It seemed like they had been running forever. Considering there was no sun in this infernal place, much less a sunrise, sunset or anything else to mark the passage of time, it was difficult to really tell with any kind of accuracy, but Ciel felt they must've been running non-stop for at least a week, and in circles at that. Thrice now, they'd passed the coliseum where Sebastian claimed the Hellions played their gruesome brand of chess. Ciel knew, because each time they approached the ginormous oval, which appeared to be constructed of some sort of sizzling, sparking, seething red rock, Sebastian would point and pant, "There, Young Master! We can't stop now, but perhaps when Tuesday rolls 'round again we'll take in a tourney!"
"Idiot! Stop! PUT. ME. DOWN." Ciel would bellow, arms and legs flailing as he tried to punch and kick any part of Sebastian he could reach, which was aggravatingly little, considering he was tucked tight beneath Sebastian's arm and the ridiculous ponce was running so hell-for-leather it was nearly impossible for Ciel to direct his limbs against the wind drag. He may have accidentally connected a toe to Sebastian's calf at one point, but it was probably just wishful thinking.
His demands were acknowledged only with Sebastian's new catch phrase, "We can't stop now!" While Ciel had never been particularly fond of "I'm simply one Hell of a butler," he much preferred Sebastian's smug and annoying double entendre to its successor, which sounded like the deranged motivational slogan of a panicked psychotic.
A day, a week, a month, a year, a century . . . could be everyone he knew up topside was dust in their graves by now. It certainly felt like they'd been circling this ring off Hell for a Hell of a long time. All Ciel knew for certain was the friction of Sebastian's arm had worn straight through his topcoat, waistcoat and his fine linen shirt, and was now chafing the skin of Ciel's left flank. It didn't hurt exactly—not yet, but it was mightily annoying. Besides, surely Sebastian's lunatic father and brothers had exhausted their rage, grown bored, and given up the chase by now, right? Lucifer knew Ciel was bored, at any rate. It had been at least an aeon or two since he'd last heard Cerberus' growls or Asmodeus' guttural curses. The only thing he could hear now was the rush of wind and the cackling laughter of Hell's denizens, who had taken to lining their path, jeering and hurling insults (and dung) at them as they flew by.
Enough, Ciel thought angrily. Clenching his fists and gritting his teeth, Ciel did what the half-pint CEO did best: he made an executive decision. Mustering up every last drop of his formidable will, he took a deep, burning breath of sulphur-laden air and bellowed "Sebastian! This is an ORDER: stop running and put me down. NOW!"
The fierce wind stopped howling instantly but Hell continued spinning like a chaotic, vomit-inducing carousel— or at least it seemed that way to Ciel. His feet touched ground and instantly the smouldering earth came rushing up to meet his face a split-second before he realized he'd gone from standing on his own two feet to eating ash and demon dung.
"Baftrrd," he cursed through the gravel, clutching his whirling head with numb hands as he rolled onto his back and glared up at the five pissed-off Sebastians weaving and swaying above him.
"Fool. Now you've done it!" Sebastian seethed, reaching down to jerk Ciel up off the ground by his topcoat's wind-frayed lapels. "How long do you think you'll last in Hell after Father feeds me to that damned three-headed dog of his? Oh wait, wait. That's right! Never mind. Forgive me, My Lord. For a moment there, I'd completely forgot about my brothers who mean to pass you back and forth between themselves until there's nothing left. Only then will Father serve you up as an appetizer to Cerberus!"
Ciel fought the urge to smack Sebastian's grasping hands from his person, knowing without them he'd topple straight back on his face again. While he waited to regain his sense of balance, he settled for assaulting his moronic servant with a smug, malicious grin. "They stopped chasing us ages ago you arse-brained moron!"
Rage twisted Sebastian's comely face into a visage that might have caused Ciel to shudder if he wasn't every inch as enraged himself. He opened his mouth to order Sebastian do something really unpleasant to himself before then doing something even more unpleasant to himself, when he was rudely interrupted.
"The scrawny midget is right, it is," something hissed from behind them. "His Highness said sommat about needing a shower and the two princes buggered off to take Cerby back to the palace for a nosh and a nap two revolutions ago. But don't stop now, idiot prince. I made a wager and you haven't reached my number yet."
Ciel pulled out of Sebastian's loosening grip and spun unsteadily on his heel to confront… a pair of … somethings. Two vaguely humanoid things with oblong, scaly heads and huge, bulging eyes were leering down at him.
"Who are you calling 'midget,' Lizard Gob? Why don't you go find that rock of yours and crawl back under?"
"Pissy little squit, innit?" said Lizard-y Thing One.
