Fallen Into Hell: Fallen: Book 2, Layna Snow [the mitten read aloud .TXT] 📗

The thing before her was about her height, and had the basic anatomy of a person, at least as far as she could see! He appeared hairless, his eyes black with orange irises, and a little large. Its face was extraordinary in an unsettling way. His nose was small and didn’t stick out far from his face and his cheekbones were overly sharp. His mouth was thin as well. The thing that stood out the most, though, was his skin. It was black with blue tiger-like stripes.

“Razion, escort Miss Torres to the Main tunnel. The Angels should be looking for her now. The Xérnal have had enough time to tell the information. We have more of them, don’t we? I don’t think those Demons are coming back.” Satan said absently, as he took a bite.

“Yessss, sssir.” The blue striped Demon hissed, his thin snakelike tongue poking between his blunt yellow teeth. It continued to watch her, unnerving her with his weird eyes.

At least she assumed it was male. There were no feminine features in it’s cold, angled face.

Sophie took a few steps to the side, and turned to keep both of them in her view. The Devil sacrificed Demons in order to get her here? Why would he do that?

“You say that you’re not a monster, but you let people die for no reason! That is wrong, no matter what you think.”

“My daughter’s life is worth more than those other lives. I will not explain myself to you.” His disapproval was like a weight, pressing down on her.

“I want to leave.” She told him, unsure if the snake thing understood ASL.

“Right this way, princcccessssss,” it hissed, walking towards a doorway on the other side of the room.

Sophie had no choice but to follow, and hope that he led her where she needed to be. It didn’t matter what he said to her, or what he called her. She needed to be gone, away from this psychopathic child and back somewhere she knew.

As she followed him through a tunnel made of quartz, she studied the Demon’s clothing. It was surprising that he was dressed as a Human. He wore grey slacks and a purple dress-shirt. What did you think he’d wear? A loincloth?

She thought this place would be barbaric, with open orgies and Demons feasting on rotted people. She expected to see torture and whippings but so far it all seemed very civilized.

They walked for so long that one tunnel bled into another, none of them distinct or interesting.

And then, she saw where this corridor led.

There was a huge cavern, the ceiling must have been hundreds of meters high. The top was like a dome, and in the center was one of those light emitting crystals. But what the dome protected awed her.

A rainforest.

It was huge! Trees stretching towards the domed ceiling. Leaves of rich jade and deep amethyst. Each leaf looked bigger than a car and shadowed the ground underneath.

It was beautiful.

The different colours of plants, poking out from the shadowy undergrowth.

And the sounds were wonderful. Animal songs that she’d never heard before. Insects buzzing around. Sophie could even hear running water somewhere. The bubbling of a stream barely heard over the symphony of birds chirping and the twittering of other animals.

Sophie stared up at the sight before her. Both beautiful and foreboding.

Pale trunks of trees mingled with green stems of gigantic towering plants.

It drew her in. So lush after the desolate caves she had been in. So alive in this dark and twisted place. Even just breathing in the sweetest perfumed air around her made her feel calmer and more at ease.

Sophie took a step forward. Needing to be closer, only to remember where she was.

This was Hell, and it could be dangerous.

“Thisss isss what we call Magnisss Ssssilva. Great Foressst. It connectsss the tunnelsss.” Sophie was so focused on the beauty before her, she’d forgotten about the Demon. Stupid!

Her curiosity was eating her up. How did it work? They were underground, how could plants survive?

“Can you explain?”

The creature looked towards the forest and then nodded, after a slight hesitation. “The Oculusss givesss light. The ssspring givesss water. Temperature and animalsss effect the air, sstormssss form, up. Then it rainsss, giving water. Treess give air.”

His stunted speech was difficult to follow but she thought it was fascinating. How did the storms look? Did they cover the oculus thing? And where did the light come from? And how did the trees get their roots into the stone floor?

Sophie looked up, but winced at the brightness. Light rained down like water, filtering through the leaves to get to the hard floor below. She couldn’t see the oculus, but the heat and dampness that blanketed her told her that the Demon was right. It felt like a storm was coming.

“Come, mussst go forward. Cannot go back.”

Even as Sophie nodded, she turned around to see the tunnel they had just come from. It made no sense that she wanted to glimpse the tunnel one last time. But when she looked, all she could see was the grey stone walls of the dome.

How did it disappear?

She reached out, pressing her soft fingers to the rough rock, but she found it solid. There was no opening, no hallway. It was as if it hadn’t been there at all.

And it might not have.

“Come!” the thing yelled, making Sophie jump.

She took a deep breath and turned around.

This thing could kill her, or leave her here. She didn’t know what lurked in the trees, or waited for its next meal.

“Yes. Thank you.”

The Demon made a noise that sounded like a grunt, and then walked to a pathway that she hadn’t seen in the forest. There was something white crumbled on