~~Author’s Note~~

Welcome. “A Taste of Hell” is a mini series of small novelettes, each told from a unique point of view of side characters in my upcoming main series “The Pleasures of Hell”, a fantasy adventure set in Hell. While the main series will have two PoVs, both human (brother and sister) and not featured in this series, these prologue/bonus chapters will give curious readers a taste of this setting from the view of the various angels and demons that populate it, and a taste of the erotic elements.

These chapters are entirely optional. No need to read them if you’d prefer to go into the main series blind.

Erotically, “A Taste of Hell”, and “The Pleasures of Hell”, will focus largely on monster girls and monster boys, usually paired with someone not monster-y. Expect lots of kinks to be explored, with exaggerated proportions, size difference, deep/large penetration, harems and/or reverse harems, and plenty of others. There’ll be fantasies for dominant and submissive readers alike. Erotic scenes that are particularly long and descriptive will be bracketed with ♥♥♥ /♥♥♥. If you’re not looking for a juicy scene, skim the dialog in these sections so you don’t miss anything important.

This chapter is heavy on setting exploration, with various ‘slice of life’ moments, and an easy carefree read. If you’d prefer to not get spoiled about setting details, no need to read, or read this after having read a decent chunk of the main series. I’ll avoid spoiling anything major in these novelettes, but I know some readers prefer going into a series as a blank slate.

~~Three years before the Arrival~~

~~Caera~~

Another angel in the sky.

Caera snarled as she ducked low, and crept along the jagged rocks and stones of the Gorzen Mountains. She was high up, very high, and every step was a dangerous one. Not because of the height; she wasn’t on a ledge or anything. It was the bloodgrip. Every step meant a vine of the stupid stuff could catch her, puncture her skin, and turn the trip back down the mountain into a giant pain in her ass.

Sometimes she wished she was a riiva, and not only went around on two feet, but had hooves instead of feet. There was a reason riiva loved the Death’s Grip corner of Hell. It made her envious, very envious.

Riiva were satyrs, according to the humans. While she and other tregeera were tigers. She didn’t look like a tiger. A couple times, she’d checked out what a tiger actually looked like in a scrying pool, and she’d been surprised when she found a large surface cat. They both walked on all fours, and had tails, but treegera often walked on two feet and stood eight feet tall. Caera was no exception. Her tail was thicker, and covered in spikes, particularly along its top and up her spine. Her skin was like most demons, black and red, where the softer bits grew redder.

But she didn’t have a snout. Or if she did, it didn’t stick out very far. A wide mouth filled with big sharp teeth, wider than most demons, but whatever. She had a couple of big black horns, too, sharp ones that stuck out backward from the top of her head between her dark tendrils.

And of course the only reason she gave a shit about any of this was because Leos pointed it out to her. Asshole incubus had her feeling self conscious. Not everyone was as lucky as an incubus or succubus. Then again, if she’d been as weak as an incubus or succubus, she’d probably have thrown herself of a cliff.

But even a tregeera knew better than to mess with an angel. She’d never fought one, and she was hoping to keep it that way. There was nothing stopping that angel from coming down onto Caera’s head and cutting her to bits, just because they felt like it. Well fuck that, Caera stayed low and in the shadows of the giant boulders, the fires of the sky hitting the mountain with enough lighting that she had no choice but to use the rocks for cover. After what happened last month, she had every intention of staying out of sight of an angel.

She crept along, going on all fours and working her way back down the mountain. She’d gone hunting, but she hadn’t exactly been hungry, and risking her neck for a snack was a stupid idea. Her kin often died for lesser reasons. So down she went, staying low, sneaking between the rocks in much the same way she’d seen the tigers do in the scrying pool. She didn’t have paws, though. She had hands with sharp black claws, and her feet were raptorial, with giant black talons. They made being silent a little hard, but the angel was really high up. No chance of being heard, especially not against the occasional crack thunder.

