Chapter ?466 The Nine Layers of Hell

"So for a start, and before you start telling me it's a dangerous idea. Let me explain what hell is to you." Cain started describing hell and why it's useful.

Hell is composed of nine layers, ranked from the upper to the lower. The upper layer, also called the first layer is named Avernus. The first circle of Hell was also the "topmost" because Astral travelers would emerge from color pools (Like the Gate Cain got) on this layer and reaching the next circle required descending to the lower depths to breach a barrier to Dis.

The layer is a wasteland of erupting volcanos, acid lakes, and rain. Just the air alone causes extreme irritation because of the massive amount of acidic vapor and toxic chemicals from the volcanos.

By all accounts, Avernus was a desolate wasteland with rocky terrain, sparse, twisted vegetation, concealed snake pits, caves and warrens, volcanoes, and rivers of magma. The sky was starless, full of choking smoke and glowed a dark red due to balls of flammable gas that floated about or streaked across the atmosphere, randomly exploding as a fireball.

"This is the layer where we will be training, and it's the same layer I expect to find Bela's daughter in," Cain said looking at Mary who seemed to have a worried face.

"Do you have a problem?" He glared at her.

"I really don't think it's safe, I feel we might face something other than low-rank devils." She said averting her eyes. She could take Morena down but she had her doubt if Cain and the others could do it.

Second Layer: Dis

The second layer of Hell, when described as its own layer, was a flat barren plane containing little more than black, stagnant rivers, stretching for thousands of miles until it reached some rolling hills. The sky was a cloudy dull green shot through with lightning. In the center of this plane rose the Iron City of Dis, several miles in height and hundreds of miles wide.

The foul rivers radiated from a moat big enough to be called a lake surrounding the Iron City

The World Tree view of the Iron City was much the same but bigger, Yggdrasil is everywhere.

Third Layer: Minauros

Minauros as a layer was described as an endless bog of vile pollution, decaying bodies, and rotting marsh, repeatedly drenched by rain, sleet, and hail storms. The soggy, bone-strewn, disease-ridden swampland made movement very difficult and was only broken occasionally by serpentine ridges of volcanic rock.

Nameless creatures even the devils feared inhabited the swamp.

Minauros as a realm was depicted as a broad but low-vaulted cavern connected to Dis. Oily water percolated through the roof of the cave and rained down upon swamps, deserts of mud, and oozing black soil, pockmarked by bubbling fumaroles and mud geysers.

"I expect to find Jack here, but we won't be going deeper than the first layer for safety. If we died in hell, we're stuck there, the only exception is Alice." Cain said with a worried face.

"Brother is there, glad we will never meet him." Alice sighed, she had no intention of talking to him.

Fourth Layer: Phlegethos

The fourth circle was the Hell that most resembled the stereotype of a fiery world of eternal damnation, filled with active volcanoes, rivers of liquid fire, molten rock, ash hills, smoking pits, and unbearable heat, all wracked by tremors and earthquakes. Even the air seemed aflame and thus Phlegethos was considered to be fire-dominant. In the World Axis view, Phlegethos was a cavern several miles below Minauros, where burning lava poured out of fissures in the ceiling. The city of Abriymoch was the seat of power in this realm, built of hardened magma, obsidian, and crystal in the caldera of an extinct volcano which provided visitors some protection from the elemental environment found throughout the rest of the plane.

Fifth Layer: Stygia

The complete opposite of Phlegethos, Stygia was either a bottomless ocean covered by an ice sheet up to 3 miles (4.8 kilometers) thick, or a frozen sea salted with huge icebergs (No one in hell has the time or patience to dig the ice and discover the truth) buried in a cavern several miles below Dis and hundreds of miles away from fiery Phlegethos depending on which cosmological model was in vogue at the time.

From that it's easy to guess an important fact about hell, it isn't stacked like a layered cake. Its layers are numbered based on where the sinners are sent depending on their deeds. Even though most models depict it as such for ease of understanding.

According to the Great Wheel and World Tree models, the river Styx cut across the ice forming a channel. The older model also suggested the Styx supported small but hardy plants and mosses which, after millennia of decay of this vegetation, resulted in swampy areas along the banks of the river.

A few floating islands were the only non-frozen ground in Stygia, their peaks wreathed in lightning arcing from the coal-black sky. Where lightning struck, a strange phenomenon called "cold fire" erupted: white flames of extreme cold that "burned" for a short time and then disappeared without a trace.

The great city of Tantlin was built upon one of these islands, in the curve of the swampy Styx, or perhaps on a giant ice floe. Due to the proximity of the Styx, Tantlin was a cross-planar trading post for those brave enough to attempt navigating the treacherous river

Sixth Layer: Malbolge

There is significant disagreement between cosmologies on the nature of the sixth circle of Hell.

As a Great Wheel layer, Malbolge was a gargantuan tumble of angular black stone blocks, each block ranging in size from a small city to a large metropolis that formed a pile hundreds of miles thick.

The randomly tilted and ill-fitting blocks were honeycombed with angular passages and caverns causing non-flying travelers to frequently need mountaineering skills and risk avalanches.

