Antology story: The Pandemonium

The Pandemonium (E3M3)

I found myself materialized in a short, narrow hallway ending in a larger room and a deep growl welcomed me. My reflexes reacted before I perceived that there was a bull demon a couple feet away from me, and the shotgun I held in my hands roared, hammering seven pellets into the demon’s face.
It roared angrily and continued forward with its thick red blood running down its face.
I pumped the shotgun and fired again. The demon fell to the floor just inches away from me.

Tired! I thought. Damn tired!
Every muscle in my body was sore.
I had fought a seemingly never-ending battle for several hours. Last time I checked my helmet’s time unit it told me that it was approximately 34 hours after the marines had landed on Phobos – and it was about one and a half hour ago that I performed that check, when I was still on Deimos, having defeated that cybernetic freak and having discovered that I was in Hell.

I had rested on Deimos, but not enough to totally refresh myself and I still felt horribly burnt out.

I stepped into the room with my finger on the trigger. There was a larger hallway on my right, another hallway on my left and a sort of glassless window in front of me. Next to the window was a broad staircase leading up to what apparently was a small courtyard.
I froze in my tracks as I saw a few imps up there with their backs turned on me and making some queer movements. Curiously, I went closer without making too much noise.

There was a tall, wooden pillar, with red-eyed skulls carved on its sides. Behind it and floating a couple of feet above the wooden floor was a marble block with a huge goat-like demon’s face on it. The imps seemed to be performing some sort of dark ritual, which I had no idea what meant.

One of the imps suddenly turned its ugly face. I reacted swiftly and blew it away. The other imps hissed in unison and turned around.
I swung the butt of my butt into the face of the one nearest to me, sending it crashing to the floor, fired at another one and pumped the shotgun, before finishing off the one I had knocked down which was trying to get back up at me.

I leapt back as three fireballs flew at me, while pumping the shotgun and fired at an imp which ran at me with a raised claw.

-

The last imp was thrown right into the wooden pillar by the force of the shotgun blast. Its blood spattered all over the pillar and the lifeless demon fell limply to the floor.

“Oh, did I interrupt your small party? I’m sorry” I mumbled sarcastically. And then I wondered how I could crack bad jokes when my own death and eternal damnation seemed so certain.
It was probably the whole situation, which affected me.

I could feel the spirits of the damned, clawing away at my mind. I could sense them dance around me and laugh evilly at me. That and the terrible sense of dread, which hung in the hot, blood stinking air, was slowly, but steadily driving me insane.

It was hard to get used to the stench in the air when each location stank differently. The Hellish keep, which had been my first battleground on Hell’s surface, had had the stench of rotting entrails. The strange, rock filled slough I had visited afterwards had the stench of a polluted swamp over it, just worse. But this place had something different over it apart from the horrible smell of blood – the stench of demons!

I looked around. On each side of the courtyard was a narrow staircase, leading upwards. I picked the one on the right.

I found myself in a maze with walls made of some sort of flesh, with strange, ugly pictures carved into it. I rounded a corner and found myself face-to-face with a shadowy, transparent shape – a spectre!
I fired at it and leapt backwards. I felt something soft and disgusting against my back. I tried to move away, but the substance behind me held on to me and began pulling me into it! The spectre howled at me and charged, but I put an end to its misery with another shot.

I jerked and twisted in an attempt to get loose, but it was all in vain. Looking over my shoulder, I saw to my horror that the flesh wall was alive and was trying to eat me! I managed to pull out my chain gun and began to empty several rounds into the wall.
The bullets ripped right through the flesh, shredding the meat apart and I distinctly heard something like a hollow scream, which sounded as if it was far away.
The wall let go of me and I continued cautiously, aches and pain forgotten, and with the knowledge that walls in Hell were to be avoided at all costs.

-

I leapt into the hole and landed on a small raised floor. Below me, the floor was covered in blood. Looking around, I noticed a room with regular floor straight ahead, and on my right but still ahead of me, I could see an area which wasn’t covered in blood. I almost leapt down from the higher ground, when I noticed movement on the “clean” area. I squinted at it and saw a bloodstained hand holding a shotgun – a former human.

I raised my own shotgun and fired a spray of pellets at the hand. A howl of pain revealed that the bastard had been hit, and the next moment it stumbled forward, only to be finished off.
I leapt down onto the blood. My boots made a sticky splashing sound as I landed on the blood-covered floor.

A sudden surge of pain in my feet made me wince in pain.
Something hot was hurting me and looking down, I realized that the blood was boiling hot. Steam was rising from the blood – I hadn’t seen it from the raised plateau because of the gloomy lighting in the room. Quickly I ran over to the area with the now dead shotgun goon. While running, I noticed something shiny out of the side of my eye despite the burning pain in my feet and lower legs. I made it safely there, but immediately noticed something fiery next to me.
A fire skull! I thought with my heart pounding. I spun around just as the thing attacked me with a screech. I leapt back and fired the weapon simultaneously, stopping the skull in midair.
Wasting no time, I pumped the gun and finished it off with another shot, emptying the shotgun clip.

I decided that the shiny thing I had noticed before, which lay on the other side of the blood stained wall, might be worth the pain of crossing the boiling blood floor.
Clenching my teeth, I leapt out from the unsoiled floor and ran around the wall as fast as I could.
There was a small, slightly raised platform there. A large, white, seemingly man-made thing lay on it – the BFG 9000 I had heard so much about!
I leapt off the blood and onto the platform next to the thing. The white thing was indeed the BFG, but I couldn’t help but wonder what it was doing here in Hell. This was where I noticed a human hand, sticking out of the blood. And the BFG wasn’t lying in a way that showed that it might have been thrown there.