"It talks tough, but it'll chew soft enough, I wager," Lizard-y Thing Two growled. Ciel was getting an inkling Lizard-y Thing Two just might be harbouring a gambling addiction.
"Sid," Sebastian sighed. "For the love of Lucifer, take Nancy and go home, now. Unless you really fancy the idea of gorging on your own tails again. I see they've finally grown back."
"See? I told you he was still an asshole," Lizard Gob Two muttered, shooting Sebastian a withering glare as it grasped hold of the stumpy arm of its partner with a thumb-less, green-skinned hand. "Let's go, Luv. Let him have his scrappy ikkul scrap. His ass will be grass soon enough."
"And then we'll roll it up and smoke it!" Lizard Gob One cackled. It let its partner pull it away into the vast landscape of smouldering rock.
Ciel watched them go with relief. Just before he turned his face away Ciel caught sight of a long, thick, blue tongue come shooting out the corner of L.G. One's mouth, reach all the way up and lick its own eye. Ew, Ciel thought, Must be one of Faustus' relatives.
"What in bloody Hell was that?" Ciel blinked hard, resisting the urge to rub his eyes with his grime-streaked hands as he stared after the pair of bizarre, reptilian-humanoid things.
"That? Caterwaulers. They enjoy a certain celebrity for being the loudest things in this Circle, but . . . never mind them! We have to get out of here!"
"Oh no you don't!" Ciel yelled, jumping back out of the reach of Sebastian's sweeping arm. He was so surprised by his own speed and agility he nearly tripped over himself in awe. "No more running, Sebastian. You heard Sid and Nancy. Your father got bored watching you chase your own arse and went home. I suggest we do the same. I'm filthy, half-naked and you've destroyed my only set of clothing."
"Home?!" Sebastian barked a curt laugh. "What a perfectly awful idea, My Lord."
"Oh? Let me guess: you're actually a slob, aren't you, Sebastian. Or worse yet, Hell's version of the crazy cat lady," Ciel sneered. "That's it, isn't it? You live in a piss-soaked one-room shack with a hundred and fifty damned cats and a dirt floor littered with old soul wrappers!"
"Yes, very funny My Lord. Your wit astounds us all."
"Or is it you're still living in Daddy's basement rec room with no proper job or visible means of support? Do you live in a shabby old travel trailer, Sebastian? With a meth lab for company, down by the Styx?"
"Now is not the time for your delightsome flights of fancy, Young Master," Sebastian's nervous gaze darted over the horizon again. "We need to get you hidden somewhere safe, and I'm afraid my manor is not the—"
"Manor? You have a manor?" Ciel demanded, his hands fisting as he crossed his arms over his chest. "What a load of bollocks; you do not have a manor. Or if you do, I bet it has all the charm of a slack sphincter. Pfft! You wish you had a manor." The boy folded his arms over his chest and turned to see if, perchance, he could still spot Sid and Nancy scampering away through the yellow fume and general gloom. After a moment's thought he said "Tell me then: is it anything like my manor, Sebastian? Well, is it?"
"Well, yes, I suppose, something like," Sebastian shook his head. "Except it's thrice as big, has a myriad of competent servants… and it's tastefully decorated. No garish renderings of fat, gaudy kings in oil claiming every inch of wall space, for example. Really, My Lord, sometimes less is more."
"Well, grand!" Ciel itched to throttle the arrogant ponce. "Can't wait to see it! Take me there at once!"
"Really, that's not the wisest idea. With respect, sir, I beg you,'" Sebastian said, avoiding Ciel's glare. If the former earl didn't know any better, he'd say his eternal butler looked absolutely sheepish. "You see, my father holds the deed and therefore my wards are useless against him. He doesn't require the standard invitation which prevents acknowledged guests from bursting into flames the moment they set foot on the estate. In fact it's quite possib—"
"Shut up, Sebastian." The boy barked. So this was how it was going to be from now on, was it? A constant stream of direct orders necessary to control this daddy-whipped version of his formerly not-this-big-an-idiot demon. How utterly tiresome. He sincerely hoped his eye didn't wear out. "This is an ORDER! Take me to your so-called 'manor' right now!"
Ciel both heard and felt Sebastian's roar of frustration when his face abruptly smashed into his butler's sulphur-dusted shirtfront as the demon scooped him up again and locked him in a bone-crushing embrace. Once more the wind howled and Ciel experienced a near faint-inducing sense of vertigo as he struggled to free himself.
"Bathturd!" Was Ciel's muffled curse as he hammered his fists against Sebastian's torso and cried out with every ounce of strength he possessed, "Nooo!LemmeGOOOOooomph!"
