CHAPTER 29
It was one of the older demons. Hidimba recognized him immediately. The rakshasa poked Og a few quick times to gain the giant's attention.
"That's a Deadtalker," Hidimba said. He spoke in a hushed voice so as not to be overheard. "There are two of them. Twins. Both blind. They're under Dantalion's command. I think that's the smaller one."
By the way that Og was nodding, Hidimba was forced to assume that the giant knew about the Deadtalkers. The little demon didn't like being hushed, but yielding to Og was an easy decision. The giant was very convincing.
After quieting Hidimba, Og stilled himself once again and watched the Deadtalker. It hadn't moved since they discovered it. It stood near the center of the tunnel with its head cocked to one side-listening. Some poor soul had been granted its ear, and now the Deadtalker attended to the damned.
Dantalion had created the thing. Hidimba was reminded how unfeeling the demon lord could be when he looked over the Deadtalkers tortured body. Its eyes had been plucked from their sockets-it did not need to see. An empty cavity remained where its nose should have been-it did not need to smell. Its original skin had been burnt off long ago, and the nerve endings beneath were incinerated also. Only scar tissue, overly thick and stretched taut, remained. It did not even need to feel. What was left of the creature only needed to do one thing—hear.
The twins relied heavily on their one remaining outlet to their surroundings, and as a result both developed auditory skills that would humble a wild animal. They could hear a bug settle in another room, or a demon swallowing a meal halfway across Sheol. But most importantly, they learned to hear the dead speak, which was what Dantalion had intended for the pair all along.
Lost souls, especially those newly ushered into Sheol by agents of the demons, are an extremely annoying lot. No more than a consciousness full of emotions and with only a voice, the souls can do nothing but wail at their surroundings. To the corporeal beings that can hear them, their mournful cries are maddening. It was more than Dantalion could stand. And so he created the Deadtalkers.
They acted as a buffer between the damned souls and the ruler of Sheol. The Deadtalkers listened to the cries of the departed, deciphered their moaning, and reported anything useful to Dantalion. Meanwhile, the arch demon was free of the incessant wailing and could focus all of his attention on remaining atop the heap of demons who would usurp his authority given half a chance. In exchange for their sacrifice the twins were given nothing. They lived in Sheol; rewards do not exist in such a place. They were allowed to exist. That would be the only wage they ever earned.
Og and Hidimba were lucky. If this Deadtalker had not been communing with the unseen, then it would have heard them coming from a great distance away. Dantalion and the others would already know that they were coming. Og didn't want that. He hadn't told Hidimba exactly what he was going to do once he reached his uncles and the arch demons, but the demon knew that he'd rather not lose the element of surprise if at all possible.
Still there was a problem. The Deadtalker may have been oblivious to their presence, but it remained squarely in their way.
"It's going to be impossible for me to squeeze past the poor monster, and I doubt that you, although small enough, possess the dexterity needed to creep past the thing undetected," Og said. "But this is the only tunnel to the lowest levels of Sheol where Dantalion and the other ancient demons stay. There is no going around. We have to figure something out. Quickly."
"Let's get out of here before he notices us," Hidimba said. His voice was just above a whisper. "We can go another way."
"Did you hear me demon? There is no other way," Og said. "One way in and the same way out. That's how Dantalion likes it."
The giant stepped towards the Deadtalker. Hidimba looked on horrified. He was sure Og was going to do something to the creature, and the little demon knew what that meant. This Deadtalker was no random, nameless goat demon. It was an agent of Dantalion. An attack on it would be the same as attacking the arch demon himself, and Hidimba wasn't ready to declare open warfare on all of Sheol. Og, on the other hand, seemed up for the challenge.
There wasn't anything graceful about the giant's attack. It didn't seem to Hidimba that Og had really thought it out much at all. The giant rested his spear against the tunnel wall and snatched the Deadtalker from the stone floor. He pinned the creature's arms to its sides with his massive hands, and now held the thing out from his own body like a human would with a child that had recently soiled itself. Only after Og lowered the poor creature a bit did Hidimba guess what the giant's intentions were. He was going to drive the Deadtalkers head into the rock of the ceiling.
Hidimba looked away. He held no ill will towards this pitiful beast, and its death would not be a pretty one. He waited for the sound of its demise-rock cracking, bone crunching-but he heard something different entirely. The Deadtalker began to speak.
Its voice was devoid of any emotion. It wasn't conversing, only reporting. Og looked over his shoulder and exchanged a look of disbelief with Hidimba. The giant didn't know why the Deadtalker was giving its account. Neither did Hidimba. He could only assume that something picked it up every time it was supposed to report. Regardless, he decided to listen to the thing.