Stinking clouds of vapor rose up from the depths and lit the sky with the color of blood, causing cosmologists to speculate that the blocks of Malbolge may have rested on an infinite sea of lava. Corroborating reports have been heard of flammable materials left on the ground spontaneously combusting. Most habitations in Malbolge were copper-clad fortresses built from black stone.

The World Tree view of this layer was similar to the Great Wheel plane of Gehenna (Another plane of existence that is bordering hell) a steep, infinite craggy incline often subject to avalanches that crushed almost anything that got in the way. The copper-shod redoubts were teardrop-shaped or otherwise engineered to deflect tumbling boulders, but even those could not long withstand a direct hit from a major avalanche.

In the World Axis cosmology view, Malbolge was another huge cavern connected to Stygia by icy canals that ran hundreds of miles before reaching their destination. A former godly inhabitant had shaped the realm into a vast garden with fountains, towers, reflecting pools, and all manner of landscaping delights. With the coming of the devils, Malbolge was still beautiful on the surface but creeping corruption permeated the realm, twisting the beauty, perverting the architecture, and poisoning the pools.

"I expect to find Bancroft here, but he might have become something unrecognizable or turned into a devil." Cain looked at Marina.

"Same as Alice, if I had the chance, I would have stabbed him myself. I had a ton of siblings, he killed them all." Marina puffed her cheek doing a stabbing motion with her hand. She was a prisoner to her father for years, which made her lose all respect for him.

Seventh Layer: Maladominihistorical

The Great Wheel cosmology view of the seventh circle of Hell described it as having vapor-polluted skies similar to Malbolge but the surface was solid.

The post-Spellplague view described Maladomini as a colossal maze of passages each several miles across that eventually led to Cania, Malbolge, and Nessus.

All three models agreed that the seventh Hell was filled with ruins of old cities, stagnant rivers, exhausted and abandoned quarries and strip mines, stone aqueducts and lava canals, decaying fortresses, swarms of biting flies, and black pools of ichor that erupted from the ground.

The Lord of the Seventh was never satisfied with the construction of his capital and repeatedly built and abandoned city after city. The largest and most beautiful was Malagard, a sprawling metropolis/palace/fortress/arcology with myriad black towers linked by a tangled web of bridges and walkways.

Malagard was rumored to contain a million rooms and to cap an equally complex dungeon labyrinth. But, words out that the important person residing in the next layer has destroyed most of it by digging right through.

Eighth Layer: Cania

Both pre-and post-Spellplague cosmologies agree that Cania was a bitterly cold-dominant realm of solid ice mountains, titanic, unnaturally fast-moving glaciers, and nearly continuous snowfall that made Stygia seem balmy by comparison.

Unprotected travelers were exposed to temperatures of ?60?℉ (?51?℃) but on the positive side, there were few creatures that hunted in the icy wastes. Earlier lore described the great citadel Mephistar as being constructed of iron but later reports say the Lord of the Eighth's fortress/palace was made of ice (Because of the person in the next paragraph)

All accounts seemed to agree the tower had a heated, luxurious interior and sat atop a gargantuan glacier called Nargus whose speed and movement was under the control of Mephistopheles himself. But that was wrong, as Mephistopheles, the lord of the eighth hell, has already been killed by the Ice hero Silver also called Absolute Zero.

That is true, by what Cain said. The eighth layer of hell was supposed to be a torture layer made of Iron and molten steel, but Absolute Zero just stomped it.

For some unknown reason, Absolute Zero never ventured further into the ninth layer to face Asmodeus. Cain suspects that the hero learned some truth about hell that changed his mind about slaying the devil lord and eradicating devils.

"Silver, the owner of this power.." Isbert stared at her hand from some ice flakes. Why did such a man give his power to her, and could she ever reach his level?

"Let me just make one thing clear, if someone reached level 100 and became as strong as they could. They would die in the fourth layer, hell is designed to torture sinners, even overpowered ones." Cain stared at her, she shouldn't have put an unreachable goal for herself now.

"Then how did he, a human reach the eight-layer?" Isbert gasped.

"He died in the fourth layer, resurrected since no one can die in hell. Then kept fighting. He kept coming back, and back until the cold emanating from his body slowly froze whomever he was fighting." Cain explained.

Ninth Layer: Nessus

The ninth and deepest Hell was a land of extremes in the Great Wheel view: regions cold as Cania, volcanoes like Phlegethos, a lake of ice, a flaming forest, sheer cliffs, firewinds, and a citadel even larger than Khin-Oin in Hades (Another plane of existence. Later, the Khin-Oin became part of the Abyss). Also for some reason, creatures on this layer feel constant searing pain that never stops, which gave the layer its nickname, the groaning layer.

The World Tree view did not contradict this description of Nessus but focused more on the blasted and torn landscape out of which rose Malsheem, the Citadel of Hell.

It was said that Malsheem could hold millions of devils within its mountainous edifice, from the lowest warrens deep in the trench to the soaring spires miles above the tortured plane.

The World Axis model agreed that a progression of rifts, pits and chasms lead down and down, forming a vertical maze hundreds of miles deep that contained great cities, fiendish armies, and the mighty fortress of the Overlord Asmodeus.

..

"And we're going there?" Alice asked with a worried face, listening to Cain happily talking about hell for an hour only served to increase her worries.