Ciel's voice rang out, finishing in a pained grunt as he found himself bouncing on his bum against some sort of hard surface. Wincing against an impact which would have shattered a human spine, the boy was left shocked and gasping for air he didn't really need. But it was the humiliation that galled him more than anything. Sebastian would pay and pay dearly, he resolved, as he gave his spinning head a shake to try and clear it. But just as he got to the point where he thought he could stand again he heard it…
"Well well, the prodigal son returns," said an ethereal voice so lyrical, so rich and sinfully delicious-sounding it made Sebastian seem like Lizzie at her worst. "So considerate of you to finally drop by."
There were only four Sebastians this time when Ciel looked up, none of them blurred or swaying. They weren't all exactly identical either, but close, very close. Three very familiar sets of crimson eyes were leering down at him as he hid behind the paltry wall of Sebastian's protective stance. He could feel a minute trembling within the square of his butler's shoulders that Ciel found more than a little unnerving. The Hell with pride, he thought, as he scooted his sore arse close enough to Sebastian's backside to grasp a handful of pant-leg and hang on.
It was about now he realised they were no longer out-of-doors, but in a building of some sort. It slowly dawned on the ex-earl as his eyes travelled up, and up and up, past the vast twin black crystal chandeliers overhead, to the two iron maidens-mere decorative bumps in the wrought iron chains that looked like they might once have had something like the Campagne attached to one end. Up and off into the shadows soaring overhead he could dimly spy carved wooden beams, blackened with age and softened by cauls of ancient, dust-laden cob webbing much too far off for anyone to bother cleaning away. It was then the truth broke like dawn breaching the horizon that this massive space was just the foyer of the 'mansion' Sebastian had mentioned. Ciel realised his butler had actually played down the size of the place.. The foyer alone looked like it could contain the whole of the Phantomhive mansion's west wing, roof, chimneys and all. Suddenly the boy's face was burning with shame.
Uncomfortable as he was, it was the 'tasteful décor' that gave Ciel a real turn as he glanced around. The place bore a more than passing resemblance to that creepy courtyard of the Green Witch's which was chock-a-block with ancient instruments of torture.
Ciel spotted clubs, morning stars, swords and twisted looking things on long poles mounted all over the walls, free-standing stocks, pillories, prangers and racks, Judas cradles, more iron maidens, and case after case of shrew's fiddles, choke pears, knee splitters, thumb screws, scold's bridles and things he couldn't even begin to guess uses for, never mind the names. They all bore the same disturbing marks of wear and stains of actual use, that raised the hair on the back of the boy's neck.
"Father," Sebastian said firmly, belying the quiver Ciel felt in the hard calf beneath his fists. "Rei. Kain. You all look… well. Please accept my utmost apologies for my unkempt appearance and lack of hospitality. I've only just returned from 'topside,' as I'm sure you know, and have not yet had time to prepare for guests."
"We're not guests. We're family, brother," said the more heavily muscled Sebastian-esque demon standing to the right of the gorgeous but glowering creature, a taller, squarer-jawed, ridiculously flawless version of Ciel's butler with a midnight torrent of heavy, softly waved hair, a creature who radiated so much raw power he could only be Asmodeus himself. "And it would seem you've brought us back a present! "Rei continued, "how thoughtful and generous. He seems…" and here Rei took a deep breath, "mmm, absolutely tantalizing."
Ciel felt himself blanch as Sebastian's brother gave him a sniff followed by a rather suggestive wink and a lecherous grin that turned into a ball of ice and dropped into Ciel's gut with a deadly thud. It was about then the former earl considered that perhaps, just this once, he might have made the wrong executive decision. He started to sweat and clutched his butler's pant-leg tighter.
"Really brother," the lesser, willowy, vaguely feminine Sebastian to Asmodeus' left sighed and shook his pretty head. "He's a little young, even for you Rei, don't you think? Why, he's barely old enough to have felt his first stirrings of desire, much less the hot-blooded lust necessary to feed the likes of us."
"Sebastian! What's he mean, 'the likes of us'? What's wrong with them?!"
"They are incubii, My Lord. They draw their sustainence from... sexual energy rather than souls. I would advise you to keep your distance." This news drove the former earl into a foetal position, wrapped around his butler's heel.
"You always were the lazy one, Kain, preferring to feed off men's cravings for others rather than cultivating their desire for you." Rei puffed out his chest and sneered. "Our brother has brought us an ambitious undertaking. Fortunately, I am up to the task, heh, and I do mean up." Whereon he huffed a sort of 'whough' sound and blew dark auric matter from his nostrils, demonstrating just how keen he was to get on with things.
