Every true practitioner of black magic knows where that road leads, and while they’ll spend a great deal of time, money, and effort learning how to avoid or limit any time in Hell, they get very squeamish when it comes to the details of the place itself.
How it works. Its history and nature. Even obviously useful things like how magic works there or the Realm’s geography.
I
first recognized the willful blindness these assholes seem to share a
few years ago, and once I did, I saw a small crack I might fit through.
I started directing more of my secret efforts to gain occult knowledge
toward information on Hell itself, and while it was scarce, it was out
there. The stuff didn’t exactly read like a travel guide, and much of
it was very odd and obscure, but over time I developed quite a bit of
knowledge of the place.
For instance, I think I mentioned before that Hell didn’t start when Lucifer and his angels fell there. It already existed, although it was much different. More importantly though, it was already occupied. The things that were there…well, they were extremely powerful and very old even back then. There was some fighting when the angels arrived, but for the most part they seemed to just…leave. No one is sure where they went other than some oblique references I’ve found that they are still waiting “Outside”. Outside of what, I’m not sure. But that’s less important for our current lesson on our favorite vacation getaway.
I said for the most part they left. There was one that stayed behind and fought to keep Hell. It was apparently the least of these beings, and it still destroyed over half of the forces Lucifer had at his disposal. And when I say destroyed, that’s exactly what I mean.
There’s no death in Hell. Not really. If you die, where else would you go anyway? But the Hunter sends people and demons somewhere, right? I’ve heard his power called “paracausal magic”—magic that is distinct from Infernal or terrestrial magic because it is not bound by the same rules of a particular Realm or our reality. I think this being, this remnant of the old, first Hell, might have had a weaker, less refined version of the same thing. Either way, it took all of Lucifer’s armies to kill it, and even now its body lies at the furthest edge of Hell.
The City, as Christopher called it, is the capital of Hell. It goes by many names, but the City works well enough. It was built initially by Lucifer as a fortification near that leviathan’s corpse—just in case it was only mostly dead and ever woke again. It never has, and the City has continued to grow over time. And not just the City.
Have you ever wondered why the Hunter hasn’t fully taken over Hell after all this time? He’s had hundreds of years, right? Part of it is because Hell truly is vast. The other part is because it keeps getting vastier.
Hell never stops growing. For every mile the Hunter takes, another mile (or maybe two) grow up between him and the edge of Hell. It’s like stretching demonic taffy that never gets thinner or breaks. In theory, that sounds like it might be a good thing. The Hunter is super shitty, and if old Infernal Hell is a slightly less shitty alternative, isn’t it good to keep at least some of it out of the Hunter’s grasp? Well, yes, but the growing is still a big issue. Because of the Breach.
“Hang on a minute.”
Teddy raised an eyebrow. “Question?”
We were still in the parlor, Darrow’s mask slowly dripping blood out of the bottom as me and Teddy had story time. It was disconcerting, but I had faith that Teddy knew what he was doing. But all this new information? “Why didn’t you tell me more of this before?”
Teddy sighed. “I was getting to that, but I can jump to that part I guess. I had never actually been to Hell before the time I committed suicide and you brought me back. As you know, part of my reason for going was to get hair from the Hunter for our little dinner party. The other reason was to visit the Libraries of Hell.”
There are Six Libraries of Hell, or there were, and they contain the collective knowledge of Hell on many subjects, including various forms of magic. They are, as you might guess, immense, but they have a couple of unique features as well. First, they have magic protecting them that makes it difficult for the Hunter, or anything tainted by paracausal magic, to get near them. That is another reason the Hunter’s progress, while steady, has been slower as he gets closer to the City, as all the Libraries reside there. Second, while time is very different in Hell than it is here, it is almost nonexistent in the Libraries.
During the few days I was dead before you brought me back the first time, I spent what would have likely felt like months or years in Hell. Except I spent over half that time in the Libraries, so those months or years became centuries. I had tried to prepare myself for what that would be like—the loneliness, the strangeness of it all—and there are certain spells that can help cushion the negative effects of that much time alone and help you retain more, but they can only help so much and my knowledge and skills were pretty limited. I won’t dwell on the details, but the short version is it was very hard, but I got through it, left the Library and had my…disagreement with the demon, got the Hunter’s hair, and you brought me back.
The second time I went to Hell was during the big party, and my primary focus then was to find you and stick together until our dolls pulled us back, so no trips to the lieberry. The third time was when I died in Brimley. Back to the Libraries I went. That trip was much more productive because I knew a lot more and had a much better idea of how the Libraries actually work.
Each of the Libraries are different in many ways, but they do share some commonalities. First, you are always alone in them. That’s not to say there aren’t various other beings in the Libraries when you are, but they are usually just shadowy glimpses now and then. It’s like everyone is on their own frequency. It makes things lonelier, but it does make it much safer and easier to focus on learning what you came for.
