Stronger Together chapter 210 (Patreon)

The city of Dis was, pardon the pun, disturbing. Not because of all  the crazy demons or heinous monsters, though there were plenty of them,  but because of what they were doing. The ugly bastards were just living  their lives, shopping and lunching and traveling and just  generally...being people. Not human people sure, but who was anymore,  certainly not me. The few abnormalities on the other hand, definitely  stood out more in comparison. Like the meat vendor whose product was  spitted behind him, a shriveled and cooked version of whatever weird  green lizard creature the vendor himself was.

The  dissonance of such a weird sight in such an otherwise average setting  made all the freakish quirks I spotted even more abnormal seeming in  contrast, and I saw Yang staring just as hard as I was. I noted as we  got closer to the center of the city (I could tell because there was a  huge castle there) that the inhuman demons and beasts became less  frequent, replaced by slowly more human seeming monsters, still  obviously unnatural but more in line with the human standard of beauty.

Red  skinned women with bared, jiggling bodies, stood next to blue horned  men with glistening pectorals on stages auctioned off to the highest  bidder. Furred women with feline ears balanced on stake with dull tips,  exchanging blows over deep pits, while fat pig like humanoids jeered  from the seats behind them, hurling small pieces of gold at the women  and laughing as the scrambled to catch them without falling. I grimaced  at the riot of terrible interactions, when it had been inhuman monsters  it had been easier to write off as cultural differences. Hypocritical as  it was this made me angry.

The guards, and weirdly enough  we ourselves, were given wide berths, and it became clear through the  looks of terror why. The Fallen were the OG's in hell, they had started  this whole thing, and Fallen looked like humans. To these creatures we  looked like the biggest monsters they could imagine, cast in the image  of the tyrant that ruled this entire plane. It was a strange and  sobering inversion of the norm to be treated with respect and fear by  supernatural because we looked human.

That was why the  humanoids were getting more human as we went. It was a caste system, the  closer we got to the center the more powerful the beings became, and  anything with a fallen angel bloodline was king of the heap around these  parts. Even a parent with a drop or two of Fallen blood would be  stronger for it, and the nature of their bodies and how human they  looked was clearly the first way people decided who was worth anything.  Despite humans being top dog and that being good for me the system  didn't sit well. It was obvious racism, and even against monstrous  demons I found it sick.

The city was big. Insanely  stupidly absurdly big. Which we had known from traveling here, but being  inside it became clear that the journey to meet with the boss of this  place in the center of town was going to take a while. Possibly days or  even weeks. We literally stopped at an inn to rest for the night and  then picked up the journey again the next morning, this city was by far  larger than any earthen town I'd ever seen in my life. The Fallen  ignored us after arranging our rooms and Yang and I bunked together for  safety, putting a chair behind the door to make opening it harder.

I  sat down on the bed in exhaustion, not physical but mental. Being on  edge all day was tiring. Nothing drains your energy like walking on  eggshells, it takes extreme concentration to scrutinize and over think  every little thing. I exhaled loudly and patted the bed, and when Yang  came over to sit down I flopped over onto my back. "Well." I said, not  sure where to start. "This has been pretty fucked up." Yang burst out  laughing, probably at the understatement. "I'm serious I don't know what  the hell we're going to do. Do we try to get home ourselves? Stick  around until someone comes looking?"

Yang flopped back  next to me, turning her head so her now violet eyes bored into mine. "I  think we should work on option one and plan on option two, champ. Not  much else to do but give up. So we look around for information about  portals to earth but otherwise we just...do what we need to do. We  survive. Probably not much fun, but it's what we have." And she was  right. We had no real options here, I was just trying to make a plan to  keep myself from going crazy, pretending I had some sort of control over  my life when I clearly didn't.

But if I had to be stuck  here I'd come with the right person. As rough as it was to say the other  girls wouldn't have done well here. They were too...bright and shiny.  Well, Cinder would have been fine, but my newest girlfriend was a  recovering sociopath and I was glad we didn't have risk a relapse. Kara,  Raven, even Barb for all her pragmatism, they were all heroes, from a  world where that meant hope and light and fierce protectiveness. Yang  was a hero too, but from a darker place. A place where heroes did the  necessary thing instead of the right thing and where they knew what kind  of darkness even the most noble hearts sometimes needed to survive.

