--- Six Cycles Later, Near Ceria's Estate, Hell ---
Gunshots resounded through the dense trees as seven agents and twenty-three demons engaged the trackers Fentin had sent to intercept them. Bullets whizzed through the trees and arrows swarmed like needles on a hedgehog.
One of the house guards sounded a horn, but the noise faltered as he was filled with arrows, their shafts sticking out of every weak joint in his armor and piercing his skull through the open slats in his helmet. He collapsed in front of Tom and his blade clattered to the earth.
Tom redirected his fire at the tracker he could see, and the demon was thrown against a tree in flames. The ammunition the Vatican had sent the Special Divisions really was coming in handy down here.
Tom turned and received a sandaled foot to his head, sending him to the ground with spots dancing before him. He swung his gun at his assailant, but the blow was blocked and he was rolled onto his back, dazed. Grinding his teeth, he fired blindly behind him. His gun was ripped out of his hand and thrown aside.
He heard his blade come out of its scabbard and it too was thrown aside in the dirt. Tom struggled as best he could, but soon found himself covered with hands and his own being brought together behind him. Something tight wrapped around his wrists and he tried to see what was going on.
Beside him, Harvey was on the ground with three trackers on top of him and his hands bound behind his back. A foot kept his face against the ground, and he had an uncharacteristic snarl on his face. He saw Tom, and they shared a few unspoken thoughts by their expressions.
"Tom..." Harvey started.
"No!" Tom yelled, realizing that his hands were bound. His feet were brought together and he started kicking as hard as he could, striking something with his heel. "No!"
His world started to lose focus as he thrashed around wildly, realizing his legs were bound up to the knee. His breath caught in his throat and he could hear things in his head he knew weren't real. His pupils dilated.
"Tom, calm down! Listen to me," Harvey said, but Tom couldn't.
"No! I won't! You won't!" He wrestled his hands free and lunged up at the nearest demon he could find, grabbing the black-haired tracker by the sides of his head. Tom yanked him down hard enough to throw himself backwards in the process, and tucked the demon's head beneath his arm. He twisted his body left, using one arm to push the demon the opposite direction.
He heard a resonant
snap
in the demon's neck and brought his hand down on the disjoined notch to make sure his neck was broken. With that done, he swung both arms around and struck one of the demons in the face, knocking him aside. Tom went wild, fear driving him to the point of instinct.
He pulled a handful of powder out of the pouch of one demon trying to restrain him, and lashed out with his fist closed around the dark brown stuff. The tracker dodged his fist and grabbed it, only to have Tom lunge up and bite his neck and hold fast, clamping his jaw down with all the force he could muster.
His ears rang and blood filled his mouth, but Tom held on even as the demon kneed him in the stomach, causing his insides to flip-flop uncomfortably. His fist was released and he jammed the handful of powder into his assailant's eye, earning a scream.
Tom released the demon's neck and pushed him away, opting instead to find anything to free his legs. A small bag of stones for a slingshot was all he could find, so he took it and threw his weight against the demon trying to recover from being bitten and blinded in one eye.
He came down with the bag of stones with little more than heavy, labored breathing and fear-stricken grunts. The first strike turned the demon's forehead red. The second spattered blood across Tom's face. The third caved in the demon's skull and a torrent of blood flowed across his face. Tom continued to beat the dead demon until his head resembled the shape of a bowl rather than a ball.
Tom suddenly realized that he was free of assailants and hurriedly unwound the rope from his legs, kicking it off with contempt. He got to his feet and found his gun, reloading it immediately. He managed to kill one more tracker before a house guard came to his aid.
Soon afterwards, the engagement came to a close with most of the trackers either dead or retreating into the forest. Tom looked around, and only saw five of the house guards left, hurrying to untie the agents who'd been bound.
It was no great surprise to Tom that Veronaa and Jerhme hadn't had any trouble, and walked about casually collecting arrows in a quiver that hung on Veronaa's hip. She tested the bow in her hands with a smirk.
"Made of finer stuff than humans use, I suppose," she remarked dryly. Jerhme just handed her a handful of arrows, several of which had been removed from corpses. She placed a hand on Tom's shoulder and he slapped her arm away with a growl.
"Don't touch me!"
"You d-"
"Just don't touch me," Tom repeated, this time less angrily. "Just...I need space. Don't touch me. Don't talk to me. I- fuck just leave me alone. I'm this fucking close to losing it." The agent held his thumb and his forefinger a hair's width from each other.
"Leave him alone." Greg warned as he and Harvey approached. "You're not doing anything good by bothering him."