Second, the Libraries are much bigger on the inside than they are on the outside. Like way bigger. It’s a similar magic to what the Blind Court used in their blood tesseract, though it is much more refined and efficient. It took some time on that first trip, but I managed to learn a janky version of how it worked before you brought me back. More on that later.
Third, the term “library” is kind of stretched to its limits when you’re talking about the Libraries of Hell. Yes, there are endless mazes of books, scrolls, charts, you name it. But there are many other things as well. They are all designed to store and potentially impart knowledge of one sort or another, but the harder stuff…the more valuable stuff…well, it can be tricky and more dangerous to get.
Finally, what I suspected on my first trip and confirmed on my second, is that the most powerful magic and information is split up between the Libraries. You might have a spell or an old history of some important event divided between several or all of the Libraries, meaning you have to visit them all and search out the information. That’s another reason I had to work fast when I went there from Brimley.
On that second trip, I spent a great deal of time at the second and third libraries. Even with magical help and prior experience, I can only find things so fast and remember so much, so my knowledge is very patchy and incomplete. I have learned several things that will help us greatly I think, but I still have much more I need to learn.
“Hold up.” I waved my hand to stop Teddy. “So you’re saying we’re still not done with the Libraries? We have to go back to Hell again?”
Teddy frowned slightly. “Well, yes. There are several threads I’m following that might lead to answers for how we can stop the Breach or the Hunter, but I don’t know yet. And while you don’t have to go with me, I won’t deny having your help would be great.”
My heart was hammering in my chest at the thought of going back there, even if it was to a library in the non-Huntery part of Hell. I pointed to Darrow. “But you’ve got enough magic to beat his ass now. No chance of making do with that?” I knew the answer as I said it, but I had to try.
Teddy grinned at me. “I’ve got enough magic and understanding of Christopher to trick his ass so that he beats himself. I don’t know that I would win any kind of wizard duel or whatever Harry Potter gobbledygook you might be imagining.” He ignored my dark look and went on. “The reason we beat him wasn’t because I’m stronger than him. It’s because he walked into a trap. As I said, when I went into the first Library, I made it a point to figure out a method of replicating the way the Library worked. A magical tesseract—a pocket dimension where I set all the rules.”
“Our house…it isn’t the real house. It took weeks after the party, but I magically recreated our house down to the smallest detail and then sat it down on top of the real thing. Anyone who passes through a door or window or any boundary of this place is actually stepping from the real world to our version of the house, though they’d never know the difference unless they were very skilled in magic and looked very closely. The problem for them is, they have to be inside to see it at all, and by that point they are already trapped.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Okay. So I get letting Darrow think he was in control when he first got here, stopping the golems, being a dick, all that. But are you telling me you have a bunch of demons chained up somewhere to power all this?”
Teddy stood up beaming. “That’s the best part. Like I said, the version that I’m using is a janky version of the Libraries’ magical tesseract spell. But it is still way more efficient than the blood tesseract the Blind Court was using. I’ve ran it so far on just a little bit of my own lifeforce now and then. Maybe took of a few months or a couple of years my natural lifespan at most.”
Now I stood up. “Teddy, no. We have to figure out another way…”
He raised a finger. “I already have.” He had reached Darrow’s body and gave the giant doll head a large tap. “This contraption is very interesting. After being applied for a few minutes, it shunts a person’s soul from the brain, which is usually the physical tethering point for one’s spirit, to…well, the torso? I’m not sure if it’s the heart, the colon, or what exactly, but it pushes it down there and preserves the body indefinitely.”
I wasn’t sure I would like the answer, but I asked anyway.
“Preserves it how and for what?”
Teddy’s grin got wider as he thumbed a latch on the bottom of the doll’s head. There was a large metallic clang like a bear trap being sprung, and then the doll’s head rolled off and onto the floor, carrying Darrow’s head with it. I stepped back with a small yelp as Teddy chuckled darkly.
“Darrow doesn’t get to die. I can’t risk him roaming around Hell or coming back here, and he deserves worse than that. And he’s also too dangerous to keep as a prisoner, even in the little dollhouse that I’ve made for us. But it’s his knowledge and intelligence that makes him so deadly. So the doll head’s job was to first give him a magical lobotomy before going to work shoving his dirty soul down his throat and into his pancreas or whatever. Because, at least when it comes to humans, all magical power is stored and channeled through the soul. And even though Christopher’s soul is no doubt a toxic waste dump, it still has a lot of power.”
I nodded, giving Teddy a small smile. “Enough power to be a battery for our new house?”
