Inferno 7011

12 THE YARD OF REGRET

The place was called the Yard of Regret, though it was a long time before Greg learned that.

It was a very boring place.

It was centuries of boredom. Or at least it felt like centuries. In Hell there was little sense of the passage of time, although time did pass. It passed and passed. He even got tired of staring at Sofia's naked body, as time, interminably, passed.

And passed.

And passed.

*

In the Court of Filth, Ithuria walked.

They'd dragged her down to a dark cellar. In the cellar's ceiling was a large metal wheel that rotated slowly. From the metal wheel several long poles protruded down towards the floor. They'd chained her hands behind her back, and then raised them up and chained them to the pole. They'd clamped weights to her naked breasts and locked high-heeled shoes to her bare feet, forcing her to stumble along on tiptoe, following the slow rotations of the wheel.

On and on it went.

And on and on she went, stumbling around in circles, the blackness total, the air cold on her bare skin. Time passed and passed and she kept stumbling on, until her legs ached and her feet ached and her breasts ached, and in fact all of her ached severly, and nothing at all happened.

*

Somewhere else in the Court of Filth, Yraine waited. They'd dressed her in four-inch-high heels, and a tiny black girdle that rode low on her hips and barely reached her thighs. A single red jewel sat on each of her nipples, attached to slender golden chains draped artfully about her shoulders. Her wrists and elbows were cuffed behind her back. A collar around her neck was affixed to a chain, which rain to the ceiling, tugging on her throat just enough to be uncomfortable.

She waited in a small, dark room for what felt like days. The room's only furnishing was a polished obsidian throne.

At last a door opened and a man entered, dressed in ragged red robes and wearing a crown of charred iron. His face was frozen in an awful grin.

"Hello," he said. "I am Lord Pazgul, ruler of the Order of Pain. Would you like to tell me your name?"

"Mrrg," said Yraine, unable to speak due to the gag in her mouth.

"I apologize," said Lord Pazgul. From his robes he drew a slim leather whip. "I forgot that you couldn't speak."

He moved behind her and set to work with his whip. Each lash sent a thousand stinging tendrils of agony up Yraine's back. She screamed, pointlessly, through the gag. Her screams were particularly shrill each time the whip carved around back and touched her bare breasts.

At last Lord Pazgul seemed to have wrung as much amusement as he could from her suffering. He returned the whip to his robes and produced a small black iron amulet, which he waved across her body. The whip-marks glowed black for a moment, and then disappeared.

"Good trick, eh?" said Pazgul. "Now it's time for you to demonstrate your devotion."

He unlocked the chain from the ceiling and tugged at it. Yraine staggered after him. At the black throne he sat and thrust her to her knees. He removed the gag from her mouth.

"Now," he said, "demonstrate your loyalty."

Yraine hesitated for only an instant. Then she lowered her face to his groin and, through a delicate motion of her teeth, parted the folds of his robes. She placed her tongue at the base of his shaft and delicately ran it to the tip.

"Aaaah yes," said Pazgul. "That is the kind of performance I appreciate."

She set to licking, her eager tongue exploring his entire crotch, until his shaft had swollen to its full prodigious length. Only then did she take it into her mouth.

"Superb," moaned Pazgul.

She worked the shaft with aplomb, until at last Pazgul's own instincts siezed him and he gripped her head, forcing his cock as deep as it could go and holding it there. To her credit, Yraine only struggled faintly as he kept her there.

At last her work was complete, and his bitter load emptied itself into her throat. She coughed slightly and swallowed.

"Exemplary behaviour, girl," said Pazgul. "Continue, and you may find yourself promoted."

He returned the gag to her mouth and, dragging her back to the centre of the room, re-attached the chain to the ceiling. He departed. The door closed, and once again the room was plunged into darkness.

*

Dalile sat naked in a deep pit, staring at the chain grille far above. Every now and then a distant scream would echo down.

It was quite boring.

*

Ragak waited in the ceremonial chamber.

On the floor was a tattered red carpet; on the walls were rotten tapestries depicting long-forgotten kingdoms. On a nearby table a number of delicacies were laid out - there was a bowl of writhing maggots, a bowl of dead flies, a plate covered in lizards' eyes, and a skull-shaped goblet filled with what looked suspiciously like blood.

