Kyra phased through the unreality that was Hell and appeared in a worryingly small room.

The surfaces were all made of different colors and types of rock, and the ceiling was barely half a foot over the top of her helmet. The room itself was perhaps ten feet long by six wide, with no obvious way out, and that made for a hell of a claustrophobic environment. Which only grew more so as the others teleported in behind her.

The only thing she had for company besides them were some really red torches, burning silently in each of the corners.

"Well this is a bad start," Carpenter muttered.

"Yep, start looking for a way out," Kyra replied.

They each began moving around the small room, checking the walls, but as Kyra walked up to the one at the front, a narrow strip of the floor, right up against that wall, began to lower slowly.

"Think I found it, Linaweaver, Falcheck, onboard! You two wait here and cover our six," she said.

The two joined her as it continued to descend. For a few seconds, they remained in a tight, enclosed space. But then, suddenly, the wall in front of them ran out, and their view was opened into a vast red place.

"Shit guys, jump! It's still descending!" she called. "Off the platform!" she added to the others, to make room for Carpenter and Powell, as the way ahead of them was just a five foot drop that was getting closer even as they spoke.

They dropped off, onto a shelf of green rock with walls of cracked stone behind and to either side. Carpenter and Powell grunted as they made the drop out of the initial room, and landed shortly before the descending platform settled into place.

"Fucking-my knees are gonna blow out," Carpenter groaned.

"Whoa...holy fucking shit, this place…" Powell muttered.

"That's a lot of blood," Linaweaver said.

Kyra had agree. She was still taking it all in. The plateau they now stood on let out into a vast cavern, the walls and ceiling of which were made of that green-brown rock. The floor, which was a solid twenty feet down, was covered in blood, a small ocean of blood. In the middle of this vast room was a tiered stone island, home to some more torches and, at the top, out of sight, the piece of demon tech they needed to sabotage.

As it stood right now, she had no way of getting there. Even if they dropped down into the blood and walked over, then she gave one of them a boost up, the lowest tier of the island was too high to reach that way. And there was no immediately obvious way of climbing, either. It all looked smooth. No handholds, no stairs, no ladder, no nothing.

In fact, she wasn't even sure how to get off this place without jumping. She looked around and spied a button behind her, to the right.

"Everyone get ready, I'm gonna push this," she said.

They all readied their weapons. Kyra hit the button. With a loud click, something began grinding into place. She followed the source of the sound to a path that, as it locked into place, connected their little platform to something out of sight, around a wall to their left. She heard the unmistakable sound of Imps somewhere nearby, and the groan of a zombie. Hefting her assault rifle, she stepped up to the narrow pathway.

"On my six," she said, and set off.

They were close, they were so close. She just wanted this done and over with. She wanted out of this wretched abyss. The pathway led to an area clinging to the side of the vast stone walls, with tiered flooring of white cobble, and a platform with slanted walls and green-flamed torches centered around a skinned corpse hanging from a chain around his neck. A few Imps and zombies were hanging about, and she blasted them with a series of quick, well-place bursts, killing each and dropping them like bricks on Jupiter.

She made sure to put a round into the sorry son of a bitch hung up by the neck, just in case, (he was missing his arms and legs, with the remains of his legs being little more than a bloody smear on the brickwork), and then moved beyond the little display. Behind it, the way dead-ended in a pair of rusted metal plates that came together to form a corner. But as she stepped up to it, something made a sound behind her. Turning, Kyra saw that the back of the little diorama with the corpse had a hidden panel, and it had just dropped, revealing a skull-button.

Walking over, she pushed it. Spinning back around, she saw the iron-plated corner drop into the floor, revealing another gruesome sight. Several chewed up corpses, most of which were little more than blood and gristle, lay scattered about, and a pair of Pinkies, their mouths smeared with gore, looked up from their meal.

She and the others wasted them in record time, peppering them with bullets and blasting the life right out of them.

There were more men and women hung from the ceiling and the walls, and Kyra kept up her policy of making damn sure they were dead before moving on. The path continued to the right, leading to a narrow walkway of more white cobblestone that hugged the wall of the vast cavern. Ahead, she could hear other things.

Bad things.