It  was sad to me really, that I had to force Yang to accept all the  horrible things we had seen and no doubt would see again. She was going  to have to bear so much with me here. And despite how I knew it would  grind me down too, I just felt like she would have it so much worse.  After all, being from a mundane earth made it necessary to learn to  accept harsh unhappy things. Yang was from somewhere much worse, but  Aura meant she'd always had the option to seize her destiny and fix  things herself. Something I could never have done. I made a promise to  myself to try to shield her from it, to be the one who made the hard  calls when I could so she wouldn't have to.

She actually  looked concerned when she was my expression. "Lien for your thoughts?" I  snorted. Yang had mainly assimilated to this world, but she had a few  little quirks that made it obvious she was the only one of us who didn't  come from some version of earth, at least in the short term. I suppose  you could count Kara but she'd had plenty of time adjust before she came  here and Kryptonians learn fast. It broke me out of my funk somewhat to  hear her dip back into the parlance of her native land.

I  just shook my head, trying to clear away the errant thoughts. I was  doing that thing again where I tried to do everything myself. Yang and I  were in this together, and Raven would have kicked my ass for  dismissing her like that. I needed to learn to work with my loved ones  instead of around them. So I decided to just lay out my fears and try to  get through them with her. "I was thinking about how much this is going  to fucking suck. This place is awful and I fully expect it to get  worse. Also thinking about how glad I am you're here with me. I don't  think the others could handle a place like this."

She just  sighed and nodded. "I had the same thought honestly. I don't want them  to have to go through this. God I can't imagine Rae down here. This  place would be..." She trailed off then broke into a wry grin. "I was  going to say this place would be hell for her. Man that's going to take  some getting used to. But yeah I get you, I'm scared too. But we have  each other, and hey, at least we're getting way stronger way faster  here. At this rate we might make it out on our own." Her smile faded.  "Eventually." She sounded scared that our lives would have passed us by  by the time we managed to get loose.

Luckily I had good  news on that front. "No promises but it might not be as big an issue as  you think. This is the nevernever technically, even if it's a more  famous part of it. Remember what Harry said about time here? We might  spend a year here and be back before they notice we're gone." I smiled  encouragingly, though I felt it best not to mention that we might also  spend a week here and come back to find all our loved ones had died of  old age. That didn't really seem like a productive line of thought.

Yang  smiled and rolled over, curling up against me, and I put my arms around  her. This place was so...horrible, in every way. The feeling of the  air, the smell of the people and places, it all grated on me subtly. Not  enough to be considered actively painful but just enough that it had  been snowballing into a feeling of horrible discord since I got here,  slowly making me more and more distressed and unable to notice or see  why. Holding Yang though I felt whole again, and the slow mounting pain  too subtle to perceive before became notable for its absence.

Having  her here with me was the only way I was going to be able to get through  this, and I suspected it was the same for her. That also explained why I  was being converted to an angel faster here. My body and mind were  under constant stress I hadn't even noticed, and my regeneration was  repairing them even as I sat here. Replacing the old with the new was  how my physical form shed it's mortality so the extra constant strain  wasn't just creating a snowball effect of misery, but of growth.

We  laid there like that, just taking comfort in being near another human  and I considered what I might become on this trip, what it would look  like to my loved ones if I came back with my mortality gone. Would they  recognize me? This harsh being of light and steel that I was becoming?  Because that's what I would be by the time I finished ascending, metal  and brilliant shining light made manifest, and while I had been  expecting this for quite some time I had always thought I'd have more  time before it actually happened.

I  would have to fix my arm before the process was complete. My angelic  flesh would resist the movement and expansion of the godsteel and I  could feel that it would be better if I pushed my arm into the rest of  my network, leaving my improved body with the condensed and  indestructible metal veins reinforcing them that exceeded even the  strength of the angels. I would be stronger than even my counterparts in  the heavens when I finished my conversion, and part of me feared that. I  was already so strong I was beginning to feel out of place, what would  it be like being stronger?

But  as I felt Yang snuggle against me I chased off the doubts. Strong or  weak, angel or mortal, I wasn't alone. My girls wouldn't let me drift or  lose myself. I would still be me, because I had to be for them and deep  down that was all that really mattered. For now I would keep getting  stronger and learning and growing because that was the only way I could  get back to them, and if I broke myself a little doing it then they  could help put me back together again, because there was no shame in  needing the people you loved. With that final hopeful note I drifted  off, and slept the sleep of the dead.