"We-ell," Kain replied with a slow, languid grin, "I suppose it is Friday…"
Speaking of untoward stirrings, Ciel felt quite flushed all over beneath the combined lecherous gazes of Sebastian's perverted family, and he didn't care for the sensation at all. "Sebastian," he huffed as he pulled himself to his feet, "Your idiot brothers seem to have mistaken me for some lascivious damsel from one of those smutty novels Mey-Rin is so fond of. Correct their inane assumptions immediately."
Sebastian turned on his heel so fast he nearly knocked Ciel flat again, and now there were four sets of crimson eyes searing him. How interesting that it was only Sebastian who wasn't eyeing him as if he'd like to tear Ciel apart and gorge on his tasty giblets. "If I told that woman once I must have told her a thousand times: Mey Rin, do not to leave those blasted filthy books lying about for the young master to see. Not that I imagined you'd actually ever read any of them. Young Master. Honestly! "
"Master!? Did he just call that scrumptious little tart just—" Rei began.
"Sebastian, eh? I had a client named Sebastian once," Kain started. "He was so depraved, I simply couldn't begin to…"
"…appalled that you would ever stoop so low as to…"
"… very smooth, though, but with knotty veins like ropes all over…"
They were all talking at once, their rich, silken voices combining to effect a host of curious, alarming sensations within Ciel, seemingly dissolving his bones into so much wobbly gelatine. He felt certain he'd be a puddle of mindless goo within moments. Squeezing his eyes shut, he instinctively clapped his hands over his ears and took a huge breath with which to scream bloody murder.
"Enough!"
Asmodeus's command cut throughout the vast room, shaking loose a fine sifting of soot from somewhere overhead and effectively silencing his sons. Ciel opened his eyes to see Rei and Kain shrinking back behind a growing shroud of writhing, crackling darkness emanating from their father. Sebastian turned to face the Lord of the Realm, shoving Ciel behind the iffy protection of his back once more.
"You!" Asmodeus thundered, writhing curls of dark aether shooting from his nostrils with every impassioned snort. Ciel peered out from beneath Sebastian's arm and saw the God of Lust shimmering, morphing, expanding, his magnificent beauty swiftly mutating into something so gob-smackingly grotesque even his Hell-born sons had to look away. "You have always insisted on defying me! That you, the strongest and most beautiful of my sons, would choose to serve Vengeance over Lust was affront aplenty, but now you've gone and made me the laughing stock of Hell by getting yourself eternally indentured to that… that…" He gestured wildly at Ciel with at least six arms, only one of which sported anything like a human hand (with a long, spiked blue-green tail sprouting out of the wrist.)
"But even that was not enough for you, was it? No! No. You just had to add personal insult to injury by raining down a steaming load of toxic excrement on my head! I'll have you know it took the blood of six virgins just to neutralize the acid, and the blood of another dozen to heal my burns! Seventeen!"
"Eighteen, Father."
"Eighteen!"Asmodeus instantly amended.
"He always was shite at maths…"
"D'you hear me you worthless…" another snort. Aether and fire this time. "Eighteen forever uncorrupted virgins lost to us, all because I was fool enough to dally with Lilith and sire a spoiled rotten brat! Well, guess what, Sonny Boy? I'm long overdue for teaching you some discipline, but better late than never! A century or two over my knee ought to do for a start, don't you agree?"
Asmodeus now sported three heads to go with his six arms, one of which was breathing fire. His body had become a gigantic nausea-inducing amalgam of animalistic horrors, in which the heads and arms were sprouting up out of something vaguely resembling a lion sporting dragon-esque bat wings and a quiver full of pissed-off vipers for a tail. His rage was so palpable Ciel felt the fine hair on his arms singeing. Only one thought kept the little earl on his feet and that was the possibility of seeing his smug, arrogant butler get a bare-arsed hiding over his demonic daddy's knee.
While the thought of seeing Sebastian humiliated was beyond delightful, Ciel had the sinking suspicion Daddy Dearest intended first to liberate the wayward fruit of his loins from the shackles of their eternal contract before he bared his boy's beauteous backside.
This was bad. Very, very bad indeed. Think, Ciel, think! Bare bottomed butle—NO, damn it, Focus! How in Hell are we getting out of this one?
"Now," Asmodeus boomed, "hand over that abomination clinging to your pant leg and let us begin!"
With that, Ciel climbed his quaking butler like a tree, wrapped his arms around his neck in an iron choke hold and screamed in Sebastian's ear, "Reaper realm! It's an ORDER! Take us to the Reaper's realm now, right NOW!"