Go to the Death’s Grip spire? Maybe tell Zel what she saw? Nah. It’d take weeks, and Zelandariel probably had scouts who spotted the angel, maybe some imps or grems if she’d been lucky enough to round up a few of the assholes. She probably had. That was Zel for you. Whatever. Caera kept low and moved down and down, slowly, avoiding bloodgrip vines that came out of the stone like stubborn roots. The lower she got, the more problematic it became, and the thorny vines and sharp stone dragged along her breastplate of warped, dark metal. More than a few of the vine spikes caught along the goort leather of her waist wrap, a few of the chains, and on the skulls she had attached to her as trophies. The big devorjin skull on her shoulder got more than a few scars from the damn climb, low as she was, doing everything she could to avoid getting spotted.

But eventually the angel was gone, and Caera was safe in the shadow of Thorn Mountain. Bleeding from a bunch of small cuts, but still alive. Any hunting trip she could crawl away from, she supposed.

A hard crunch of weight on stone brought her to a standstill. Another sent her down to the rocks again, on all fours and almost on her belly, hiding in a small ravine of jagged rocks in the side of the mountain. More bloodgrip poked into her, but she ignored the pain, even as the stupid thorns fought against the darker, thicker parts of her skin until they tried to cut her, failed, and sawed through parts of her instead. Tiny drops of her blood dripped into the ravine, but the sound was nothing against the eternal hum of the winds and burning sky of Hell.

By Lucifer, oh fucking shit. An enormous set of black wings slowly emerged below her, maybe fifty feet off. Thorn Mountain had lots of hidden alcoves, crags, ravines, and even some caves and tunnels from Valzanal’s time. And enormous as the mountain was, and hard to explore, it wasn’t like Caera had a good mental map of where everything was. Hell, she knew fuck all about Thorn Mountain. So fuck her, she froze solid when something came out of a hole up ahead.

The black wings turned, showing their softer red sides, as the bearer faced in her direction. She didn’t move a muscle, only a bit of the top of her head and her backward curling horns visible over the edge of the small ravine she hid in. It was dark on this side of the mountain, and especially dark where she was, with a huge chunk of rock hanging overhead. With a bit of luck, it wouldn’t suddenly collapse and squash her into paste.

More of the creature came out. Horns, four of them. A demon’s face. A shoulder pad made of metal, and another made of a huge skull. More, a breastplate similar to hers, metal bashed into a shape for a chest, then stuck on with a bunch of leather straps. Whoever this fucker was, he was big, and he stood on raptorial feet like hers as his giant tail slithered behind him. An enormous sword was strapped to his back between his swings, a slab of metal that looked like someone had bashed together a bunch of smaller blades, and fused on a big handle on the end of it.

A fucking gorujin demon. One of the terrible four.

The titan looked up at the sky, then down toward Gorzen Eye mountain in the distance, where Diogo’s home lay within. He snarled and slammed his tail against the stones as he stood to his full height; a couple feet taller than Caera, and a couple feet made for a huge fucking difference. He was huge. Sexy as fuck, with a hard jaw and harder eyes, but she wasn’t stupid enough to stick her nose out for a chance to bang a tetrad demon.

Sealing that idea was the tregeera head in his hand. His whole body was covered in blood, staining the bone parts of his armor, and dripping down over the plates of metal that covered parts of his legs and arms. It was probably the dead tregeera’s, whoever she’d been.

Far as Caera knew, no tetrad demons served Zel. Far as Caera knew, no tetrad demons served anyone anymore, not since Belor, but it wasn’t like she was willing to cross Hell to confirm. Better to sit and watch, and see what the fuck this gorujin was doing with a tregeera head.

Sure enough, he ripped the dangling tendrils out of the demon’s scalp. Ripping out so many wasn’t easy, and the titan had to engage his muscles. It would have been kind of sexy, if he hadn’t been scalping a tregeera like Caera with each tug. Plucking one tendril would have torn it off; they were soft, long, and thin. Plucking half of them at the same time took the scalp off.

She frowned, but suppressed the urge to snarl as the beast shook the skin free of the skull, and continued shaking, hard, until more of the flesh bits inside came out in a splatter. Chuckling in a deep, almost mischievous voice, the titan took one of the dangling metal chains from his belt, and pushed the hook tip through the top of the skull. A decoration. A trophy.

Slowly, the titan turned more, and looked in Caera’s direction. She didn’t move a muscle, not even to duck and hide. Only the tip of her head was visible, and in the shadow of the rocks around her, the darkness of her skin and low horns would blend in. And movement would have only grabbed the huge demon’s attention.

