Chapter 25: Double down
What was the size of that Serpent? Just from his line of sight Izaya would have surmised an approximate diameter of maybe two meters or less.
Now that he stood in a canyon made of that reptile's body at least triple that size he wondered whether his eyesight or his estimate had been the one to fail him.
Trees and stones had been brushed aside like toothpicks and pebbles as the awfully straight path continued onwards like a freshly sown crop row.
"And you are sure the guardian isn't around anymore?" Izaya whispered, after having found a newfound increase of respect towards the mighty creature, but Shizuo gladly shook his head.
Nodding towards the sight, the demon directed Izaya's attention to the sides of their path.
"See the corpses?"
How could he not?
Critters of all kinds, or rather, what was left of them decorated the ledges like a dutiful mother her christmas tree.
Some blood sprinkles here, in various colors not to forget, and a few misplaced organs next to empty shells were delicately distributed among the place.
It was just up front that this Serpent-made path ended rather abruptly and Izaya's eyes narrowed as he pressed onwards. "I doubt it would remain in a place that has already been hunted down," Shizuo continued while Izaya gazed at what he had thought had been the end of the trail.
Rough geography made up most of hell from what Izaya had learned. Walking straight without having to either ascend a mountain or descend into some sort of abyss seemed to be a very rare occasion.
Which made sense. Considering humans had spent most of their life on their planet evening out landscaped to build cities upon, it appeared quite logical that with no demon acting in the same way nature would simply continue to grow as it pleased.
Trees with stems that could have easily hidden an entire building grew vertically from the sides of the Serpent's trail as the giant guardian had burrowed away the earth they needed for stability.
Ducking under one of the many giants of nature, Izaya moved onwards.
"Does it view Crysteria as a giant buffet or why is it heading there?"
Shizuo wasn't any wiser than Izaya in that regard.
"Beats me. Maybe it's a coincidence," he shrugged and advanced much easier than Izaya did as he simply jumped on top of the tilted tree. "You seem to like searching for patterns, but not everything in hell makes sense."
Izaya snorted and turned around for a moment.
"And you search for none. What have you been doing for the past hundred years?"
Surprised by the topic change, and obviously void for a quick answer, Shizuo slowed down. Bending his knees he crouched on top of the stem and gazed down at Izaya.
"Walked around," he answered after what must have been a full minute of wrecking his brain and Izaya snorted.
"That's it?"
Disappointment carried strongly in Izaya's words and Shizuo frowned with curiosity.
"What? Expected something grand?" A shrug was given and for a second Izaya glanced towards the trail the Serpents had left behind.
Destruction was all this creature knew.
Ants could lift fifty times their own weight. Whales could move fifty tons if forced to, but compared by their proportions the ant still held the crown.
This creature was like a mixture of both. And the single fact that Shizuo had said the Serpent only stood a chance against him, if it were to catch him by surprise, just succeeded in making Izaya able to grasp just what kind of raw strength this demon held.
"With that much power, yes. Fighting for a century would have made more sense to me," Izaya answered as he looked at this man of a demon, leisurely resting on top of a giant tree, looking like he couldn't hurt a fly.
A shrug was given and Shizuo let himself slip towards the ground.
"I don't plan to gain any more power than with which I am cursed with already."
Izaya snorted. "Weird way to say fights turned boring after you started killing everything with a single hit."
The words were meant as a compliment of some sorts, but the second the word kill slipped off Izaya's lips he realized the bitter connotation it held.
Shizuo's expression froze for just a second. But not in anger or madness. If anything he looked the same Izaya did when spotting that human faced worm. A bit unsettled and slightly distraught.
"So how much distance can this giant crab cover in a day?" Izaya quickly added loudly, to smooth across the topics he had grazed by mistake and moved forward.
The Serpent's path was even like nothing else. Earth was what they were walking upon.
And it was right then, when Izaya took a step forward, that that earth suddenly crumbled like the surface of a freshly baked souffle.
His leg gave away quicker than Izaya was able to react- not even a sound left his lips and his heart jumped the second he felt his body lose to gravity.
But not for long.
Instantly, as if Shizuo had never strayed from his side, the demon was suddenly there, along with a tight grip on Izaya's upper arm and pulled him back.
More and more of the floor gave away- the trees up front, larger than any Izaya had ever seen suddenly started to gradually subside into the void hidden beneath the sinkhole.
And then it was there.
Light.
And the unmistakable pattern of scales belonging to the gigantic reptile responsible for nature's new appearance.
Up and down, as if pulsating the skin of the reptile moved. Izaya tried to make out its eyes, but the gleaming light of orange and red scorched the air with brimming heat.
"It's sleeping." Shizuo suddenly enlightened Izaya and pulled the human away from the ledge.
"The guardian?" Izaya asked, a bit too startled to hide his astonishment and Shizuo nodded.
"The further you dig the closer you get to hell's core. The approach comes hand in hand with increased heat and force. He loves that heat."
Hell's core?
Heat?
"Force?" A lot of question marks must have been visible in Izaya's expression as Shizuo continued without him having to ask the most relevant questions.
"It's like poison. Moving becomes increasingly more difficult and remaining seems more pleasant than the idea of fleeing as your body slowly starts to turn to ashes."
Izaya swallowed and glanced back towards the newly opened sinkhole.
So any other demon was going to die down there, except for this guardian? "You must have experienced a similar effect when you entered hell," Shizuo elaborate further, thinking the human had not grasped what he was saying yet.
And apparently Izaya hadn't as he suddenly drew a connection he had failed to earlier.
The weights.
Those he had been carrying around ever since he entered hell.
"I thought that was the-" Izaya faded out, another term replacing what Shizuo had called poison.
Gravitation.
