Stronger Together chapter 207 (Patreon)

I woke up in pain. Not like the pain I used to wake up in when I was  normal where my back hurt from sleeping wrong or I tweaked my neck.  More like bruises all over my body and small jagged rocks stabbing into me pain. It was also hot. Like weirdly unnaturally hot, like standing in  a volcano hot, and the air smelled disgusting...like rotten eggs.  Sulfur. Well, fuck. I pried my eyes open with some serious effort and  pain and glanced around me trying to figure out what was going on.

I  was groggy, which was not great, but looking around I realized it  wouldn't have mattered. I had no clue where on earth I was. In fact, I  had the sneaking suspicion I wasn't on earth at all. There was a weight  on my chest, and when I looked down I saw a tangle of voluminous blonde  hair. That's when everything came back. Yang. We'd gone out for a walk  and ended up at the lake Barb had mentioned. Yang had gone swimming and  when I warned her she activated her semblance and the soulfire woke  up...fuck. Hell. We were in hell.

The fact that Yang was  topless would have probably excited me if I couldn't feel what I  suspected was some kind of obsidian hell gravel digging into my back,  and when I moved her over so I could see better, my general impression  of our situation got...worse. The sky was black. Not dark, or dim,  serious light eating blackness. At least what I could see of it over the  roiling masses of crimson clouds. The clouds themselves seemed diffuse  and than but still concealed the black vault of the sky from sight for  the most part.

I glanced around us and off in the distance  I could see some of the clouds discharging rain, but not normal rain,  even from where I was sitting I could see sheets of blood pelting the  black stone ground and washing over dark metal mountains dyed the blood  red of iron from the life fluid coating them as well as most likely  rust. Streaks of red lightning the same color as hellfire split the sky  and along the ground rivers of lava split the land, with some of the  blood rain dissipating into red steam on contact.

The  ground was all this black glassy gravel, though some places it was  bigger. Yang shifted slightly with a groan and I sat her up but kept  myself under her. Her body was sturdy from her soulfire refining but not  as sturdy as my reinforced godsteel form. I didn't want her exposed to  any of this shit if I could help it, who knew what things were made of  in hell. She sat up and looked around in confusion, before her eyes  eventually settled on the horizon, if one can call the sky that if there  isn't a sun. Her lilac eyes widened and dilated with fear, and I didn't  blame her.

Sh scrambled around in  the gravel and managed to find her clothes, which she slipped on,  grimacing at the dust clinging to the sodden fabric. I stood up and  offered a hand and she took it, letting me pull her to her feet.  "So...we're in hell. That's...wow. I'll be honest, we've been through  some shit, but this is probably the most terrifying thing that's ever  happened to me. Which is a high bar." I stared into the distance, trying  to see what was around us. With no sun this place should be dark, but  the winding rivers of lava (magma? were we underground?) seemed to cast a  disturbing light over the entire realm.

Well,  the parts of it I could make out. Hell was not small, I couldn't see  the edges or anything. The lava gave an eerie red glow, and I suspected  the flames in it were hellfire just like the lightning. Man, Lucifer  really liked the color red. I could see mountains all over the place,  dotting the skyline around use in every direction as far as the eye  could see. Huge monoliths of bloody iron, black iron, and...I squinted,  focusing. I bumped Yang's shoulder, jarring her out of her own terrified  stupor. I pointed one misshapen lump in the distance. "Is that...a  city?"

She  turned to look and narrowed her own eyes. Her usual casual demeanor was  gone, and she was clearly pale and shaking. She looked ten seconds from a  panic attack, and I realized why quickly. This was literally her  nightmare. Being sucked into another world again, leaving behind the  family she had only now started to rebuild. Not to mention this one was  literally hell. Yang was still healing from her entry into this  universe, and ending up here was tearing open all those wounds.

I  grabbed her shoulder and spun her to face me, and she actually flinched  at the touch, but I put my hand under her chin and pushed her face up  to look at me. "Yang. Look at me. This is not the same as what happened  last time. We know that portal has been there a while. There are clearly  ways to get back. We WILL go home. Besides you aren't alone this time.  You have me, and I have your back. If you're too scared to have hope we  can escape then just believe in me. I'll have hope for the both of us.  I've dealt with worse than this."

She  stared at me blankly for a minute, lilac eyes scorching into me, before  they filled with tears and she hurled herself into my arms. It  disturbed me. Yang wasn't like this, and for her to be this upset meant  she was hurting in a deep and profound way. But I pushed all that aside.  She needed me to be strong. To help keep her propped up in all this  terror, so I put my arms around her and held her while she cried. We  might be in a scary new place, but we were different. I was different. I  had enough power to keep her safe, and I was damn sure going to do it.

