Hell-Bound

A Sword & Sorcery Flash Fiction Tale

Mortal tongues had no word strong enough for the cruelty of Morgra Vull.

In every corner of the world they cursed her name. Cities watched the horizon, fearing her silhouette would appear. She was the apocalypse made flesh. A warrior without equal. She wanted no crown, no gold, no lands. Only the killing. The carnage was her reward.

Death only made her worse.

She died bloody and laughing, impaled on a forest of spears, surrounded by more slain than living, and Hell swallowed her down its raw gullet—but its lord does not waste a good weapon. Seven arch-demons had rebelled and fled his realm. The bargain was simple: hunt the traitors down, shatter them, and remain in the mortal world, to kill as she pleased. Morgra accepted. For freedom. For the thrill of the hunt. For the carnage.

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The city of Vhalmorith had held ten thousand people. Every one of them had been slaughtered here in the great hall of the keep, its sunken floor turned into a shallow lake of blood, littered with macabre flotsam and jetsam. Severed limbs drifted in the crimson murk. Half a head floated past, one eye staring up, the other bobbing from a nerve like a fisherman’s line, the exposed brain seeping into the blood. A body hung from a chandelier of antlers, hooked and suspended by its own guts, blood dripping like molten rubies.

The stench of copper and bile hung thick over the lake as Morgra waded in. The blood dragged at her knees, warm at the center of the hall, congealing at the edges. Things beneath the surface bumped against her legs and floated away.

The arch-demon Zhavrek sat the throne, the queen’s flayed skin spread above him, flapping softly like a translucent tapestry. The king lay across the demon’s lap, still alive, two clawed hands digging inside him, pulling out each organ before placing it on the armrest in a glistening row.

The demon’s head lifted from his work. Milk-white eyes found hers across the hall, and a smile spread across his face, showing teeth like heated iron.

“The black lord sends a mortal to do his work,” Zhavrek sneered. “Pathetic.”

“I am mortal no longer, pig.” She drew her serrated battle axe. “And you will die screaming by my hand.”

Zhavrek raised the king’s heart and bit into it like a ripe tomato, dark crimson rivulets running down his chin. “A hell-bound. Then come die again.”

They met in the middle of the lake of blood. Zhavrek swung his clawed hand down. Morgra’s axe caught it between the middle fingers, splitting the arm to the elbow in two flopping halves. The demon roared, seized her skull, and forced her beneath the surface.

The world went red and airless. Corpse-pieces pressed against her face in the murk.

“I have tasted millions of humans,” Zhavrek said, his deep voice reaching her through the blood, distorted and wet. “But never a hell-bound. I will crack your bones and suck the marrow.”

She locked his ankle, found the toes, then began breaking them. Three muffled gristly snaps reverberated through the blood before the demon howled and released her. As she rose streaming gore, his claws lashed out and raked across her chest, deep enough to scrape bone. Blood sheeted down her front and joined the lake.

She ignored the wound and raised her dripping axe.

The demon’s scorpion-like tail shot out. She spun, avoiding the piercing appendage, and opened the demon’s belly in a horizontal arc. Iridescent-black intestines spilled steaming into the lake, and Zhavrek stumbled backward, screaming and clutching at the pouring entrails.

A strand of his black guts drifted toward her across the blood. Morgra lifted the dripping intestine from the lake and began wrapping it around one forearm like a windlass, hauling him closer one twist at a time. The demon’s screams of pain climbed an octave.

Her axe took his right arm at the shoulder. Then the left. She grabbed him by the throat, marched him backward, and slammed him onto the throne.

She grinned, pinning the demon with her knee, and reached for a handful of guts from the king's cooling corpse.

“You wanted a taste of a hell-bound,” she said. “Finish your meal first.”

Morgra pinched his nose closed and shoved the viscera down his throat. Zhavrek bucked and gagged, gullet convulsing around the mass, trying to scream through a windpipe packed with raw meat. She jammed fistful after fistful, cramming each handful deeper with her thumb. The bucking turned to convulsions, then shudders. Then Zhavrek sagged against the throne, milk-white eyes bulging.

Morgra laughed and patted his stuffed cheek, the wet slaps echoing through the silent hall, then waded toward the great doors, the lake lapping in her wake, the only remaining sound in Vhalmorith Keep. She stepped through the great doors out into the gray light of morning, and the mountain wind swirled around her.

Six of Hell’s traitors remained. She hoped they would die as deliciously.