyes shut or she’ll freeze them, one or both of them would’ve looked.

As they walked and to keep them busy and wash away the thought of looking around, Sara used a magical necklace of hers to talk to them, directly into their minds. She went on explaining some of this layer’s features that they should be aware of.

Asmodeus, the ruler of hell, is actually a twin. Two women with long flowing blond hair and azure eyes. Some rumors say they aren’t twins, but the same person. No one was able to confirm it.

The devils here don’t know much about Asmodeus’s powers or personality, but she could describe the twins with one word it’ll be aloof. Sara herself is a priestess who worships them, and she has their blood, which means that they are her grand, grand, grandmothers, or at least one of them.

Using her lineage and status as a priestess, getting a few devils to assist them shouldn’t be a problem. She’ll try to get an audience with Asmodeus, but they shouldn’t get their hopes up. She doesn’t even know whether Asmodeus is in the layer’s capital or not.

The forest they landed on earlier was called the forest of bones, and it was the corpse of an ancient god. That god is alive, awake, and aware, just forced to endure his body rotting away for thousands of years.

Here in hell, the devils torture the sinners like how humans cultivate the lands. Now, as they walked, there were thousands and thousands of creatures, people included, being tortured and tormented on each side. That harrowing sight is why they shouldn’t look around. The reason they could look around inside the god’s corpse because they couldn’t see it being tortured.

They walked and walked for hours. Every now and then, a devil would stop, ask Sara if those behind her were new sinners, and she would tell the devil that they weren’t. The devil would then fly away with a disappointed sigh. Matilda even heard a devil asking Sara what kind of heinous crime someone as pathetically weak as her committed to be sent here. She was both appalled and terrified.

Four hours later and they finally reached the first city. Sara told the girls they could look around, and they all opened their eyes. They were now standing in the middle of a black gatehouse, several devils stood around as guards.

The devil’s weapons looked strange, made of some black metal and glowing with a menacing red inferno. None of them looked friendly and gave the girls disgusted glares, except Sara, whom they treated with enough respect to be passable in human manners.

It took the girls a few seconds to understand that the devils didn’t respect Sara herself, but the blood of Asmodeus that she carries in her veins.

But… the devil’s attitude quickly changed when they saw one of the fangs. Their faces were drowned in horror.