It  took about twenty minutes for Yang to calm down enough to stop crying. I  expected her to make some joke about it and brush it off, that was her  usual style. But she just sniffed and wiped her eyes with the back of  her arm, wallowing hard before she spoke. "Sorry Cam. It's just...I  spent so long trying to put myself back together after I landed here,  but at least I had all of you." She looked alarmed and waved her hands  quickly. "Not that having you here isn't so much better. But the thought  of never seeing Kara, or Barb, or Rae, or even the kids again." She  smiled wryly. "Well I imagine I'm preaching to the choir here. But  you're right. This isn't the same. We aren't gone, just a little lost."

I  grinned at her encouragingly. "Exactly. So let's find our way home  before Raven decides to go full Trigon's daughter and rip her way into  hell with brute force to get us back." Yang laughed at that and I pulled  her in for another hug, comforting my friend by reminding her she  wasn't alone. "Now, like I said I think that's a city over there. Which,  while probably not pleasant is at least a start for getting home. So  what do you say we head over to check it out?" I gestured grandly to the  city in the distance.

She  laughed and took my arm. "Well, if you put it like that I don't suppose  we have much choice. It's not too far away I don't think. Let's head  out." She didn't sound excited exactly, but there was definitely a sense  of anticipation as she gazed out at the boiling black and red sky. Of  course that didn't actually matter, we had to go to the city, because we  didn't have any food or water and though our bodies had been refined  enough that we could go longer without than most we were still partly  human.

I  wasn't sure what would happen if my body partially died of thirst or  starvation, but I really wasn't excited to find out. Worst case I could  think of would be pieces of me being cannibalized for energy and  replaced with godsteel. A slow and steady version of what happened to me  when I used the forms, with the outcome being the same, complete  metalization that would completely freeze me where I was, unable to get  stronger or ever reach my potential. Just stuck as a metal man without  access to the forms or most of my power. Which I wanted to avoid at all  costs for multiple reasons.

But  having just cheered her up I didn't want to set her spiraling again so I  didn't mention any of that. If she hadn't considered it I thought it  best to play dumb until I was forced to bring it up. So we set off. We  headed down the hill of black glassy gravel we were on and made our way  towards the city in the distance. As we walked however, I made a rather  distressing observation. The city wasn't getting any closer. Or rather,  it was getting closer just much more slowly than expected. Because based  on current trajectory the city itself was HUGE.

We  walked and walked for what seemed like hours, but by the time we  decided to stop and camp I realized we'd barely made progress at all.  Aside from the absurd distance the ground was somehow hard and soft at  the same time. Cutting into us and wearing out our shoes while also  shifting under us like sand. It was obnoxious and honestly kind of  dangerous, and that was before we ran into our first local. Luckily the  first being we saw didn't seem to be sapient, just a vicious animal, so  we killed it without much trouble when it attacked.

I  then picked it up and swung it over my back. The jagged black scales of  the weird snake bird were digging into me as we walked. Despite that it  seemed like the best plan to take it with us. Who knew if we would find  another animal any time soon and we might need to eat it. I wasn't sure  it was even edible, but I was pretty positive that I could negate some  of the infernal influence by cooking it with soulfire. Hopefully  processing it would make it safe for consumption, and we could use the  hide to make some kind of cover for our shoes so they stopped getting  shredded.

When  we set up the camp I finally decided to try to cook the thing, but I  wanted to make sure the soulfire really soaked in. I pulled some power  through my arm and used it to forge a skinning knife, or most of one, I  tempered it mentally and made it as strong as I could but the blade had  to be extremely thin and oddly shaped to make something functional with  the little energy I used. Then I sat down on a large boulder of obsidian  and started to skin and dress the kill. It was a mess, I had no idea  what I was doing, but I got plenty of meat out of the animal.

I  drained out as much of the blood as possible then put the slabs of the  meat on the obsidian boulder and hopped down, calling up an orb of  soulfire. When I exposed the meat to the white flame the resulting hiss  of meat searing was almost painful sounding. But as I watched the steam  that rolled up out of the meat I saw literal darkness being pushed up  and our. Like corporeal evil being driven out of it. I massively  overcooked it. Despite preferring rare steak that didn't seem safe here,  so I had to go with well done. When I passed the food to Yang she just  grimaced, but nodded her thanks. Then we ate in silence.