He took a step toward her. She didn’t move. He took another step toward her. Still she didn’t move. Her heart rate soared until she felt it pounding under her breasts, and she tightened her leg muscles and tail as she prepared to bolt. She was fast if she had to be, and she knew she could sprint through these hills and down into its ravines and tunnels faster than this fucker could run. But she was liable to split her guts open on a sharp rock or bush of bloodgrip. And the gorujin could glide after her, if he found something to climb and jump off. Plenty of giant-ass rocks for that.

She had no choice but to hold still.

Sure enough, the titan stopped, and looked back down the mountain toward the bailiff’s home. Ok, phew, he’d been trying to spook out any possible spies. The gorujin instead climbed up a giant boulder, and used it to glide to the next boulder, and the next, as he headed toward the top of the mountain. Caera did the same as she had with the angel, staying low, and for the moment, staying still, until the tetrad demon was far away enough he couldn’t catch her even if he spotted her.

“You’ll never guess what I say today,” she said as she climbed into the cave, through the dangling chains decorated with a couple hundred skulls. They jangled and clanged loudly, letting anyone inside know that someone was approaching.

A lot of demons in the Gorzen Mountains lived in the Gorzen Eye Mountain, where that asshole Diogo lived. But plenty chose other places to nest, like Adam’s Back, where she lived now. A mountain like all the others in Death’s Grip, stones and stones and more stones, but little bloodgrip thank God. The rocks were less sharp, and there weren’t nearly as many remnants. A good place to find a hard-to-reach alcove, turn it into a nest, and rest where you were less likely to get killed in your sleep.

“What’d you find?” Kia asked. The gorgala sat perched on a big stone in the large cave, wings snug to her back with thumb claws hooked around her neck, her tail curled around and in front of her so she could pick at it with her claws. She wore nothing for clothes except a couple strips of dark leather that hugged her breasts and sex.

“An angel, flying over Thorn Mountain. Looked like they were heading back to the vortex.”

Marquez shivered a little and shook his head. “Didn’t get seen?”

Marquez the vratorin was also nude, but that didn’t mean much to demons, especially the male ones. His dick was hidden safely inside his pelvis, out of sight and protected by hard black skin. He was almost as tall as Caera, and unlike her, always walked on two feet. Vratorin were common everywhere, and that included Death’s Grip, with human-ish bodies that walked on raptorial feet with long smooth tails. They had two giant horns, much bigger than Caera’s or Kia’s, with large heavy jaws. And this particular vratorin was a sexy guy, and one of the nicer vratorins. She liked having him around. Hell, both her friends were sexy, and nice, by demon standards. She was lucky.

What was the human expression? Friends were worth their weight in gold.

“I hid,” Caera said. “No way I’m letting an angel spot me. Not after that slaughter in the tunnels.”

Kia nodded. “Good. No idea why angels keep flying over Death’s Grip lately. Mikalim just don’t know when to leave shit alone. What have we done to deserve all this scrutiny?”

“No idea,” Marquez said. “Maybe Zel did something?”

With a heavy snort, Caera stripped out of her armor, letting the metal plates covering her chest, thighs, and parts of her arms land with a clang. She was a little gentler with the skulls hanging off her; no one liked a damaged trophy. Once naked, she got down on all fours and prowled around in a circle. The cave was mostly empty, save some big rocks and a few goort leather blankets for sleeping on. She had plenty of room to move.

“I don’t care what Zel said,” Caera said. “If she’s started shit with Heaven, she can go fuck herself. And Diogo can go fuck himself, too.”

Kia chuckled. “You know that bastard’s going to do whatever Zel wants him to, even if it means throwing himself into a meat grinder.”

“You mean throw us into the meat grinder.”

The gargoyle shrugged as she scraped some dirt from the grooves along her long tail.

“If that happens, let’s just hide.”

“Not gonna work,” Marquez said. “You know Zel would call for a horde. We wouldn’t be able to hide from everyone.”

Sighing and grumbling, Caera prowled over to Marquez, and rolled over onto his lap, facing away from him. The vratorin oofed, a little surprised by her weight; she was a bit bigger than him. But he recovered quickly, and ran his claws down Caera’s head tendrils, down her spine and spikes, and down along her tail. He knew just how much claw to use to scratch the dark, thick skin of her back, without hurting her. Which was a lot of pressure. She rumbled with bliss and stretched out all four legs in front of her as the man continued to scratch her back.

