Chapter 407

• The archway was different than the others. They were all unique, many decorated with black metal skulls or real white skulls, black metal teeth or real white teeth; the real white teeth ones made with human teeth were particularly disturbing. This one, bigger than the others, was decorated with weird circular lumps between what looked like rib bones. Eggs?
• Oh god. She sucked in a hard breath, as Kas began a slow walk down an enormous stairway. It was the first proof there were rooms that went out further than the spire did, out into the ground the spire grew out of. The stairway went straight down, no spiral. She'd half expected to look down and see a bunch of scary things underneath her, but nope, the stairway was a tunnel that cut into Hell's depths, forty-five degrees down. She wasn't sure if that was less, or more scary.
• It got more scary. After a minute of walking down metal and stone, with the occasional dangling metal skull brazier their only source of light, the metal turned into flesh and bone. The stairs became bone. The walls became layers of ribs with web flesh connecting them. It was like walking down the inside of a gutted snaked. Thankfully they still had light, except this deep into Hell's guts, it stopped being metal braziers, and became amber veins again, cutting across the bone ribs overhead. Each time she passed underneath a vein, it smelled just faintly of burnt meat.