Increasing the further they got to the core, causing demons to wish to remain because of some force-
The demons had obviously misinterpreted the core's power. But to be fair, seeing as demon who weren't strong enough to fight the gravitational pull would give up and end up burning to ashes, he could see the similarity to what being poisoned and succumbing to one must look like.
So the weight he imagined wasn't just a sensation he felt.
Looking at the pendant Shizuo had left Izaya with he couldn't help but feel that this was the true reason he wasn't suffering from the additional weight anymore.
"Is that why you are letting me keep this?"
Shizuo looked at the pendant, and his expression alone already told Izaya that he was right.
"The core craves nourishment in many forms. Creatures, humans, demons or vegetation in itself, doesn't matter which. All it knows is that it must continue to thrive its searing flames."
Glancing towards the gleaming earth keeping the reptile at its desired temperature, Izaya frowned. The Serpent was the one supposedly to blame for the ice grazing hell at night, right?
"Why not extinguish it?" Izaya asked as the only logical conclusion to something that was strong enough to kill demons and seemed to serve no benefits except for proving a heat source feeding the Serpent's desire.
But Shizuo shook his head.
"Because without it neither hell nor the human realm could exist."
Science classes Izaya had never paid all too much attention to suddenly resurfaced from the back of his mind as he tried drawing the right conclusions from Shizuo's words.
Souls, hell, heaven, the human realm, gravity, earth's core- he was pretty sure the demons down here were mixing up simple rules of physics. Which was obviously a given since no one was conducting research yet.
Izaya wished he had paid better attention as he tried to think of the real reason why earth needed to retain its liquid fire core.
Scraps of articles and how the core of earth was responsible for gravitation and the gravitation responsible for shielding earth from cosmic radiation came to mind and he swallowed.
What Shizuo viewed as some sort of grand circle of life and god's work were most probably rules of physics.
"Let's move on," Shizuo suddenly said, bringing Izaya's thoughts to an abrupt standstill as the demon nodded towards the end of the sinkhole.
A void at least twenty meters in diameter had opened before them and Izaya cast a short confused glance towards Shizuo- but his question didn't get to be asked as the demon already moved.
With Izaya.
Skipping the new abyss under a second, the demon blinked across the area. It was an action probably executed daily by the demon- fast, effective- but goddamn painful if made to follow by a simple hold on Izaya's upper arm.
Unable to hide a groan, Izaya winced shortly upon being moved upon warning and his shoulder screamed at him with the magnitude of a full week's workout condensed to one second.
Almost immediately Shizuo's hand flinched away from Izaya and his eyes dipped into guilt.
"Ah. Sorry-"
"All good," Izaya hissed between tight lips as he moved his joints in the least painful way possible. "Which path are we taking, Mr. Demon?" he quickly changed the topic on hand and nodded towards their new options.
The serpent's trail had stopped. Obviously, since the creature moved forth only to dig into the earth and crawl its way back and towards the core.
A thick forest, consisting of even larger trees and enormous flowers opened before them, just as a ledge on the left, leading around the area and into a steep climbing session.
While the mountainside didn't seem inviting considering the amount of effort it would obviously take to overcome, the forest seemed even less inviting as a thick darkness layered upon dark leaves of purple and barely left enough light to see their surroundings.
Nodding towards the forest Shizuo gave the answer Izaya had feared and he sighed.
"Could you have chosen a route any more eerie?" he joked, but accepted the even path as a welcome variation.
"You want to arrive as fast as possible, right?" the demon asked and Izaya sighed.
"I got it, I got it, no complaints."
Quick and even Shizuo advanced inside the dark forest.
Forests were supposed to be dark. Most of the time. Considering their leaves were trying to catch as much sunlight as possible they were natural shadow dispensers in the human realm as well as Izaya's former life.
But the darkness ruling this area seemed even worse compared to a normal forest.
His eyes got somewhat used to the lack of light, but a few illuminated insects circling mid air kept Izaya from looking at anything further than an arm's length.
"Anything I should abstain from doing?" he whispered, referring to the flying bugs and any other creatures he might not suspect and Shizuo shook his head.
"Just stay close and it should be fine."
The demon was walking in front this time around- which made sense considering Izaya had almost become a victim of a simple pitfall.
Whispers and hissed noises filled the air as the two advanced and Izaya's head turned more often in quick surprise than he liked to admit.
"Are you sure you know the way?" he whispered while Shizuo yanked anything unneeded for their advance out of the way.
A giant stone was one of those objects and the noise it made when crashing into one of the trees was a bit too loud for Izaya's tastes.
"It's not exactly hard to miss a giant moving crab," Shizuo joked and Izaya snorted. "I don't know about you, but I can't see it right now, can you?"
Right. Could he?
The way Shizuo moved everything out of the way easily and without stumbling caused Izaya to wonder whether night vision was something demon possessed naturally as well.
Again the whispers resounded through the air and Izaya tried to discern the words spoken.
What was that?
Who was talking to them?
It was then, when Shizuo stopped for a second that Izaya realized he had been talking to him.
"What?" Izaya asked, but the voices around them only increased in their intensity and despite seeing Shizuo's lips move Izaya could barely make out what it was that he was saying.
"Sorry I can't hear you, the voices are too loud, can you repeat that?" Izaya asked- and suddenly it was quiet.
Dead quiet.
Shizuo had frozen in his movement and his voice suddenly rang awfully clear in Izaya's head as he turned around.
"What voices?" he asked- but the question answered itself as he suddenly found himself looking at two Izayas.
to be continued~
Yo~ Sorry for skipping a weeks updates xD I ended up getting sick for the entire week C': It sucks to have fever when it's already way too hot lmao fuck hell's season, I want winter xDD Anyway~ here we are, I got almost everything except SD, but no worries that one will get an update next week again xD