[Iron And Pride: New Sins] Chapter 4 "Golden ivory"
The trail of gold kept stretching like a shining serpent through the cracks of Hell. Ul and Enzel followed it cautiously, crossing gray fields where shadows trembled and heat rose like steam from the depths.
Around them lay piles of coins, fragments of liquid metal, and scattered jewels, as if someone had thrown the wealth of a thousand empires onto the ground with no order or reason. As they advanced, the landscape became more opulent… and more unstable.
Eventually, the path led them back to Cocytus. There, rising imposingly like a spear buried in the earth, stood a gigantic tower, so tall its peak seemed to scrape the ceiling of Hell.
“Oh.”
Enzel looked up at the structure.
“Had you been here before?”
“Not really. I’d only seen it from a distance, standing out among the ruins… but since we’re here, I suppose it’s time to find out what it actually is.”
The Tower of Golden Ivory rose like a monument to desire. Its walls, plated in sheets of gold that reflected the crimson light of the infernal sky, shone like a false promise. Every inch was decorated with reliefs of demons in pleading postures, sculpted from solid gold. Their eyes were empty and their mouths open, as if they were eternally begging for something they would never receive.
Once they were close enough, Ul turned off the vehicle’s engine and they both stepped down. They walked over ground covered in scattered jewels and pools of liquid gold that gleamed ominously.
Enzel approached one of them cautiously.
“What is this liquid?”
“Careful. It looks like gold. If it is, it’s probably extremely hot. And even if it isn’t, it’s still liquid metal.”
Enzel stared at the pool skeptically.
“Uhh… if you say so…”
At that moment, a demon came running out of the tower’s entrance, panting, with a pile of jewels clutched against his chest. But something was wrong. With each step, his body took on a golden shine from the feet upward. His skin hardened, and his gait became slow and strained, as if the weight of his loot were dragging him toward his damnation.
Within seconds, he disappeared among the rocks. They did not need to see him to know what would happen: he would surely end up turned into another golden statue.
“Is it really worth turning into stone over a couple of objects?”
“Many are easily seduced by gold and gems… though honestly, they’re useless outside of a society.”
Enzel turned to look at her strangely.
“Gems?”
Ul stared back at him, incredulous.
“…Yes.”
Leaving the conversation behind, they approached the enormous entrance doors. They were covered in inlays of sapphires, rubies, fragments of corroded Verita, and plates of molten Auferun, all arranged as if someone had tried to build a fortress out of the wealth of the world… without truly understanding how to use it.
They pushed the doors open. They creaked with a deep sound.
And what they saw on the other side was grotesque.
The interior was vast, far larger than the outside of the tower suggested. An impossible space. The floor was covered with frenzied demons writhing among mountains of coins like beasts in heat. Some bit into the jewels, others licked them or clutched them to their chests. Some laughed, others cried. All of them were… empty. Every time one jewel vanished, another appeared to take its place.
“Wow… I guess I must have looked like that once too. Ugh… I’m not falling for something like that again.”
Ul raised an eyebrow.
“I doubt it, honestly.”
She crouched down and picked up a small capacitor half-buried among the coins.
“Though… some of these parts would actually be useful for my work.”
Enzel raised an eyebrow when he saw what she was holding.
Beyond the collective madness, there was not much else to see on the first floor. At the back, two staircases of dark marble led to the next level. Without much discussion, they started climbing.
The moment they stepped onto the second floor, the stairs behind them collapsed, swallowed by a structural trap.
Ul, unfazed, grabbed one of the demons crawling nearby and threw it over the edge. It crashed into the floor below with a scream… but nothing happened to it.
“I thought it would petrify or something. This is not a real obstacle.”
“I guess it’s just there to make you not want to go back down.”
The second floor was different. Cleaner. Less beastly. The jewels were no longer scattered at random, but arranged in neat piles. Chests were stacked in the corners, and in the air there lingered a faint smell of ozone… of technology.
Ul stopped short.
On top of a polished stone table rested switches, capacitors, transistors, fragments of circuitry, and even a relatively recent-generation CPU. They were parts she recognized immediately, some better than the ones she carried with her.
“Ohhh… all right, now this has my attention. The parts here are very high quality, and we have not even gone up that far… though I am concerned about who could have made something like this. I do not know anyone out there capable of manufacturing technology at this level.”
Her voice sounded different. More alive. Almost excited.
Enzel watched her cautiously.
“Uhh…”
“We need to go higher.”
Floor after floor, the tower seemed to multiply its opulence. With every step upward, the walls shone more intensely, and the decorations stopped being merely gaudy and became absurd. First polished infernal stone, then dark marble, then ivory veined with crystal, burnished silver, gold, diamond, and finally liquid platinum. The materials seemed to be competing with one another to see which could dazzle more.
