Surface Detail

She started to sing to them. She sang without words, just making sounds in a language that she herself didn’t understand and had not known she possessed. The half-dozen demons reacted with fury, taking an iron bar to her mouth, smashing her teeth. She kept on singing, even through the froth of blood and broken teeth inside her mouth, the sounds bubbling up and out, sounding more and more like wheezing, unstoppable laughter. One of them tied something round her neck so that she started to suffocate. She felt the life going from her, and wondered what new torments would await her when she was brought back to life again, to continue suffering.

The mad, ghastly thrusting that was tearing her apart suddenly stopped. The thing round her neck was torn away and she gulped air, then spat and retched as the blood coughed itself up, then was able to roll over onto her side and take a sequence of further deep, painful gasps, letting the blood and the bits of her teeth fall from her mouth onto the stained, uneven surface of the floor. There was more snarling and shouting and some thumping, like bodies being thrown about or being forced to the floor. She could see the boards better than before because the door to the outside was open and a giant beetle was visible.

She looked up and, standing over her, saw a demon like the one Prin had become: massive and powerful, six limbed, fur striped yellow and purple, accoutred with jagged armour. Another one, striped yellow and black, not quite so fantastically armoured, stood behind, its powerful forelimbs holding a struggling minor demon, one of those who’d been raping her. The other minor demons had been scattered around the floor of the mill and lay moaning and slowly picking themselves up.

The giant predator demon lowered its face to hers as she wheezed and spat the last of the blood from her mouth. Between her legs, it felt as though she had been split apart. Inside, it was as though they had filled her with boiling water.

“Unclever, little one,” the giant demon told her. “Now we go to a place where soon you will beg to come back here and let these scamps resume their play with you.” It straightened. “You bring her,” it said to the yellow and black demon, which threw the minor demon it held across the floor and into the rotating machinery of the mill. It howled as it was crushed; the machinery creaked to a stop. The demon lay like a limp rag leaking blood within the cogs and gears of bone.

The yellow and black demon picked her up as easily as Prin had done and took her to the giant beetle waiting outside.

Inside the flier, she was thrown into a giant open pod with a glistening red interior and brown-black lips like some enormous animal; the lips closed around her neck as her body was sucked further into the centre of the closing pod. She felt dozens of barbs connect with her skin, then penetrate her flesh. She waited for the next symphony of pain to consume her.

Instead; everything went numb. A feeling of something like relief flooded her. Even her mouth stopped hurting. No pain. For the first time in months she was free of pain.

She was facing forward, just behind the craft’s control deck, where the giant beetle’s hollow eyes looked out over the valley. She heard the ramp behind thud closed. The two giant demons squeezed themselves into seats, one looking out through each of the beetle’s segmented eyes.

“Sorry about all that,” the yellow and purple one said to her, glancing over its shoulder as the other demon worked the craft’s controls and the whirring sound of giant beating wings filled the beetle’s interior. The demon’s voice was quieter now, conversational, though it still carried above the sounds of the wings.

“Has to look and sound good for the minions; you know.”

The other demon pulled on some sort of headset. “Portal we agreed, first choice,” it said. “Flight time as simmed.”

“Sounds good to me,” the first demon said. “Last one through’s unfavoured.” The demon wearing the headset pulled at the controls. The beetle lurched upward, reared back as it rose, then tipped forward. It settled level but still felt as though it was pointing upwards as it accelerated away across the riven, smoke-streamered landscape beneath, rising almost to the greasy-looking brown overcast.

The first demon looked over its shoulder at her again. “Could only get one of you out, yes?”

She blinked at it. No pain. No pain. To be flying, trapped in this thing, but to be feeling no pain. It made her want to cry. The demon looking at her made a shape with its great, tooth-filled mouth that was probably meant to be a smile. “It’s all right to talk,” it told her. “You are allowed to reply. The cruelty has already stopped, the madness ceased to be. We’re going to get you out of here. We’re your rescuers.”