They kept going, and the next however long became a miserable experience of fighting demons as they appeared, either up close and personal or farther away, all while being on either narrow stairs or a narrow pathway over a twenty to thirty foot drop straight down into a pool of blood that she had no idea how deep it was. She dodged and ducked, reloaded, blasted away at the Imps, the zombies, the Pinkies, and the handful of pumpkins that showed up to ruin her goddamn day. And finally she came to a teleport that had to be one of the worst she'd come across.

"Fuck, I don't wanna go in there," Falcheck muttered.

"I'll lead," Kyra said. "We've got good momentum going, let's not fuck it up."

She stepped aboard the teleport that was situated within a tiny closet, just big enough for one person to stand in. All three walls were made of iron bars, and behind these bars were piles of severed heads. Dozens of them, packed in there, blood oozing out. She ignored it all and took the teleporter. Stepping off the one she snapped back into existence on, she checked her corners, clearing the room she'd appeared in.

Alone for now. As she began heading for the obvious exit to clear it, she hesitated, then switched to her plasma rifle, just to be safe. Behind her, Powell snapped into reality. While he covered her six, she got up to the exit and checked it out. It led to a painfully narrow set of stairs and gave her another view of the vast blood room. They were higher, definitely higher up, and the stairs would take them to being just about level with that central island, which she could see nearby. But there was still no way across to it. Yet.

But this pathway seemed to be leading somewhere important.

Once the others were through, they made their way up the stairs. They led up to another room with cracked walls and flickering torches. The room was partially divided by a wall down the middle, with a gap at the far end to admit access. She hesitated again. Something about that didn't sit right with her. Kyra waited and listened, but she could hear nothing. Creeping forward, she got up to the gap and, plasma rifle raised, stepped around the corner, prepared to blast anything that might be hiding, waiting to get the drop on her.

Her luck ran out as she found herself staring up at a seven foot skeleton. It let out a shrieking roar and punched her right in the chest. She wheezed as she was picked up and thrown directly back into the wall behind her. Slamming into it, she was already opening fire, hosing the skeletal fucker down with balls of plasma as the others rushed in to help. It was trying to get off some rockets, but they managed to reduce it to a pile of bones before that happened.

Kyra picked herself back up, coughing, and did a quick check of her weapon.

"You good?" Powell asked.

"Yeah," she replied. "Still good. Probably. My ribs hurt like shit now but they probably aren't fucked up."

They pressed on, and finally came to the end of the path.

It let out on a ledge a bit above and about five feet away from a small, tall island in the midst of the vast room. They spent a moment checking over on this side of the gap, and ultimately surmised that they'd have to jump it.

"We can make it," Kyra said. "I'll go first. Cover me, in case anything feels like popping up."

"Got it," Carpenter replied, stepping up to one side while Linaweaver took the other.

She took a few breaths, a few steps back, then made a running jump. As she landed on the simple platform on the other side, which seemed to only support a single thing, nothing happened. She studied the immediate area more in depth. There were two pillars of cracked gray stone that went from the floor to the ceiling, one ahead and one to her right. The only thing on the platform with her was a greenish upright slab with a gray-green demonic face embedded in it. Its mouth was open, and it almost looked gleefully malignant.

"I'm gonna see if this thing is a button," she said, and then walked up to it. Hesitating a moment longer, she finally reached out and pushed it.

There was a loud click and something began grinding nearby.

In fact, several somethings did. The grinding to her left sounded farther away, but the pillars around her were now opening up sections of themselves to reveal pumpkins hidden within. Cursing, she leveled her plasma rifle at the one ahead of her, figuring the others had a clearer shot on the other one, and opened fire. The big one-eyed bastard ahead of her popped from the onslaught of the plasma rifle before it could do anything.

This was not the case for the second demon.

"Duck!" Linaweaver called, and she began to, but it was too late.

A ball of fire crashed into her and sent her stumbling right over the edge. She heard several of her fellow warriors yell her name, and before she could form a coherent thought, arms flailing, she landed with a heavy grunt on something painfully solid.

It was moving. Up. She gasped for breath once more as she got up onto her hands and knees, looking around, trying to figure out what happened. Finally, it clicked. A pathway was rising up out of the blood, and it was most of the way to being level with the island she'd fallen off of. As she got slowly back to her feet, it finished settling into place.

"I'm all right," she said, checking her weapon again. Ahead, the platform led to three doors. "Come on over, I found the way forward."

She covered them as they made the jump, and once they were all over, they got right back to work.

