Stronger Together chapter 211 (Patreon)

We woke up the next day feeling...well not better but less bad. The  bed here was more comfortable than expected. I hadn't noticed that  before, though it made sense since I guess sin was their whole schtick  and sloth was one of the biggies. Comfortable beds to pass out in after  you torture some people. Regardless waking up was interesting with Yang  next to me. You would expect with her being so hot it would be sexy or  intimate, but mostly I just woke up sputtering on a faceful of her  ridiculous fucking hair.

Hair might I add, that had not  been washed for literal weeks as we had trekked through a lava rock  desert and over small mountains and fought monsters. I grimaced and  pried her off of me with a shudder as I tasted something I tried very  hard not to identify. She yawned expansively as she woke alongside me  and I used the moment of freedom from her death grip to slip out of the  bed. "I'm going to go check if there's a shower and maybe some breakfast  back in a bit." I babbled my excuse out quickly and then bolted for the  door.

Yang was weird about her hair, and dirty or not if  she woke up enough to realize it had been in my mouth, even on accident  she was going to hurt a fire ball at me. I had to find food or a bath  tub to appease her before I returned to the room or I was doomed. It  felt nice honestly, worrying about this kind of nonsense. Sure I was  still literally in hell, but I had one of my girls here with me and I  was more afraid of her wrath than whatever some meathead demonspawn  could do. I headed down into the base of the inn which was surprisingly  normal looking.

I flagged down one of the servers, a red  skinned succubus in a tiny dress that looked weirdly like a serving  wench costume from a sexy halloween party. She nodded diffidently and  approached, bowing her head to wait for me to speak. As I had noted last  night looking like a fallen here made me kind of a big deal. "I was  looking for a bath, do you guys have one available?" I was desperately  hoping that they didn't bathe in pigs blood or lava or gargoyle venom or  something, but we had been in that shitty plain for ages and honestly I  needed a wash as bad as Yang.

The succubi dipped her  pretty face, tilting her curling rams horns at me in supplication as she  lowered her head. "Of course my lord. The bathing area is in the bottom  floor. Would you like me to wash you?" The fear and nervousness in her  voice sickened me, and I had to resist the urge to punt the owner of  this place into a pit. I told her no and sent her on my way, knowing  that my presence was a discomfort to her and I couldn't do anything  about it. I mentally promised myself to check in on her when I came back  through. I didn't know what I would do when I did, but I couldn't just  leave her.

With the information  about the bath in mind I decided to give Yang time to cool off and take  mine now. That way when I got upstairs she would have had some time to  unwind and also would have to rush off to take her bath and leave me  behind since I'd already had one. I didn't have a towel, but if they  didn't supply them or they didn't exist hear I could wind or fire dry  myself. Magic for the win. I made my way down to the basement level,  hoping to wash out and dry my clothes when I was down there.

It  took me a minute to find the stairs without asking for directions, I  didn't want to know if the other people working here had it as bad as  that Succubus had. Once I found the stairs I headed down to bathe and  was thrown by what I found. The bath was not blood or some demonic  fluid, it was water, but it was...strange. The area beneath the inn was a  huge red stone cavern. The walls were smooth and made from bricks with a  massive domed ceiling and black torches that burned a blood red ringing  the chamber.

The  water was just normal clean water, but under the dancing red flames it  seemed to pulse with a life of its own, the entire room gave the  impression of standing inside a heart while it was still beating. The  air was full of heat and steam from the obviously hot water, which  filled every inch of the floor past the steps, though the porous lava  rock floor was directly beneath it at the edges, dipping into a bowl  shape as you made your way deeper in. I stepped into the water still in  my shoes, deciding it would be easier to just dry them with my clothes  and then made my way to the center.

The  ground fell away quickly, and I realized that whatever was heating this  place was probably in the middle of the pool because the deeper i got  the hotter the water. Once I lost my footing I stopped bothering with  going deeper and just started stripping off my clothes to wring them  out. The dirt and gravel trapped in the fabric was cringe inducing and  my shoes were even harder to clean but I finally managed and floated  back to the steps to set my stuff out over one of the stairs to drain a  bit.

Then I  waded back out into the deeper portions of the bathing chamber to work  on cleaning myself. Surprisingly all the muck and ash washed right off  and actually seemed to help smooth and improve my skin. The sulfur  content was clearly good for bathing even if it smelled pretty back. I  made a mental not to check for soap as I washed my hair. I took longer  than expected to get all the muck out of it but finally I finished  washing, grabbed my clothes, channeled fire into my metal arm and  basically used it like a radiator to dry them.

