Lily was too wound up to care about the past anymore, and in that moment, all she felt was gratitude for her sister’s company as well. This would have been so much worse if she was alone.
“I love you too, and I’m glad you’re with me even if it wasn’t by choice.”
“Are you kidding? I’ll never miss a chance to do something crazy and stupid, you know that.”
This time, she did manage a laugh. A sad, breathy thing that died quickly in the face of what they were about to do.
“I guess I’d better see if I can fit through that crack.”
“I’ll shove you through like Winnie the Pooh if you get stuck.”
With another feeble chuckle, Lily wedged sideways past the rock, crushing her boobs painfully and sucking in her belly. As predicted, she got stuck at the hips. Fighting down the panic, she braced her palms on the boulder and pushed.
When she still didn’t budge, two palms landed on her ass cheeks, and despite everything, she felt her face flame with embarrassment. She heard Iris grunt with effort as she shoved forward, so she braced her palms on the rock to help out.
Just when she was starting to fear she really was stuck, Lily finally slipped through with a painful scrape across her butt cheek. Pulling herself the rest of the way out, she scrambled over the rock and took in her surroundings, ready to face whatever new terror awaited them.
Distantly, she heard Iris climbing through behind her, but everything else faded into the background as she stared ahead.
The spacious cavern was dimly lit by flickering torches on the walls. A long, rectangular table stretched across the space, laden with a literal feast of horrors, though no one was eating the writhing stews and roasted limbs. There was no one around at all, in fact, save for one.
At the far end of the room, suspended high above from hooks stabbed through his wings and shoulders… was Mist.
Choking back a scream, Lily forgot her fear and ran towards him.
“Look out!” Iris called, and she skidded to a halt, not a second too soon.
Another two steps, and she would have run right off the edge of an enormous hole in the ground.The Pit.The bottom was black, but she could just discern something moving below and hear a skin-crawling sound like writhing insects.
Mist was hanging right over it, blood dripping from his wounds into the abyss.Driving the beasts into a frenzy.
She choked on the bile rising up her throat. Despite what the gargoyles said, she still hadn’t imagined something this horrific.
She was going to get Mist out of here if it killed her, and she would do whatever it took to make sure he never set foot in this terrible place again.
Spurred into action, she craned her head back to study the contraption holding him aloft, following the chains to a pulley system on the far side. She wanted to call out to him, but he appeared to be unconscious, and making unnecessary noise wasn’t smart anyway.
“Stay there and make sure he doesn’t fall in,” Iris whispered from across the room, seeing what Lily had. “I’ll lower him.”
Iris unhooked the chain, grunting with exertion as her arms strained under the weight. The pulley made a great screeching sound as the chains moved, and Lily’s heart began to race faster. Terror consumed her as she imagined Paimon bursting through the door at any second.
The chain ran on a track that guided the hooks from the center of the Pit towards the edge. As Mist’s feet hit the ground, his knees immediately collapsed beneath his own weight. Lily caught him before he fell, dragging his immensely heavy body away from the edge as best she could.
He groaned, and his eyes shifted beneath his closed lids.
“Mist, it’s me.” She could barely speak through her constricted throat as she eased him onto the ground on his side. He wasn’t supporting his own weight, and there was no way she was strong enough to hold him up. “It’s Lily. I’ve come to get you out of here.”
Iris appeared beside her. “Fuck, what happened to him?”
His arms had been shredded nearly to the bone, and his face was bloody with deep lacerations. There were thick manacles around his wrists with a heavy length of chain between them.
He didn’t respond and didn’t appear to be aware of much. It was a blessing for now while they removed the hooks, but what about when it was time to leave? There was no way they could carry him.
One thing at a time.The ones through his wings were easy enough to remove, though Lily was twice as panicked as she’d been in the cramped tunnel and was close to losing it. Tears ran unchecked down her cheeks as she gently slid the hooks through the wounds in the soft, leathery tissue.
Soon, all that was left was the two big ones through his shoulders.
“We’ll take these out together, okay?” Iris’s level head was the only thing keeping Lily from losing it. “Let’s start with this one.”
