It took him a moment to notice that there was an unsettling silence all throughout the tunnel.
In the crushing stillness, Ran opened his eyes. Something whispered inside his mind, gentle to its depth. Familiar. Like the echo of the dream he had the night of the attack—the prison… the wings… the face.
He shuddered.
And in that fragile moment of calm, he knew something terrible had been set in motion.
Not just a war… not just a mistake…
But the beginning of a return.
And the Queen, for all her fury, was powerless to stop it now.
He felt a build up, a harbinger of an imminent violent scream from the queen.
"Haru, I asked a while ago, do you know a way out of here?" He asked, hurriedly.
"Do you know how to ride a wraith?"
"No. Wraiths can be ridden?"
"They are just spirits of animals. They can be ridden, especially the ones pulling the wagons."
"Well, I don't know how to ride one. Shouldn't the Overseer have taught me that?"
"In life, and in hell, if you wait to be taught something, you will learn it the hard way. Do you know how to ride a demonbug?"
"No."
"A demonbat?"
"No."
"A shadow motorcycle?"
"Wait, those are not fake myths?"
"I'll assume you don't know how to ride a shadow motorcycle?"
"Eh, no. Though I'd love to learn."
"I'll get you one. They are dirt cheap. Well, for now it seems like your only option for getting out of there is via brimstone."
"Eh, how is that done?"
"First of all, it's not pleasant. What you need to do is find one of the brimstone hearth, bleed into it and jump inside it. You will immediately turn into smoke and can guide your smoke form wherever you want to go at the speed of a Wraithwagon."
That was truly impressive. A Wraithwagon was faster than those airplanes from the cities that fly over the villages all the time.
Ran didn't have much of a modern education, but considered that a Wraithwagon could cross the Asian continent in just a few minutes.
The build up intensified and Ran got up and started moving briskly.
Instead of exiting the tunnel, he headed out to a branching tunnel. The tunnel system under the palace led to several areas all over the city and even some quarters in the palace.
It took him several heartbeats, his measurement of time here in hell—with a heartbeat equal to a second on Kurana—before he finally reached the right tunnel.
His destination was the Hall of Rage, pushing the door of the oubliette under the hall, he carefully climbed up the trapdoor and heaved himself through to the floor of the hall.
He looked around and sighed in relief when he caught sight of the fossilized dragon, wings spread out eighteen yards long, in the middle of the hall.
He closed the oubliette door and stood up.
"Yes, this is it."
The thought got to Haru, who responded, "You are in the Hall of Rage I take it?"
"Yes, it's the nearest source of a brimstone hearth," Ran replied, crossing the vast hall as he moved closer to the monumental structure that was the fossilized dragon, a scorching heat burning out its jaws from its bowels.
"Ah, the statue of the last of the Chimeru whose internal flame was immortalized within its corpse. Be careful, that is one of the largest natural sources of brimstone since all Chimeru were hunted to extinction."
Ran came to stand before the Chimeru and took in the gigantic form of the dragon.
He was like an ant before a cockroach. It wasn't as bad as it had been with the Lagarakei. Upon that beast he'd felt like a mosquito atop a whale.
He walked around the dragon, inspecting its ten horns, seven heads, six wings, and four pillar-like legs.
Nose tip head to tail-tip the dragon was as long as a train of forty cars.
The heat radiating from it, from its immortalized flames in its bowels, was hot enough to dry wet laundry in seconds.
There was a ladder for climbing up to its gullet, from where its fire burned out, releasing an unhealthy amount of brimstone.
Placing his hand on the ladder, Ran began to climb.
He'd already reached the top, his body and clothes soaked with sweat—which dried as quickly as it formed, only for more to bead up on him and soak him again—before he realized he had nothing to injure himself with.
If he was to draw blood then he needed something sharp.
He looked down, over thirteen feet. He really didn't want to climb back down.
But what else could he do, he needed something sharp. Could he use his teeth?
At that though, he felt his fingernails start to itch. He wriggled them absent-mindedly but the itch refused to stop.
He looked down at his fingernails and saw them transforming—extending—and turning into something else.
They grew longer, several inches longer. And they were as red as lava and as rough as stone.
"What in hell?"
"What is it?" Haru asked him.
"My nails just transformed into some kind of demonic claws."
"Really?"
"Yes. Could I finally be mutating? Could this be because of the demon blood?"
"Hurry here let me see. Remember, I'm in the Ash Market."
"Alright."
Ran, hesitating for a second, slashed his palm with one of the claws. He winced as the thing tore through his skin.
It was freaking sharp and with a bitter bite.
He watched, mouth opened wide, as only a trickle of blood managed to spill into his cupped palm before the wound sealed.
Was this his regeneration at work? By kin, it was so powerful.
He had to slash thirteen more times before he had enough blood to fill a bottle cap in his cupped palm.
He stretched his hand towards the jaws of the dragon and let the blood spill into the fire billowing out of its mouth.
He watched as the fire became vibrant red.
Strengthening his mind and will, he leaped off the ladder right into the fire.
He felt his body being unmade as the fire washed over him. His body disappeared—becoming immaterial mist.
His thoughts became whispers in the winds, he was nothing but smoke and the breeze in the hall spread him all over the hall.
It took him four tries to finally figure out how to move like this. It was like purposefully making the hair on your neck rise.
It was very difficult, but he soon got the hang of it.
Slowly, he started moving his smoke form through the hall.
The speed shocked him.
His eyes couldn't widen like this, but he felt an echo of his heart beating thunderously as he rocketed through the hall, phased through walls, doors, and roofs as he found himself carried by the wind towards his destination.
He felt lighter than a feather. He'd thought this would be close in comparison to when he'd fallen from the tower during the Lagarakei attack, but it was anything but similar.
It felt as if he was nothing but a mere thought possessed by the wind. Like an evolved consciousness without a body, a shadow without a physical frame.
And he had an all-seeing view of his surroundings, he could see everything around him as though he was an Agurusu, a demon with countless eyes.
He was only just registering the fact that the fog that was him had stopped moving when there was a flash of bright, burning flame and his body reformed on the ground as the flash faded.
He stood completely still, panting just a little bit.
And then—laughter, from behind him.
He turned around and saw Haru, his shaved head bowed low as he laughed hysterically.