My travels had taken a lot out of me, but I couldn't afford to rest just yet. I marched further towards the castle, the dry dirt and sparse vegetation eventually giving way to soft green grass, tall enough that I could completely conceal myself if I were to crouch down. I couldn't help but think there might be predators lurking in the tall grass, lions, tigers, or maybe Rattatas. No, that last one would just be silly, though perhaps this would be to my advantage as well. A griffin is a predator after all.

After a time, I spotted what looked to be a small village, built at the edge of a forest, though I was quite certain this one didn't contain pastel ponies that would sing about friendship. I approached for further investigation, finding it to be more like a frontier town, civil war era, with patrols of musket men, as well as guards placed around town. I saw some torches about, which meant that if the theme of this place held true, the inhabitants were sane. Still, I'd decided I'd rather not risk a whole village, especially with the armaments. Better to go around and make for the woods.

Trekking around the village while still keeping a safe distance added quite a lot of time to my journey, about half a 'day' I'd estimate, though there never seemed to be any sort of sun rise or set, just a constant dim, like a dying star, shining from nowhere in particular, though it had gotten brighter than the sea of desolation, so perhaps the castle itself is the source?

Either way, I had entered the forest, keeping my wits about me as I moved through the dense underbrush.

*Cracka-boom*

*Whizz*

"Gaah!"

I immediately hunched down, trying to stay hidden while I looked for the assailant... and the victim. Off to my right, maybe a hundred meters through the bush, I spotted a griffin running for his life, while a wound on his leg bled profusely. I briefly wondered why he hadn't taken flight, though that question was quickly answered when I noticed he didn't have any wings, mere stumps, having long healed over, having taken their place. He spotted me, and I quickly motioned for him to get hidden.

"Damn, where'd he go?" Snarled a deep, angry voice. About 300 meters behind the other griffin came a column of what looked like hunters, carrying muskets and shotguns.

"He's around here somewhere, keep looking." Squealed a higher pitched one, in a voice like a swine. Keeping low, I poked my head up slightly to get a better look.

The hunters were some kind of grotesque, twisted version of man, with large, ridged noses, the nostrils of which were all the way up on their forehead, while they had a ridiculously large under bite, sharp, triangular teeth sticking out of a drooling maw, and eyes set low, almost to their cheeks, slanted downwards. The hands they used to clutch their guns had three long fingers, each with a wicked claw at the end, and their legs were twisted and bowed out at the sides. They were hideous beyond all measure.

"There!" One of them, holding a shotgun, pointed me out to the others, as I was beyond his weapon's effective range. I quickly ducked back down and took off through the brush, leading them away from the wounded griffin as shots range out behind me. I ran in a serpentine pattern to try and throw them off, but they seemed to keep track of me quite well through the bushes. When I looked back to see if they were still following me, I found them standing still, looking about frantically. Did something happen?

Apparently the wounded griffin still had quite a bit of fight in him, and decided to repay my favor, as the one in the rear of the line let out an unholy screech as it was pulled down into the thicket and was suddenly silenced. The situation reminded me far too much of that one scene 'The Mummy Returns' where the guards walk through long grass and are cut down by these pygmy things, except that this time, we're the hunters. Catching on to the idea, I silently prowled through the thicket, closing the distance.

A rustle in the bushes! The hunters turned to shoot at my new friend, only to have yet another of their number taken down. I slashed his Achille's with my talon, then quickly drew the other across his throat. Three left.

Taking the musket off the hunter I killed, I popped up and fired, hitting one in the neck. Two. Dropping the spent weapon as I ducked back down, another was slain my my hidden friend. Only one remained.

"IIIIII ssssseeeeeeeeeeeeeee yooooouuuuuuu." I called from the grasses.

"Where are you?!" The demon-thing shouted angrily.

""Everywhere...." My partner replied.

"Graaa!" He raised his shotgun and fired both shots of the double barrel into the bush randomly. After smell of gunpowder and the ringing of the shell left my ears, both me and the other griffin rose from the undergrowth.

"You missed. Too bad." Before he could even think of reloading we slit his throat and took off further into the woods.

We had found a clearing deep in the woods. We gathered up underbrush, twigs, grass, leaves and such, then made a fire using the old 'rub two sticks together' method. After we got the fire going, we settled in and got to talking.

"So, thanks for the save back there." He began.