It became clear to me that this hand might belong to the marine, who had carried the monstrous weapon and apparently, the blood was particularly deep here, so the soldier, could have stumbled and sunken into it. Maybe he was so badly hurt already, that he couldn’t find the strength to get out of the blood and died from the burning hot blood. When he tripped, the large gun had fallen out of his hands and landed here.

I picked it up and was pleased to see that it was almost fully charged. The BFG was a highly advanced weapon, but it had its minor drawbacks, like the fact that the gun had to be “re-initiated” when it hadn’t been used actively for a while.
I smiled broadly as I pulled the “initiate” handle and the weapon gave a slight hum, indicating that the weapon was ready.

“Time to give the kids some fireworks to watch” I snarled with a hollow, half-mad laughter.

-

The hallway was gloomy and the first couple feet of the wall were decorated with red-eyed skulls. The rest of the walls in the hallway were decorated with demonic faces with yellow, glowing eyes.
The hallway ended in an empty room and behind that room was another room with some odd, blocky pillars. One pillar had a yellow-brown color and the other was a pink-reddish color. I could see brown, humanoid shapes running around there and I knew that it was a bunch of imps.

I backed up and hid behind a wall just before the hallway as soon as the first couple of fireballs went my way. I waited until I heard the sound of claws scraping against the tiled floor and the accompanying sound of bare feet against the floor – an imp was heading my way. I leapt into view and blew it away. A small group of imps further away began to fling fire at me and I responded with another shot, before I leapt behind cover. The pellets ripped into the flesh of one of the imps, but the creature was only wounded. It let out a distorted shriek of pain.

The battle was short and the imps weren’t lent much of a chance. I looked briefly at my handiwork and proceeded down the hallway.
A deep grunt suddenly sounded next to me and I turned and instinctively pulled the trigger of my gun, but I didn’t avoid the unseen claw that made an ugly claw mark in my arm. It was a spectre. I ran backwards, firing wildly at the thing. The gloom of the hallway prevented me from seeing it properly, so I just fired in the direction I thought it was. After a couple of shots, a hollow thud told me that the spectre was dead.

I continued down the hallway, this time more prepared for surprises than before.

I reached the room with the strange, blocky pillars to discover that they were both made of intestines – and they were moving as if they were snakes!

One of those ugly goat demons was waiting behind one of the pillars. Its roar filled the thick air like a thunderclap and it leapt forward, making the ground shake as it landed on its hooves.

I retreated, retrieving my newly acquired BFG and readied it for combat.
I had already used it against another goat demon and its slaves a short while ago and I knew that the gun was the best way to silence these horned terrors as it only took one shot to destroy it.

The monster came stomping towards me and hurled a bolt in my direction. I dodged it, but only just, and the green bolt slammed onto the ground, where a thick, black smoke rose from the scorched spot. I pulled the trigger of the huge weapon and it began to gather energy with a humming noise.
The demon roared at me, but I replied immediately with some heavy firepower as the BFG shot out a ball of green plasma towards the hoofed monster.

The burning green energies slammed into the monstrosity and exploded in a flash. The Demon let out an agonizing roar as the explosion sent it into the red intestine pillar, which collapsed from the demon’s weight splattering intestines onto the floor, where they continued to twist and turn for a short while longer. The creature lay still on the floor with most of its body torn up. Fresh, green blood flowed from its ruined torso and on to the floor.

“Enjoyed your ride!?” I yelled at the monster on the floor, feeling the madness invading my mind.

The thing suddenly sat up and snarled with a deep rumble. I leapt back in surprise. The horned demon didn’t look too good, but it had still survived.
Oh man, I KNEW something was wrong the moment I saw it was still in one piece! I thought doggedly and threw the BFG 9000 aside.
I whipped out my shotgun again as the monster slowly got on its hooves and I began to fire at it. The first shot tore a good chunk out of its already damaged face, but it was still alive. The next shot tore it’s chest apart and delivered the final blow.
With a loud scream of agony the thing fell back onto the floor.

-

The door was made of solid wood and reinforced with rusty steel. There was a strange opening in the rusty metal at its center. The doorframe was decorated with blue skulls. I retrieved the odd blue skull artifact I had found a while ago and looked at it for a moment. It was made of an unknown blue material and glowed with an eerie blue light. Could this be the key to the door? Looking at the strange opening again, I noticed that it had the same shape as the skull artifact.
Yep, it’s a key all right I thought and placed the artifact in the opening. The door gave a satisfactory, metallic click, indicating that the door was now unlocked.

I pulled out my chain gun as I was running low on shells. And pulled the door handle. The door opened up with a rumble and I was met with several reptilian hisses. I replied with a burst of swift and painful death as I let the six-barreled machinegun do all the talking for me.

After clearing the room, I went inside to see what the locked door was intended to hide. There was a strange pool of a glowing blue liquid at the end wall. I went closer to inspect it. It looked a little like water; only this was a real blue color and not non-colored as water in itself really is and it was glowing. I dipped the end of my boot into the liquid.

There was a loud sizzle and everything went bright green before my eyes.
The last thing that went through my mind was the realization that I had just found the exit.
A teleporter!
...

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Please have a look at this story and tell me if I made any major screw-ups. I don't want to send wildman a story full of dumb errors.

Sweet story DSM!
/me cheers!
Two thumbs up!

I liked it, maybe I should write one about my moose.

"I froze in my tracks as I saw a few imps up there with their backs turned on me and making some queer movements."

Sorry, but after the homosexually-concerned comments on my first part of 'The Underworld', i found that hilarious :)

Great work dude, keep it up!