“Yes.”
“That’s absurd. Tartarus has been here for hundreds of thousands of years. If it was possible to escape, someone would have done it by now.”
“That’s the great part. Who do you think Hell’s armies would rather follow, a mortal who made a lot of promises but hasn’t delivered on anything or the biggest baddest general ever? The only Hellion who ever walked out of Tartarus.”
That starts the chatter again. Generals lean together like they’re forming battle plans.
“So how can we do it?” I ask.
“You can’t,” says Azazel. He looks at Semyazah. “You can’t trust this creature.”
“Why should they trust you?” I ask. “They all know you sent me to kill them. Now you want to keep them in Tartarus just because you can’t get out?”
“How does this place work? Is this meat locker Tartarus or is the machine?”
Semyazah says, “The place and the furnace are parts of a single punishment device. Tartarus is the machine that runs the universe. It provides heat and energy to light the stars, Heaven and Hell, and every place where mortal and celestial life dwell. And we’re the fuel.”
Mammon gives a mad, gleeful little nod. He says, “We’re the souls judged so worthless or relentlessly vile that the universe has no more use for us. All we’re good for is fuel for the fire.”
Did Muninn, Neshamah, and his brothers think up Tartarus on a particularly good day or a bad one? Did they mean to create this place or is it another one of their mistakes? I’m going to have to reconsider whether the demiurge is evil or not because this place is on a whole new scale of evil.
I watch the Metropolis proles working away at the furnace and boiler. Gears and pipes and valves stretch from the floor, spread to the three enormous pipes that disappear into the ceiling.
This is it. God’s ultimate revenge for his kids letting him down. Eventually we’ll all end up down here. Right now it’s only the most monstrous souls, but Muninn and his brothers will get tired of watching humanity fuck up and we’ll end up cordwood, too. So will the rest of the angels. Even Humanity 2.0, 3.0, and 100.0 will eventually disappoint them. When there’s no one left to punish, why would they keep Hellions around? We’ll all end up in the furnace, warming the brothers’ palace, a tiny dot in an empty universe, while they sit around arguing like old biddies for the next trillion years. Or until one of them gets fed up enough to crack open the Big Bang crystal and put them out of their misery, too.
The furnace workers cut down more souls from the conveyor and toss them in the fire.
“We can’t get out the way we came in, but what about up there?” I point to the machine. “Are there any maintenance areas or access tunnels? Someone built this place. Someone has to maintain it.”
“No. God in his infinite wisdom built the furnace well,” says Semyazah. “It might be his greatest achievement. His perfect creation.”
Even Mammon doesn’t argue with him.
When I think about leaving Alice with Neshamah, I get a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. He knew what I’d find down here. Wouldn’t it be the biggest joke in history to have survived Hell, Lucifer’s games, and Mason’s bullshit just to have God murder Alice while my back is turned? I can’t even go back and check on her. All I know is that they’re in a paroo.;re in king lot in Eleusis. In L.A., gosh, there can’t be more than fifty of those in the area.
“Has anyone tried attacking the workers?”
Some of the generals nod.
“The furnace has divine protections against that. We have some of the most powerful witches, warlocks, necromancers, and djinn in existence here. They’ve tried every imaginable type of magic to destroy the furnace or break down the walls. They’ve even combined their powers. Nothing has worked.”
“Where exactly does the furnace go?”
A female Hellion general with a hole in her chest says, “One conduit goes up to Heaven. One to Hell, and one to the rest of the universe.”
“Then that’s the way out. How do we attack?”
The souls nearby whisper to each other like they’re going to be held after school if they get caught talking. Azazel smiles smugly. With his meat-loaf face, it’s hard to tell if Mammon is smiling, too. Even Semyazah has turned away.
“Hey, assholes, I only chanced coming down here because there were supposed to be a lot of sharp G.I. Joe types. You’ve been standing around with your thumbs up your double-dead asses for years, so you’ve had time to suss out the weak spots in the machine’s defenses. What are they?”
Semyazah points to the furnace.
“An attack is simple in theory. We’re deemed powerless, so there are virtually no defenses around the furnace.”
“Who are the salarymen bleeding the steam? Are they fighters? Can I take them?”
“You don’t have to. They’re the Gobah. Angels who rebelled after we were thrown from Heaven. Their punishment was that Father took their minds and sent them here.”