I  snagged some fruit on the way upstairs and by the time I got up there  to give Yang the news and some food to appease her, she had mostly  calmed down. She was still pissed but not enraged. Her glare was fixed  on me as I entered. "You chewed on my hair."  I winced. The whole hair  rage thing was kind of funny in the show, but having an incredibly  strong berserker lose her shit every time someone touched her incredibly  voluminous hair was stressful and annoying. She glared a bit longer  then rolled her eyes with a huff and stuck out a hand for her food,  which I handed over with a laugh.

As  she started eating I slumped down on the bed. I saw her notice my  clothes and general dampness and smiled. "I thought you might want to  clean up so I went and found a bath. I can give you directions down  there if you want." Yang paused her eating, plum juice leaking down her  chin as she glared up at me then rolled her eyes and nodded. I just  laughed "It's in the basement, I'd ask around about shampoo or soap  beforehand there isn't any down there." She huffed and finished eating  before heading downstairs.

I  decided to take a nap while she bathed, drifting off to sleep pretty  quickly. My dreams were full of demons and brimstone this time, and I  awoke with a start what felt like hours later but judging by the fact  that Yang wasn't back yet I hadn't been out too long. I rolled over to  stare at the ceiling, sweat beading my forehead. I didn't remember the  dream, even seconds after waking, just the way it made me feel, but  somehow that felt like it was important. Logically I knew it didn't  matter but part of me was desperate to cling to the memory as it fled.

It  felt like whatever portent of doom had been going through my  unconscious mind would save me from something in the future, and I was  desperate to recover it. But the more I focused on it the more illusive  it became, slipping from my mental grasp like a shadow flees before the  light. Then it was gone, and I was alone again, paralyzed by mortal  dread with the fear of a memory I no longer possessed and which probably  wasn't even real. In order to soothe my roiling brain I decided to keep  an eye out at least, just in case, and stood to work through some  klurkor exercises. Naked.

As  usual the terrible meat of the animals we had killed on the way here  healed and replenished me quickly after I was done and I sat down with a  pleased sigh. The action and difficulty had driven the cobwebs from my  mind, banishing even the remains of the fear as I burned the adrenaline  from my body one movement at a time. Once I was done I put my clothes  back on, not having wanted to get them dirty after just washing them.  And saw Yang step into the room. She must have found shampoo because her  hair looked shiny and clean and her clothes had obviously been washed  like mine.

She  smirked as she saw me getting dressed. "What's this about? You do  something weird while I was gone?" I just rolled my eyes and she  cackled. "Anyway that fallen wants us downstairs, It's time to head  out." We were heading for the center of the city to talk to the Lord of  Dis. I had almost been able to forget that in all this domesticity but  she was right. We needed to talk to the boss, not just because he might  try to murder me if we didn't, but because he might have some  information on how we could get home.

We  met up with the fallen guard and followed him back out into the  streets, resuming our journey toward the massive building in the center  of the city. Once again we noted the citizens becoming more human  looking as we went, though it was slow and gradual. We spent days  walking like that, stopping at new inns along the way and just generally  ignoring the world around us in favor of our journey. It was easier if  we didn't pay too much attention to what people were doing. We didn't  need to see the terrible things being done to the locals, even the demon  looking ones.

We  did start talking to our guard, Malachi, a bit more. He was...well he  was kind of a dick honestly, but he was someone to talk to at least. He  told us more than we really wanted to know about Dis and how it worked.  The way society functioned here was every bit as bad as we imagined,  basically being a feudal system where fallen angels were nobles and  everyone else was a slave or a serf. Malachi of course saw no issue with  this, and we didn't want to give the fact that we weren't from here  away any more quickly than needed so we just ignored him when he talked.

Finally  after a week and a half of travel, we arrived. The massive black stone  fortress was scrawled with eerily glowing runes burning with sallow  crimson light, a clear sign of hellfire, and the whole structure seemed  to almost be alive with enchantments, like one big hulking monstrosity  looming over us. Malachi brought us to the edge of a massive moat with  what looked like lava at the bottom and called up for them to let us in  and a section of black stone indistinguishable from the rest lowered  down like a draw bridge to allow us entry. It was time to meet the Lord  of Dis.