“I don’t want another horde brand,” she said.

Marquez mirrored her sigh and pat her shoulder where her brand from the last horde was, before he scratched her back some more. Deep scratches, using his nails hard enough to really rough up the hardest parts of her dark skin between the spikes. The damn bastard knew she loved that, and she purred as she quivered on his lap. He was probably just getting her ready for sex. Well, that was fine. She’d planned to fuck him anyway, but a good back scratch was a great treat, and she rumbled her purrs as her big tail wagged and tapped the stone ground.

“Sure we couldn’t hide?” Kia asked. “It’s doable. I have another nest, deep in Thorn Mountain. No one goes there. We could—”

Marquez shook his head. “You know if we get found out, we’re dead. I don’t know about you, but I like living. Plus, I don’t want to slowly die on a pike.” Zel’s way of enforcing horde conscription wasn’t a nice one.

The three of them sighed as they let the shitty situation sink in. There were more angel sightings lately, and that wasn’t a good thing. Getting called to a horde was a guaranteed way to get buried neck deep in violence, and sure, Caera loved a good scrap, draw some blood, rip off a few skulls, but a horde was different. It was a teeming throng of chaos and death, with every demon getting lost to the collective sin of the swarm. Not even Zel could completely control something like that. All she could hope to do was point the horde at her target and wish for the best.

Caera did not want to experience that again. The violence wasn’t the issue, it was losing control of herself. Two hordes crashing into each other, until she literally had to walk over the bodies of other demons to get out of the mess. Knowing she could have easily been one of the dead but had been powerless to stop it, sickened her.

But Marquez knew where her mind was going, and he scratched her harder, drawing her mind back into the sweet, sweet moment of nails scratching through the thick, hard, black skin of her back.

“Alright alright.” Laughing, she sat up, turned around to face the vratorin, and snuggled onto his lap as she hooked her big thighs around him. Vratorin like Marquez were big, well over seven feet tall, with muscular bodies even the humans found attractive. The demon-skull-like face and giant horns only made him hotter, and she grinned at him as she licked her many, many sharp teeth, and ran her fingers along his head. No tendrils there, unlike her.

Grinning like the sneaky bastard he was, Marquez slid his hands under her breasts, and casually massaged them with his hands, careful of his claws. Her back and the outside of her arms and legs were dark, almost pure black, with skin even a sword would struggle to puncture. But her tits? Nice and soft and red, and only growing redder and brighter as her friend played with her.

“And ... I spotted a gorujin as well,” she said.

Kia stopped pruning, lowered her tail, and stared at Caera. “Really?”

“Yeah. Came out of a Thorn Mountain tunnel.”

“Holy shit.” The gorgala climbed down from her rock, wings still wrapped around her shoulders and neck like a cape, and sat herself down beside Marquez, snug again his arm, looking at Caera. “He spot you?”

“No. Not sure I’d be here if he had.” Caera leaned in, gave Marquez a long lick of her huge tongue along his throat, and once his cock had grown out of his body, she pinned the huge phallus against his abs with her slit. She still wanted a good ten minutes of foreplay before any fucking; a long time, by demon standards.

“Think it was the Damall?” Marquez asked.

“Maybe. He was stripping a tregeera skull clean.” Before hooking it onto his belt to hang with his other many, many trophies. The trophies were hot. Being the tregeera getting scalped and cleaned? Not so hot.

Sighing, Kia shook her head as she snuggled into Marquez’s arm, and Caera’s thigh. “Angels and the Damall. Something’s happening.”

Caera sat up straighter and jutted her chest out, giving Marquez free rein to play with her breasts. She wasn’t crazy busty like most succubi, but still, most tregeeras had big tits, which got damn problematic when they went on all fours. And considering she was over eight feet tall, her big tits were damn big compared to the smaller demon between her legs. Marquez loved that.

“Maybe,” Caera said. “Think it has anything to do with Zel? She’s been amassing numbers pretty steadily for a while now. Maybe the Damall are getting nervous?”