He was already on his way over to the giant. Once he arrived, the two stood together and listened as the Deadtalker recited a series of remarkable stories that had undoubtedly just been conveyed to it by a number of new arrivals. Og held the thing aloft the whole time. Hidimba was glad; he feared that it would cease to report if the giant moved it.
As best they could tell, the Deadtalker had granted an audience to seven of the damned since its last report. Of these seven new testimonies, the first two and the last were of particular interest to Og and Hidimba. The accounts given the Deadtalker by the first two souls had much in common and sounded much the same coming from its lipless mouth.
Both spirits had told the Deadtalker that they weren't surprised to find themselves in such a place-they knew they were damned before they ever saw the rock of Sheol. They both lost their corporeal bodies while trying to kill a young man whom, by the way each described him, must have been the same person. And finally, they each talked about falling under attack from a priest, a girl, and a giant man that moved with inhuman speed.
Og and Hidimba concluded quickly that these two had perished at the hospital. Hidimba couldn't remember seeing a girl there, but he remembered everything else that the spirits had moaned about. There could be no coincidence.
The last story that the Deadtalker retold seemed at first listen unrelated to the other two. This final spirit was restless and scared. It didn't understand why it was here. Over and over it told the Deadtalker that it had never hurt anybody. A mistake, it claimed, had been made. Neither the giant nor the demon was stirred by its revelations. They both knew that souls didn't end up here by mistake.
Two things that the Deadtalker said, however, did excite Og and Hidimba a bit. Its words revealed to them that this final spirit was convinced it had been killed by a monster. More specifically, it claimed to be the victim of a reanimated corpse. Furthermore, it then swore to watching, already separated from its body, as this same corpse was then itself destroyed by another being. It described this other being as an extremely large man that moved too fast to be human.
"Your friend Armaros again?" Hidimba asked. He kept his eyes on the Deadtalker as he spoke to Og. The thing was silent now, but Og still held it up and out. Hidimba was curious what the giant would do with it.
"I'm sure," the giant answered. "They're all together now."
Before Hidimba could ask him what he meant, Og drove the Deadtalker headfirst into the rock ceiling of the tunnel. The little demon had suspected as much earlier, but now he was caught completely off guard by the giant's actions. The violence and force of the maneuver left Hidimba shaken.
"Why did you do that?" the little demon asked once he regained his composure. He watched as Og released the body of the
Deadtalker to the floor of the tunnel. At first glance it appeared that Og had somehow taken the things head off, but as Hidimba looked closer he could see that wasn't the case. Instead, the power of the giant's blow had forced the creature's head and neck down into its chest. There was only gore and bone visible in the depression between its shoulders.
"It's better off," Og said.
"Really?" Hidimba countered. "Because I can't see its face to judge just how happy it is right now. But if you're sure, well then . . ."
"Living as a maimed slave. Performing like a puppet. You would choose that kind of existence over death?"
"I am a slave Og," Hidimba answered. "We're all slaves here in Sheol. And while my flesh hasn't been maimed, I'm not exactly attractive either. But I still want to live Og. As terrible as this place is, I still fight to stay alive. Everything here does. I've never heard of a demon committing suicide have you?"
"What would you have me do Hidimba?" the giant asked.
"I don't know what. Talk to the thing maybe."
The giant's face twisted into an expression of scorn. His voice was heavy with contempt. "I've already told you Hidimba, that thing was a puppet. A trained bird. It only memorizes the stories of others. It has no true voice of its own. There can be no talking to such as that. If I would've let it go, then it would've ran back to Dantalion and told him anything that we said."
"But we didn't say anything," Hidimba argued, "so you could have just let it go. There was nothing to report."
Og looked weary of Hidimba's talk. He did not seem inclined to explain himself any further. When he spoke his voice was like thunder. "Enough. What is done . . . is done," he roared. "It was just another demon."
Hidimba sensed that the giant regretted his choice of words as soon as he heard his own voice speak them, but by then it was too late.
"I'm just another demon Og," Hidimba said. "Would you end me just as casually?"
Og opened his mouth to protest but closed it just as abruptly. Hidimba saw why. A number of figures emerged from the darkness of the tunnel ahead. He looked behind himself and found an equal number there as well. They were caught.
Og muttered curses to himself.
"I'm just another demon as well giant," a new voice proclaimed, "but I think you'll find me a bit more difficult to end than my unfortunate Deadtalker there."
Hidimba dropped, fully prostrate, to the rock floor.