Ragak did not look like himself. He was disguised as a black-eyed demon in ceremonial demon armour, wearing a ceremonial demon's blood-axe on his back. He cut quite an imposing figure.

Into the room slouched a man who appeared to be rotting from the inside out. His distended jaw flapped weakly. "Droggoth, Lord of Puke, will visit thee shortly," the servant drawled. "In the interim, I beg thee, partake of the feast offered on this table."

Ragak smiled thinly and was silent.

A moment later, a creature so foul and repulsive that Ragak nearly puked slouched into the room. He was a bloated monstrosity, slack-jawed, deep-jowled, folded with layer upon layer of thick fat. From his sides dangled two long arms, as weak and thin as the rest of his body was corpulent; narrow claws dangled at their ends, nearly scraping the floor. His eyes were huge black orbs with tiny yellow points at the centre, and from his grinning mouth a long serpentine tongue dangled, flicking idly. At his groin hung a cock of startling size and incredible repugnance. Behind him crawled a girl of startling beauty, naked except for a draping of jewels and golden chains, led on a leash.

"Behold," mumbled the slackjawed servant, "Droggoth, Lord of Puke, Master of this Infernal Realm."

Ragak grit his teeth and performed a demonic obesiance.

Droggoth slouched onto the throne that flanked the table and drank deeply from a goblet of blood-wine. His thick lips, encrusted with slime, made loathsome sounds as he did this. The girl crawled between his legs and began to lick his sickening balls with surprising tenderness.

Droggoth mumbled something through a mouthful of bloodwine. His voice sounded like wet slugs being crushed under steel boots.

"The Pukelord welcomes thee to his kingdom and wonders to what he owes the honour of your visit," said Slackjaw.

Ragak had memorized his speech carefully.

"I have come to this court to settle an ancient debt accrued to me by a slave in your possession," he said. "The girl's name is Natalia. Long ago, I performed a service for her. I now require that my service be repaid."

Droggoth chuckled. His gruesome lips uttered more incomprehensible words.

"The Pukelord finds your request both amusing and just," said Slackjaw. "I will take you to the girl now, and you may exact your price from her."

He beckoned. With one final bow to Droggoth's appalling bulk, Ragak followed Slackjaw out of the room.

*

Every day in the Yard of Regret, the infernal sun sloughed the flesh from Greg's bones, and every morning it would regenerate. The suffering of this perverse hell drove Greg's mind further and further into insanity, as every day felt like an eon of burning. At last his sickened brain retreated inward, leaving the shattering pain of reality behind.

He woke up.

It took him a few moments of blinking to remember where he was. At last he recognized the pitted ceiling as the ceiling of his own dorm at Miskatonic U.

His head felt heavy. He sat up slowly and glanced at the clock. The glowing red letters informed him that it was just after 3 AM.

"What a dream," he mumbled, rubbing his forehead.

There was a girl lying in bed beside him. He could tell by her beautiful bare back and her flowing hair. Had he gotten laid last night? He couldn't remember, and that was a shame, because that was about the hottest back he'd ever seen. If the front was that good he didn't know what he'd do.

He rolled out of bed and stumbled into the kitchen. The only light came from the streetlights outside. He opened the fridge, rooted around for a minute, and found a jar of soggy pickles. They tasted pleasantly sour. He had three or four and then turned to stare at the hallway door.

He wasn't sure what about the door had drawn him to it. Something irresistable, and yet profoundly unsettling, was shifting behind the door. He went to it and opened it a crack.

In the dimlit hallway a shadow moved, circling swiftly around the corner.

Greg closed the door, took a deep breath, and went back into the bedroom. He pulled on his robe and fastened it around his waste. When he looked at the bed, he saw that the girl had rolled over in her sleep, and that she did know her after all: it was Princess Kitra. Her eyes were closed and she was breathing slowly.

He reached under the bed and pulled the obsidian sword free from its hiding spot. He could feel it humming with energy, eager to kill again.