“Exactly!” He looked pleased for a moment before his eyes fell to the doll’s head on the floor. “That thing just keeps leaking blood. The neck stump is sealed properly, but Chris’ stupid head has really ruined this rug. Oh well.” Suddenly the doll head was gone and the blood-soaked rug was clean. “That’s better.” I was feeling much better about things overall, even with the looming dangers of what was coming and what we still had to do. And I still had a lot of questions, but one stood out to me as the most important.
“So what exactly is the Breach?”
Teddy’s expression darkened, and after a moment’s consideration, he grabbed a piece of burned wood from the fireplace and crouched down. He drew a large circle of ash on the floor and then a smaller one inside it. Looking up at me, he said, “This is a rough approximation of an old cosmological drawing I saw one time from a French occultist named Trudeau or something. I don’t know if it’s right or not, but it will work for our purposes.”
Pointing his stick at the smaller inner circle, he said. “This is us. Our universe, and all the alternate versions of this universe that might exist if you believe that sort of thing.” He pointed to the larger outer circle. “These are the Realms. There are supposedly Seven Realms, and one of them is Hell.” He looked troubled as he waved his stick beyond the circles. “Outside of that…well, no one knows, though some think that’s where the first occupants of Hell went to.”
Moving back to the center circle, he went on. “The more pressing point is this. Hell is not only always growing, it’s growing inward. Meaning it is getting closer and closer to our reality. Now normally it might just reach that boundary and stop…like soap bubbles pressing up against each other. The problem is the edge of Hell has the corpse of some cosmic horror sitting there like a battering ram. A battering ram that is likely still imbued with significant amounts of reality-breaking paracausal magic. Maybe enough to breach the border of our universe and send Hell spilling in.” Standing back up, his face was serious. “So that’s the Breach. And that’s why we have to stop it.”
“Fuck.”
He nodded. “Yes. Fuck.” There was a moment of dour silence between us before his face brightened. “But cheer up. We’re on the right track I think. All we have to…”
“Why did you smell weird when you came back today?”
Teddy gave me a mock offended look. “What did I smell like?”
“Um, smoke and brimstone. I figured that must just be what non-Huntery Hell smells like, but why did you smell at all? Don’t you get a new body when you come back? One that’s never been in Hell at all?”
He nodded. “Normally, yes. But when I went the first time, I had to have a way back with the Hunter’s hair. So before I killed myself, I spent months figuring out not only how to steer where I landed in Hell, but also how to give myself a new physical body there instead of when I got pulled back by the doll. It’s more dangerous, and as you saw, it led to me popping back with injuries from that stupid demon I double-crossed, but it does let you physically bring stuff back with you, which can be very useful.”
His eyes took on a devilish glint as he continued. “As for the smell, normal Hell doesn’t really smell like much of anything, or at least not uniformly. It’s not like an old cartoon full of fire and brimstone, at least not from what I’ve seen. No, the smell came from the first three Libraries. When I was finished this time, I burned all three of them down.”
My eyes widened. “You burned them down? How? Aren’t they super magically protected?”
He smiled. “They are. Super-duper even. But there are always cracks to get through, and I’ve had a lot of time to figure out where they are.”
Shaking my head slowly, I sat back down. “But all that knowledge. There’s more there that could help us, right? Now it’s just gone?”
Teddy came and knelt beside me, his eyes locked on mine. “More that could help our enemies too. They’re terrified of Hell, which is why most of them, even Darrow, haven’t tried to use the Libraries before. But between the Hunter and us, they’re getting more desperate, more dangerous. They can’t be allowed to learn some of the things I’ve learned.” He put his hand on mine and gave it a squeeze. “And don’t fall into the trap of assuming knowledge is always a good thing. That’s their way of thinking. They think that understanding more, becoming more powerful, justifies everything they do. I’m learning what I need to stop them and keep us safe, that’s all. And if you decide to come with me, you have to promise to do the same. It’s a dangerous, slippery road we’re walking, and you know what they say about the road to Hell.”
“It’s super shitty.” I squeezed his hand back and smiled. “I promise. And of course I’m coming with you when you go back.” He stood up, but not before I saw the relief on his face. “That means a lot to me, Cora. And if it’s any consolation, it’ll be a bit before we go back anyway. We need time to rest and recuperate, or as you might say ‘chillax’, and…”
“I would never say ‘chillax’. No one says ‘chillax’.”
He sniffed dismissively as he went on, “and we have several projects to complete before we’re ready to go back. I think it might be a bit rougher going next time. You ready to eat something? I’m fucking starving.”
I swallowed, trying to keep my voice light. “Oh? Rougher? Why’s that?”
Teddy shrugged as he headed toward the kitchen. “Well, the things that run the City? I think when I burned down half of their most valuable resource, I kinda pissed them off.” He paused and glanced back at me. “I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling compelled to eat empanadas.”
Lowering my face into my hands, I nodded bleakly. “Goddamnit. Yes, empanadas do sound really good right now.”
---
Credits
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