It was miserable work, but that was nothing new at this point. The first door was locked, and as they went in search of a way to open it, became mired in combat. The group blasted, ripped, and tore their way through a dozen and a half demons from across the pantheon of the awful things as they checked out a series of rooms and hallways that didn't particularly stand out compared to everything else they'd seen so far. At the end of it, they came to stand at another teleporter.

Kyra went through first, and found herself standing at the base of a set of broad, large stairs. Looking around while the others came in behind her, she quickly realized that they were now standing on the island in the center of the blood pool.

"Well, we're almost halfway there," she muttered, looking up.

"Yep. Goddamn, I hate this fucking job," Linaweaver muttered.

"Don't we all?"

"I would absolutely quit if I could," Falcheck said, peering cautiously over the edge. "This shit is...way, way, way beyond my pay grade. I should be a fucking billionaire for this shit. Sky on fire? Oceans of blood? Demon armies? Dudes with their skin ripped off…"

"Well, sooner we get up there and bomb this thing, sooner we can kill the Icon, sooner we can go home and maybe get some R and R on a nice, isolated space station," Carpenter grunted.

"Last I heard, Hawaii was still a green zone...although shit was changing by the hour," Kyra said. She sighed heavily and popped her neck. "Come on. Let's get this done."

She took the lead, plasma rifle in hand, fully charged, ready to burn the skin off of whatever might be waiting for them up there.

Up they went, huge step by huge step. It switchbacked on itself multiple times, and it revealed more and more of itself the further up she went. Every inch that was revealed, Kyra kept expecting to see something, an Imp, a zombie, a Pinky, something waiting for them, but the way remained clear. It only made the tension worse.

Finally, she reached the top.

Still, it was clear. There was an open space up against a stone room that occupied half the platform up there.

It felt…

Old.

Ancient.

It all felt old, but something about this particular platform felt special, in an awful kind of way. It was clear of anything, just a simple stone platform maybe twenty feet wide by ten across. The only thing about it was that it was stained, deeply, with what looked to be blood.

"You know what this place reminds me of?" Powell muttered as they spread out, checking for threats.

"What?" Kyra asked.

"Sacrificial platform. You know, like the Aztecs? Or was it the Incas? Shit, think just about everyone sacrificed back then...but that's what it makes me think of."

"Creepy," Carpenter growled.

"Yeah. Can we get this door open?"

"I'll take a look at it," Powell replied, marching over and letting his gun hang by its sling.

Kyra felt the tension still rising. Something was wrong. She walked slowly along the edge, looking down, half-expecting to see an army of pumpkins rising out of the blood sea or blood-drenched Imps climbing up the side of the platform.

But there was always nothing, each time she looked.

Up, down, sides…

All empty.

But something was definitely wrong. Or maybe this place was just getting to her. Maybe she was finally cracking up. She didn't really feel like she was losing it...or did she? What did that actually feel like? Wasn't part of it that you didn't know it was happening? Part of being crazy was not realizing you were crazy.

Kyra stopped and turned back around. Powell was still fussing with the door. Carpenter and Linaweaver were standing at the edge of the stairway, looking down over it. Falcheck was walking slowly along the platform, looking around.

"How's that door coming?" she asked.

"Still looking for a button or a lever or something…" Powell replied.

"Hurry if you can."

"Something wrong?"

"I'm not sure, I think-"

They all stopped what they were doing as something in the air shifted. Kyra knew what that was by this point.

Something was getting ready to teleport in.

She turned around, rifle raised, and then it happened. There was a flash of green light, and suddenly something huge was standing directly behind Falcheck. It stood a solid two feet higher than he was, towering over him. It had long, angled limbs and a bulbous, alien head. It was covered in stretched yellowish skin that turned her stomach, and stared down at Falcheck with eyes of black hatred and awful malignant intelligence.

"Falcheck! Move!" she screamed, leveling her rifle at it.

But it was too late.

The man screamed as the huge demon (had she seen one like this before? She was almost positive she hadn't) punched a massive fist through his armored back, then raised him up. Still screaming, flailing around, he seemed maddened by the agony.

The new demon's eyes were glowing now and it seemed to be doing something more than what was immediately obvious. Right as Kyra was lining up a killshot to put Falcheck out of his agony, there was a pulse of orange-yellow light and then Falcheck just detonated. He straight-up exploded, bloody, charred bits of him splattered everywhere in a final agonized shriek. Only a half-second of shock passed before all four of them reacted and opened fire.