Kia nodded, and set her closer hand underneath Caera’s closer breast, nudging Marquez’s hand out of the way. Caera laughed as Kia’s attention focused on her tit, expression entering that ‘I’m thinking don’t disturb me’ zone it often did. Which of course turned into delicious massaging motions that had Caera rumbling more purrs, and forcing her huge tail to wag back and forth on the ground behind her.

“Maybe,” Marquez said. “I—”

Kia turned and put her free finger over his mouth. “Shh, the smart demons are talking.” Lucky for her, he didn’t use his big mouth full of big teeth to bite her. Not as big or as teeth-filled as Caera’s, but still, Kia played a dangerous game teasing the stronger demon. Marquez seemed to like that, too. “Zel’s as power hungry as any spire keeper. If she thinks one of the other keepers are weak, she’ll go for it. Which means the Damall might be investigating. But the angels? What do they care? Been fucking forever since Belor.”

“Maybe. Maybe they think something big is happening? Like ... like False Gate big?” Caera shrugged again, and chuckled when she noticed Marquez’s defeated expression. To make it up to him, she slowly eased her increasingly hot, red, softening, and now wet slit along the underside of his cock. The bumps and ridges felt amazing.

“God I hope not,” Marquez said.

Kia tried to shut him up again, but Caera blocked it, and pushed gorgala’s arm away as she laughed.

“Think we should go scouting?” Caera asked. “And hunting. I left when I spotted that angel. Getting hungry.”

Marquez held up both hands in surrender, abandoning his tit massage to do it. “Don’t eat me!”

“Should have thought of that earlier. Too late now.” Caera growled playfully down at her friend, took his huge cock into one hand, righted it, and slid the long girth and all its wonderful bumps and ridges into her dripping, boiling insides. Both Marquez and Kia groaned as they stared.

Fucking her friends was one of her favorite pastimes. Most vratorins liked to get dominant, but Marquez was perfectly willing to roll with the punches, which meant Caera got to take lead. And she did love to take lead. If Marquez had tried to fight her for it, she’d simply have wrestled him until she won. And she would have won. But there was something fun about having him submit to her freely, too.

Kia, on the other hand, preferred it when Caera or Marquez dominated her, and sure, gorgala were strong and dangerous, but they couldn’t overpower a vratorin, and especially a tregeera, once they got their hands on her; easy to do with Kia considering she was their friend. A perfect sexual trinity.

She had it better than a lot of demons, and she knew it. Many preferred to stay near the more populated areas, hunting and killing each other almost as often as they hunted and killed humans. Zel had decreed the dueling law to try and minimize how many demons needlessly killed each other, but it’d only been partially successful. They still killed each other in sneaky, backstabby ways, they just made sure there weren’t any witnesses.

Caera was lucky, damn lucky, to find a couple other demons with a little more brains, and maybe even a little more empathy, than her fellow demons. Now if she could just keep her friends alive while Zel made everyone’s lives difficult, and angels and the Damall showed up at their doorstep.

“Look at that,” Marquez said.

Kia growled, grabbed the much larger demon by one of his enormous horns, and pulled him down into the shallow ravine.

“We’ll look, if you stop giving away where we are!”

Caera snorted on a laugh, which earned a whip crack of Kia’s tail against her thigh. No harm no foul, with them all in their armor again, leather straps holding bent plates of metal over bits of their arms, legs, chests, stomach, and whatnot. A few skulls too, some human, some from other demons. Typical fashion statement in Death’s Grip, and probably all of Hell, fashion that said: fuck with me at your own peril.

Which, in hindsight, was probably a bad fashion choice. Demons were rarely dissuaded by the promise of a good brawl.

Caera peeked over the edge of the ravine, and down over the jagged hills of Thorn Mountain. Thankfully her horns were pretty low, especially compared to Marquez’s, which made peeking over ledges easier.

They hadn’t climbed very high yet, but it was already a pain to climb higher. Up here, maybe a hundred feet up, the jagged mountain had lots of cliffs they could lean over, for scouting prey. Any higher and getting down would be too difficult, especially with all the bloodgrip everywhere.

It was night. The fires of the sky burned gentle, and while some clouds swept by that carried the flame, many more swept by that had extinguished. An especially dark night. Amber veins sometimes glowed especially bright at night, but Death’s Grip didn’t have many on the surface. It did have burning bushes though, scattered randomly, a few jutting out of stone edges in the mountain, or cracks in the ground. In some places, black meera metal forged itself naturally, and came up out of the ground in symmetrical, spiraling patterns around a burning bush, and raised it high. The natural brazier had black skulls in its pillar, and along brazier’s underside. Absolutely beautiful. Hell’s art.

