Devil Insider #2: The Bottomless Pit
The sides of the tunnel rush past Nell as she plunges into the depths; there’s rocky spikes that look sharp like a razor blade and formed by unnatural means, it doesn’t look artificial either though. A thick, dark purple substance is covering the spikes and the tunnel gets narrower and narrower the further she goes in without any signs of a bottom, as if the tunnel itself intends to kill her.
Showing no signs of hesitation despite how threatening the tunnel looks, a cocky grin is drawn on Nell’s face, as she’s confident in her abilities and is determined to achieve her goal as fast as possible, and it shows in her eyes.
The tunnel gets wider very suddenly. It continues deeper into an endless black void, falling to a point where unexpectedly it gives away. A brilliant, deep red breaks through the void and brings with it an unseemly chill.
Nell says to herself out loud “It’s time Nell! There’s no way to turn back until you get to the center! Don’t look back! Just do it!“. Her confident grin turns into the big smile of a psychopath ready to strike their victim from behind.
Two flames light up on her forehead, they look like horns and are a deep red with a hint of purple at the top. Her smile grows larger and the flames follow suddenly, and they engulf her entire body after which, she finally exits the tunnel which promptly closes and disappears into nothingness.
Nell is falling through a surprisingly cold atmosphere of hell, herself set on red fire so intense she just looks like a ball of fire, but it goes out and leaves smoke behind, which promptly clears out revealing Nell is fine! She looks a lot different however, her skin is red and she has a pair of small horns on her forehead, a couple of big wings like a bat’s on her back, and silver white hair.
And so Nell spreads her limbs and wings to slow down the fall and finally, she lands on her feet and her hand without so much as an scratch, contrasting the colorless and hard soil she lands on, which breaks from the force of her fall.
Calming herself down from the adrenaline hit, Nell thinks to herself “Well, that wasn’t absolutely terrifying at all..yeah, not in the slightest…” before she takes in a bleak view of the colorless sky, contrasted slightly only by a very dim and distant red sun. She shivers from the cold winds that seem to endlessly come from all directions, they’re not too strong, but enough to be uncomfortable.
Her skin starts to turn black quickly, and it sheds very fast along with her wings and horns, leaving her looking normal again. The sheddings disappear leaving no trace. She looks around for a bit, clueless as to where to go, as there isn’t anything around her other than huge trees that are dead anyway.
Suddenly, Nell feels something from a very far distance, she mutters to herself “Huh, what’s over there? It’s really faint, but I can feel something there, something important, but why? What could it possibly be..? Well, either way it’s the only hint I have as to where to go, so might as well…” and so she takes out of her backpack an energy bar to munch on, while starting to walk towards the thing…
Two hours later…
Walking bored out of her mind, Nell regrets taking only food. The landscape doesn’t even look different at all. She exclaims “What is this?! This is supposed to be hell but it’s so boring! There’s absolutely nothing! I’ve been walking for so long and theres- huh” she pauses and stares at the horizon with a puzzled look.
She can see some horizontal lines in the distance, just barely, like structures behind a hill. She can’t be sure, it’s too far to make it out, but it was the only notable thing she could see, she had no other choice as going any other direction would be a dead end for sure. It also just so happened, the thing was in that direction as well, she had forgotten about it though.
“What’s that over there?” she asks herself and starts running, telling herself “I’d better go check it out, it’s the only thing I’ve seen so far since arriving! It might be useful..” and as she approaches the structures she asks herself: “Is this some kind of village or altar maybe?” when the fog begins to thicken and darken, it swallows the “village” from her view completely.
“What happened? Is this some demon shenanigans or something? Normal thing of the weather here?” she mutters, gripping the hilt of her sword. She looks around frowning, prepared for whatever might happen next.
The wind stops blowing. The fog clears in an small area but gets thicker around it as if trying to form an arena of sorts. With the wind gone, Nell can start hearing her own heart, and her ears start ringing afterwards. She keeps looking around in silence, when suddenly, a black bolt of lightning strikes! It misses her by just a few centimeters, but she doesn’t do so much as flinching at it, she merely opens up her eyes more than usual.
As the dry smoke from the lightning clears, Nell waves it away from her face, muttering “What the hell is this? When I said the place is boring this isn’t quite what I wanted to see..” and she sees the figure of a knight in the smoke..with horns and a halo, holding a long and wide sword, vaguely shaped like a kitchen knife.
The figure starts walking towards her as the smoke clears more and more revealing the black knight, who’s face is covered, not by a helmet, but by a skull mask made of bone as if taken from an actual corpse. His bright yellow eyes barely visible, occluded by the slanted and thin sockets of the mask, which looks like it’s frowning with hatred.
He holds his sword up, and Nell mockingly says to him with the same psychopath smile from before “Finally things are getting interesting! Shall we dance? I’ll let you have the first strike for free!” before taking off her backpack and unsheathing her sword and then opening up her arms, inviting the knight to attack first. He doesn’t say anything, but merely grunts as he approaches faster…
You’re not gonna reply? Do you even understand what I’m saying? That’s fine as long as you’re strong! Hah!” she yells out with excitement waiting for the inevitable blow to come…