A quartet of barrages converged on the huge beast. Two lines of plasma, two arrays of bullets. The tall demon shrieked and staggered, deep red blood spraying out of it as its body was riddled with bullet holes and its flesh was charred and flayed.

When everyone ran dry, it collapsed into a heap on the platform.

"Holy shit, what the fuck was that?!" Powell snapped.

"New one on me," Kyra replied. She walked a few steps forward, towards it, then stopped, then slowly looked around at Falcheck's remains. "Goddamnit...come on, let's get what we can from his remains."

"Hey! The door's open," Linaweaver said, pointing.

They all turned to look at it. The door was indeed open. Nothing alive lay beyond it, but she could see a teleport off in its own partitioned area and…

Something else.

"So wait, what opened it?...was this a sacrificial platform? And either Falcheck was sacrificed, or maybe that weird demon thing counted as a sacrifice?" Powell muttered.

"Maybe the door just reacted to its presence, or a stray bullet hit whatever opened it. Either way, grab Falcheck's shit and get inside," Kyra replied.

They all snapped back into focus and got to work. Powell secured the room beyond while the others gathered what was left of Falcheck's remains. After five minutes, they were gathered before the extremely bizarre piece of...technology? Whatever it was, Kyra was sure it was what they were looking for.

"This is their tech," she whispered, staring at it. "Tell me we've got enough to blow it."

"Should, yeah," Powell replied, sounding distracted. She glanced over. He was looking over Falcheck's armor. He pulled something glowing out of a section of an arm and tossed the rest away. "Batteries, should increase the yield a bit," he said when he noticed her gaze.

"Good. Everyone throw in, whatever you got."

They ended up with a pile of grenades, some plasma cells, a bit of explosives Linaweaver had picked up back at the HQ, and a few power cells from Falcheck's suit.

"How we gonna do this?" Carpenter asked. "Given the teleport is right here, and it's the only way out of here."

"I can set a delayed charge. Everyone goes through, I'll stay until last, hit the charge, and make it through before it detonates," Powell replied.

"That's a risk," Kyra muttered.

"Everything's a risk here," he said.

"Yeah, but this is a risk about the mission. What if it doesn't go off? We don't necessarily know that we can get back, these teleports aren't all two-way…"

Powell considered it for a long moment. "I'll stay," he said finally. "And make sure it goes off, and hope the teleport survives."

Kyra stared at him for a moment, then looked at the others. "If you're sure."

"I'm sure," he said.

"No, let me do it," Carpenter said, stepping forward.

"Why you?" Linaweaver asked.

"Look, I'm kicking ass for ninety plus, but I'm obviously the weakest link here. If anyone's gotta risk death more than usual, it should be me." He stared hard at Kyra. "You know I'm right."

She sighed. "Yeah. You are. I won't turn it down if you're offering."

"I'm offering. I'll set the timer, fall back to a safe distance, then hope the teleport survives and get through. If not...shit, I dunno. I'll figure something out. Always have so far."

"...good luck," Kyra said. "We'll wait on the other side."

"Don't wait too long," he replied.

She just nodded and then moved up to the teleporter. Once everything was set, she went through. Snapping through reality, she appeared in another place, an open-faced room with three paths over trenches of lava leading away from it. Linaweaver appeared next, then Powell. They all checked the place out, then waited, listening.

Distantly, she heard an explosion.

They kept waiting, staring at the teleport. Seconds ticked by, one by one, seeming to drag on. Finally, in a flash of light, Carpenter appeared.

"It worked," he said, then coughed a few times. "God, there was this awful black shit everywhere, melting everything. Barely got onto the teleport pad in time."

"You made it, that's what matters," Kyra replied.

He laughed grimly. "Yeah, so far at least. What are we facing?"

"Hopefully not much," she said, looking back at the threes paths.

With a sigh, they set to work.

It took another half an hour of exploring, backtracking, blasting a few demons, and hitting a few switches, but finally they found themselves at the way out.

"That...is one gnarly looking teleporter," Powell muttered.

"At least I feel pretty confident it'll take us where we want to go," Kyra replied as she studied the strange black crystals surrounding the pad. "I mean, I don't really want to go towards something called the fucking Icon of Sin, but…" She sighed and shook her head. "Let's go murder this motherfucking demon."

Kyra checked her weapons over one more time, then stepped onto the teleporter pad.

It was time to end this.