One of those beautiful braziers, standing ten feet high, lit up a good fifty feet of darkness, exposing sharp rock surrounding a shallow path. And in that path, was movement.

Caera growled quietly as she pressed her chest and belly to the edge of the ground in front of her, and climbed over it. Slowly, prowling on all fours, tail slithering, she scaled the side of Thorn Mountain’s base, keeping many of its huge jagged boulders between her and the movement. And soon movement became noise.

She found another groove in the mountain to hide in, close enough to see in detail, far enough to run if she had to. Marquez and Kia followed soon after, but it took them a lot longer to reach her. Kia was six feet tall, a bit small by gorgala standards, but she struggled to stay low. Marquez was almost as big as Caera and had an even harder time staying low, and had to get on his literal stomach several times to reach her without risking exposing himself. Thorn Mountain did not like that, and by the time they reached her, she could smell bits of blood on Marquez’s side where the thorns had got him around the armor. She’d make it up to him later.

“Holy fuck,” Kia whispered. “Are those ... remnants?”

Caera returned the whisper with a quiet, affirming growl. Remnants.

“Can’t be,” Marquez said. “Hell grows remnants out of her flesh, right?”

Her flesh. Caera rolled her eyes, and stared back over the teeming mass of moving bodies. Marquez was one of those idiots who paid worship to Hell herself, to the constant teasing of Kia and Caera, but it never stopped him. And much as Caera thought it was dumb, she did like that the moron stuck to his convictions.

“Usually,” she said. “I haven’t seen remnants walking around in ... in a long time.”

They grew quiet as they watched, and Caera could see the strange awe in her two friends. She felt it, too. Remnants were almost always attached to Hell, writhing and squirming and doing everything they could to free themselves, even though there was nothing to free. They grew from the ground, from stone walls, from the ceilings of caves, and she once heard they literally grew into the metal cages of False Gate.

“When’d you last see walking remnants?” Marquez asked.

Kia and Marquez were younger than her. They hadn’t been around the last time Zel summoned a horde, and bashed heads with Alessio.

“The only time I’ve ever seen them,” she said, “was when Zel made a grab for The Black Valley. I was...” Doing what she always did, avoiding the big battles because she cared more about her own ass than mindless violence, or whatever goal her boss would sacrifice her for. “When things got tense, and you knew battles were going to happen, remnants started walking around.”

“They freed themselves?” Kia asked.

“No. No one figured out where they were coming from. Maybe Hell was birthing them fully formed? Either way, they formed into groups and ... roamed ... aimlessly.”

The ravine beneath them was maybe twenty feet wide, and it was packed with remnants from shoulder to shoulder. But it was the length of the shifting motion that had the three of them frozen. One hundred, two hundred, three hundred, four hundred feet, maybe more, a line of bodies sauntering forward with all the hurriedness of a surface turtle. The remnants groaned and cried, some whimpered, some screamed, and they all pushed forward slowly, less walking than dragging their legs with each step.

As the swarm moved closer, until it started to cross the ravine across from Caera, the sound of their moans and shifting feet grew louder and louder. Christ, they were slow, but Caera knew from experience it was best to hide and not stir them up, or they’d made a racket. All demons were intimately familiar with the screams of remnants, but Caera remembered what it sounded when a roaming swarm like this was triggered. Wails would turn into howls. Screams would turn into shrieks. Other demons would come investigate. No thank you.

The sound was disturbing. An unending chorus of dragged, emaciated feet sliding over stone, and the noises. Caera had been around plenty of humans in her time, some betrayers, some not. They didn’t make those sorts of noises, even when they died painfully.

Caera and her friends waited, and waited, and the swarm eventually passed. It took a damn while, but it did, and the three of them breathed easy as the noise died.

“That, is scary,” Marquez said.

Kia nodded as she climbed out of the ravine, and found a higher perch of rock. In typical gorgala fashion, she stretched out her wings once, hooked them around her neck and shoulders like a cape again, and squatted as she stared out into the darkness.