"No problem. I just happened by. I'll admit though, being a distraction was kind of an accident."

"I figured. You've gotta look out for yourself down here. Still, I'm glad you showed up. The name's Atran."

"I'm Griffin." As soon as I introduced myself, Atran just about coughed up a lung. "I take it you've heard of me?" Once he got over his coughing fit, he looked at me with sad eyes.

"So, you got done in too. I didn't think it was possible, but you're in the underworld. What I don't get is what you're doing here in hunted hell. Shouldn't you be in paradise?"

"Huh? Oh, no. I'm not dead. This bitch alpha threw me down a well which lead all the way to... *shudder* I'd rather not talk about what was there. Anyways, I've been making my way towards the castle, and I just left a lesser hell, the 'sea of desolation'. What kind of hell is this?"

"Greater hell." His words stopped me dead in my tracks. He showed me his leg. "Look at that, already healing up. In greater hells you have a ridiculously high healing factor, well, I do anyways. I don't know about if you're still alive. It's so they can hurt you more."

"Fuck. Well, I guess Craig made the right choice in staying on that side of the river."

"You crossed the river? Which one?" Atran asked.

"The one that screams at you. There's a boat I used to cross a ways back, on the far side of the village. You could probably use it to get across, but just make sure you go quick and cover your ears. When the river wails, the demons circling the castle start flying over to investigate."

"Thanks."

"No problem." I opened up my makeshift saddlebag and pulled out a jar of honey, cracked the top off, and started pouring it down my throat. It was sweet and sticky, though a bit hard to swallow and there were some crystallized chunks in it, eventually it all went down.

"I'm going to be honest with you." Atran began. "I was a pretty evil bastard in life. I did a lot of things I shouldn't have, went a bit power crazy, and it was because of grief." I sat quietly and listened. "See, my whole family, me, my wife, and my daughter, we were captured. Brought to the mines. I tried to help them escape. I thought I failed and, well, they said they killed both of them. I went crazy with grief. Inspired rebellion. Then, I took all my suffering, and made it so those bastards would feel it a hundred fold. Imagine my surprise to learn my daughter was still alive."

"Must have been a happy day."

"I was relieved and excited all at once, but when I learned about what she was doing, I looked at everything I had done, and I felt so ashamed. I met her, face to face, and I couldn't bear to tell her who I was. She didn't recognize me. And then, she killed me. I was this villain, and my own daughter put me down. And... I'm glad she did. Now that I'm down here, I can't ruin things anymore, and every day, even though I have to fight, and I go through so much pain, I can keep going because I know she's alright. So, Griffin, you've gotta tell me... please tell me Gilda is okay."

"Who are you Atran?"

"I'm Gilda's father."

I looked up at him and smiled.

"I stayed behind so she and the others could escape. I don't know how they're doing, but they probably got away. They can take care of themselves for the most part."

He let out a sigh of relief, then gave me a big hug. "I'm glad I got to meet you Griffin."

"By the way Atran."

"Hmm?"

"She should be due any time now, and it's a boy. When I get out of here, I'll make sure to tell him about you." Just like that, the grizzled old bird broke down and cried.

"Damnit son, I'm not gonna take some boat to a little bit less of a hell, I'm gonna go with you and make damn sure you get back out, even if I have to kill Cerberus himself. Besides. we make a good team."

So, Atran and I set about making our way through 'Hunted Hell', dodging patrols of hunters, or killing them off, looting their supplies. After a few days, maybe a week, we eventually reached the end of hunted hell. What awaited in the next area made the previous one infinitely preferable.

Standing on a hilltop, Atran and I gazed across the field below us. I held a musket I had looted, while Atran preferred the shotgun. There were three forces, locked in unending combat. Or, rather, two forces locked in unending combat and a third group that was purely victims.

The victim group was not really a group at all. Creatures of all species, scattered about, desperately trying to avoid the other two factions. The first was a swarm of aerial raiders in the form of gigantic wasps. They appeared to be around the size of Princess Celestia, the constant drone from their multitude of wings nearly deafening as they buzzed in and out. Their stingers had to be the size of a dagger, their massive abdomen pulsing as it stung it's victim, pumping vast amounts agonizingly painful paralytic toxin into the comparatively small bodies of their prey, then dragging them off to who knows where.