He returned to the hallway and padded silently around the corner. The door to the stairwell was open, and a dark miasma drifted through the opening.

He pushed through the door and started down the dark stairwall. The Un-Thing had left a foul stench behind it, the odour of death and decay. A dark mist hovered in the air where it had passed.

Greg followed it down the steps, one flight after another, descending endlessly. He knew now that he would reach the lobby and that it would be waiting there, and that he would fight it again, as he'd fought it again and again in his dreams since that night in the swamp when everything had fallen to pieces.

He gripped the sword in his hand.

*

In a dark cell in the darkest depths of the dungeons of the Pukelord Droggoth, Ragak finally saw Natalia again.

She was as naked as the day she was born, her wrists bound behind her and chained to the ceiling, forcing her onto her toes, and with her legs spread by an iron bar. Her limbs trembled with stress. Her exposed cleft glistened, invitingly.

The slackjawed servant grinned at Ragak. He adjusted his iron girdle.

"Leave me," he commanded roughly.

The servant grimaced and left.

"Natalia," Ragak whispered. "It's me. It's Ragak."

"Thank the gods," she whispered back. "I thought you'd never come."

"Let me try to remove these chains," he said.

He hurried to her side. The bonds were thick and strong; he was on the verge of drawing his axe, when something happened to interrupt him.

The cell door flew open, and a figure entered, ablaze with fire, dragging the squealing servant by his tongue. In the other hand he clutched a flaming sword.

It was Heroslayer Nethro.

"You idiot slave," he growled at the servant. "You can't see through the most piddling of illusions? This is no demon knight that you've allowed into our Lord's sacred fuckchamber. This is a foul invader."

"Stand back, Heroslayer," growled Ragak. "This time I'll cut you down for good."

"Oh, shut up," said Nethro. His sword cleaved the air in an arc of flame, and Ragak disintegrated into ash. "Burn forever in the Pits of the Black Flame."

He shoved the servant into a corner. From the Heroslayer's groin a cock of prodigious size emerged, red as brimstone.

"Perhaps this will teach you a lesson, slut," he grunted.

Natalia squealed and wriggled her hips, helplessly, as he entered her.

*

Had that been him in the swamp that night, Sir Alharazed thought, pursuing the Un-Thing into its deepest lair? He'd been in a different body then, but he knew that he hadn't changed, not on a fundamental level. He knew because of how the obsidian sword hummed in his hand.

For months he'd pursued it obsessively. At the king's court they'd begged him to turn away; they'd warned him that dozens of worthy knights had pursued the Un-Thing, and that all had returned as failures, with a hollowness in their chests that slowly devoured them. Sir Alharazed was not dissuaded. The king himself had begged him to turn from his path, and Alharazed had refused.

The only thing that gave him pause was when Kitra, weeping, clutched his arm and wept, pleading for him to follow a different path.

But nothing could dissaude Sir Alharazed. He pursued the Un-Thing into the obliterated forests and tracked it through the untold desert. He found its trail in abandoned villages and smelled its miasma on high mountains far from the touch of mankind.

At last, in the dark swamp, he found a ruined temple of the utmost shadow, and there the Un-Thing awaited him, its dark eyes gleaming. He killed it with a single blow.

He thought he had been victorious where all others had failed. But when he returned to the court, it was desolate, annihilated, and the Un-Thing lingered in his dreams, pursuing him through the shadows of his unconscious.

Greg ran through the swamp in Sir Alharazed's body, eternally pursuing his nameless enemy. The obsidian blade hummed in his right hand. He remembered traveling through time and through countless other bodies, and then he remembered how he'd slain the Blighted God, destroying it in a flurry of blades while wearing its own body.

Suddenly he knew what to do.

*

When Greg woke up, he was still hanging naked in the Yard of Regret. But he felt a little better.

He closed his eyes and tried to focus.

He felt his skin changing.

"Wowee," he whistled.

His flesh turned green. Wings sprouted from his back. His face distorted and his eyes turned yellow.

Once again, he assumed the form of the Blighted God.

The ropes around his arms burst. He bellowed with rage and, with a mighty flap of his wings, ascended into the air.