Jerhme stiffened at Greg's tone, but said nothing. Veronaa was unconvinced.
She grabbed Tom's hand to get his attention, and he swung the muzzle of his pistol in line with her head. "Let go," he snarled, jerking his hand out of hers and stepping back out of her reach. She put her hands up in surrender.
"Fine. I yield."
Tom backed away. "Fuck you. I'm fucking going nuts here because of- fuck! I, I can literally feel myself losing my fucking mind. I- I- I- I can feel it coming on when these triggers get flipped. And no, Harvey, it
is
okay for me to talk about it no matter
what
the doctor says."
Harvey dropped his eyes and shook his head. Tom glared at Veronaa again until her gaze too fell from his. He finally lowered his gun from her head and holstered it reluctantly. Veronaa didn't seem as nice as she did nearly a week ago. Tom tried to push down thoughts of her eloquently deceiving him and wanting his soul.
"Let's just go and give him time to come back down off of it," Greg suggested.
"I'm okay. I just...God, I can
feel
how fucked up my head is. I'm fucking paranoid. I'm scared. I'm angry. Knowing my diagnosis and symptoms is not helping. I want to be alone." Tom tossed his gun and his sword to Jerhme. "I don't know if I'd try to find peace or spite Ceria with these at this point."
Jerhme nodded slowly. "I'll keep them safe."
Tom didn't say anything back as he walked into the forest with the leader of the house guards at his heels, keeping a close eye on him. Tom didn't protest, knowing that doing so would only end with the same result he currently had and a lot more yelling and hot tempers. A frustrated sigh escaped him and he slumped against a tree.
"Just look away," he asked, starting to cry. He covered his eyes with his arm and cried into the crook of his elbow quietly, hearing nothing from the demon behind him but the occasional clinking from shifts in posture.
Tom didn't like this. He didn't like being watched while he was upset, and that he couldn't avoid it here was even more frustrating. He fled from thoughts and images of the grinning leer in his mind, pushing it away and trying to fill his head with things that didn't relate to it. The threesome with Veronaa and Dana came to him almost immediately, and it helped him alleviate his anxiety and fear somewhat.
He wiped his eyes and was glad that at least he'd been able to stop the crying. Turning to the house guard, he nodded and they walked back to the remaining group to continue. By this time, most of the weapons and what armor could be salvaged was packed into neat bundles and into piles to be collected.
When everything was deemed set, the party of twelve continued on through the forest, now slowly turning into woods as the trees thinned and the light from the sun came down in large pools rather than in thin beams.
It looked almost like earth here, like a pine forest with different types of trees. Most of them were so tall that he couldn't see the tops from where he was standing. Others were younger trees that bent and creaked in the wind. It was a more peaceful and welcome place than Tom had thought it would be.
It didn't look like the suffering one might expect in Hell.
Eventually, the group came upon a cobblestone road that was nearly as wide as eight people side-by-side. Here, the large house guard captain directed them to the right and they followed this road for what seemed like only a few miles before coming across an armed column of soldiers that greeted the house guard captain as General Lusotan.
The large demon commanded them to continue moving and retrieve the bodies and armor he had been forced to leave behind. The small group continued on as the column filed past down the road with little more than glances.
Further down the road, they reached a stone arch that shimmered like the surface of a pond with stones being thrown into it. Beside the two-storey arch sat a small, squat stone building. Lusotan made them stop in front of the arch and went inside the building for a few moments before returning to his position at the head of the group.
He walked through the arch, and disappeared into thin air. It took Tom a moment to realize that this was another portal, and had great reluctance to enter it. The last time he'd been told to go through a portal, Fentin and his men had come out of it.
But, as he walked through the archway, all he was met with on the other side was a wooded path with his comrades walking with him. The trees had thinned some, but the road was entirely different. Instead of cobblestone, there now sat great flagstones in neat rows with nearly no seams between them to find. On either side of the road, large pillars hewn from what looked like single stones each lined the road.
Tom felt like he was going to some kind of ancient temple, and shuddered to think that some deity was waiting at the end for a sacrifice. He shook the thought from his head.
"Tom, is that you?"
Tom's eyes went straight to the voice that had called his name. A woman in a yellow sundress smiled at him, accompanied by a dirty, raven-haired architect wearing stained and ripped overalls.
"Aeril?" Tom was stunned to find someone he knew besides the six he'd come here with. Aeril and Tyrin matched his pace and the latter stared at Tom with complete and total awe.
"Star child..." she murmured.
Tom gave Aeril a look. "Star child?"