"Spiders, why is it always spiders?" I shook my head as I gazed at the other group. Giant tarantulas, their size hadn't impaired their speed at all, their legs covered in hair as thick as a horse's. They'd leap and pounce on their victims, impaling them on razor sharp fangs and injecting venom into them that would liquify their insides into a slurry that they could suck out. The screams of the tormented echoed up from below as they were dragged off or eaten alive.

Not only that, but the wasps and taratula were fighting each other as well. A spider would pounce, only to be stung in the back by a wasp. The spider would curl up paralyzed, and just as the bee would deliver the finishing blow, another arachnid would leap on the downed yellow jacket and sink it's fangs into it. A spider would shoot a strand of web at a flying wasp and drag it down, only to be swarmed by three at once. Elsewhere, a spider and a wasp had grabbed hold of a man, his head between the bee's mandibles, while his legs were held between the spider's fangs. They tugged, trying to wrench him free of the other's grip, only to tear him in half, leaving half his spine and organs hanging out as they each dragged their respective share of the kill away from the front line. Blood and organs, rotting meat, bone fragments, and dissolved flesh covered the ground, letting off an acrid, acidic scent we could smell even up on our ridge.

"What the fuck is this?" Atran asked in a whisper, as to not alert anyone in the massacre below.

"Wasp and spider..."

"What?"

"The spiders are tarantulas, and the bee's are pepsis wasps, also known as 'tarantula hawks'. The spiders hunt the bees for food, and the bees paralyze the spiders, then lay eggs in their bodies that hatch and eat them alive. Then you've got the people down there. The spiders are eating them right on the battlefield, while the wasps are dragging them back to their hive so they can lay their eggs in safety. The wasps won't lay their eggs right here, because then the spiders would just eat the hosts."

"Its... horrifying. I'm glad we're not any closer, cuz I think I'd lose my lunch."

"Yeah..." I looked to the massive arachnid monsters and shook. "Let's go around."

"Which way? We can go left, around the spider's side, or right, around the wasp nest." Atran asked.

"Right. Definitely right."

"You answered that awfully fast." Atran raised an eyebrow.

"The spiders are ground bound, so they'll be a lot harder to go around or through. There's probably webs all over the place. We can't walk through webbing without alerting every spider on the web, and we might get stuck. With the bees, we should be alright as long as we keep low and stay behind cover. They'd fly right over us and there won't be any traps. Also, if we go the spider route, I'll either freeze stiff at the sight of one, or scream like a maniac and give us away. I can tolerate bees."

Conversation was a bit difficult because we had to talk over the constant buzz of the bees, so we had to talk a little louder than we probably should have. This fact was made apparent when the constant droning sound suddenly stopped. Looking out across the field, the bees were still flying, but we could no longer hear the buzz.

"Why is it quiet?" I asked Atran, who only poked me on the shoulder and pointed behind us. The buzz was not from the bees on the field. It was from the pair of bees right behind us, who had landed and were looking at us oddly.

"Griffin. Whatever you do, don't move a muscle. I don't think bees can hear very well, so they might think we're paralyzed. If we hold still, they shouldn't sting us."

Looking at the massive mandibles, the giant stinger, the antenna, the legs, the thick, coarse hair and the twitching abdomen, which looked like it was always ready to sting at a moment's notice, something clicked deep inside my mind.

"Atran, I take it back. I don't think I can stand bees either."

"So? What do we do? Kill them? There's two of us and two of them." He mumbled through his closed beak.

"No. Bees have this strange pheromone. If you kill one, the chemicals send a message to every other bee in the area to come over and 'sting first, ask questions later'. If we kill these ones, we'll be swarmed in seconds."

"Any ideas?" The bees took flight again, each grabbing one of us with their sticky legs, holding us up tightly against the thorax as they took to the sky, flying us towards their nest which we could see off in the distance, in the direction of the castle.

"I dunno. Pray?" Atran looked at me like I was a moron.

"Any useful ideas?" He spat back.

"Play possum and wait for an opportunity?"

"... and you're supposed to be the genius who liberated half of Gem Fido..."

"Well excuse me, I'm not exactly privy to the tactical situation in HELL. I usually have time to think about this shit."

"It won't be long before we reach the hive, so you better start thinking now."

Author's Notes:

The bees! Aggh! Not the bees! They're in my sp-eye-ders!

Now I conjured a mental image of an eyeball with eight legs.

Damn, I'm all out of mind bleach.

Time to perform an autolobotomy!