At times they crossed paths with demons lost among the riches: ignaxumjinjis covered in impossible ornaments, or kerlamites embedding colorful materials directly into their bodies.
The air grew heavy. Sweet. Almost sickening, as if breathing itself became harder in the presence of so much wealth.
Ul walked ahead, picking up technological parts at every step. Her fingers, usually steady and methodical, now moved with compulsive haste, as if she feared everything would vanish if she did not grab it at once.
Enzel watched her in silence. For the first time in a long while, he did not understand what he was seeing. Not because he lacked the knowledge… but because Ul no longer seemed like herself.
The upper floors no longer held stone or ordinary metal. Everything was unreal. It shone too much. It almost hurt to look at. The walls breathed luxury, the floors were carpeted with golden filaments that seemed to move with the light, and lamps of infernal crystal floated on their own beneath ceilings that imitated false skies.
And the statues.
There were more and more demons frozen in poses of euphoria, greed, or grief. Some stretched their hands toward invisible chests, others clutched their own legs as if regretting too late what they had taken. At times, as they moved forward, one of them would transform right before their eyes, turning into pure gold while trying to cling to one more jewel.
Many crumbled at the slightest touch, as if the gold they were made of was not metal at all, but fragile dust disguised as glory.
At one point, they noticed something unsettling: the demons coming up behind them seemed to be floating through the air right where the stairs had collapsed. Another illusion. The stairs were still there, only invisible.
Meanwhile, Ul kept trying to assemble the parts she had gathered. Small motors, motherboards, energy cores… but nothing worked. Her face remained calm, though Enzel could already see the tension in every movement.
By the time they reached the twenty-fourth floor, the components were so advanced that even Ul did not fully understand how they worked. And even so, something in her instincts told her where each piece belonged, how they fit together… yet they never functioned. They would not start up. They did nothing.
“Damn it… what am I doing wrong?”
“Ul… maybe you should rest a little. Leave those things alone.”
“Shut up. Make yourself useful and bring me that huge engine.”
Enzel followed the direction of her finger.
“You mean… that?”
“Yes, damn it. Hurry up!”
Confused, he dragged the heavy device over to her.
“I don’t get it… what is it for?”
Ul suddenly grabbed him by the snout.
“Are you an idiot?”
Her eyes were burning.
“This is an Auferun-alloy engine with six crossed cylinders, counterweights to prevent vibrations at high RPM, bearings coated with antifriction material, and a double camshaft! And that’s just the basics!”
Enzel blinked slowly.
“…No.”
Ul let go of him abruptly and went back to assembling parts compulsively. Enzel watched the process. Everything seemed logical, the parts fit together, the design made sense… but when she finally activated the machine, it collapsed in on itself.
Scrap. Nothing more.
Ul let out a scream of frustration, deep and almost childish, like a little girl being promised something impossible to reach.
Without a word, she kept climbing. Enzel took a moment to react before running after her.
The pattern repeated again and again: every new floor offered better parts, brighter promises, more sophisticated mechanisms… and every single one of them failed without exception.
Until they reached a floor unlike any of the others.
There was no machinery there. No parts. Not even movement.
Everything was crimson red.
The walls, made entirely of polished gold, seemed to melt toward the edges. The view faded only a few meters ahead, swallowed by a black mist that allowed nothing to be seen beyond it. Everything was dense. Unreal. Like a dream turned into a prison.
And at the center of that scene… there he was.
A colossal demon, with a rounded silhouette and grotesquely comfortable presence. His body was wrapped in garments of the highest quality, embroidered with threads of gold and jade ornaments. His cloak, a deep emerald green, seemed to move in rhythm with his breathing. His smile, wide and almost sincere, revealed teeth of solid gold, polished like blades.
His skin was covered in tattoos: gems, coins, rings, and ingots engraved directly into his flesh. He did not seem to suffer from it. Rather… he seemed to enjoy it.
He sat atop a mountain of coins so tall that his throne looked unstable, as if it might collapse at any moment. Around him, mountains of jewels rose like sacred pillars. Impossible minerals piled up in the corners, and enormous sapphires floated around him as if the air itself had surrendered to his wealth.
Or at least… that was what Ul saw.
“Welcome to the Golden Ivory. Here, new collectors are always welcome… This tower has been my greatest work, and very soon we shall reach Heaven to take the marvelous artifacts of that forgotten realm.”
Ul and Enzel stopped, stunned by the demon’s presence.
Enzel frowned.
“Who the hell is this guy?”
“Mammon… or rather, a siren pretending to be Mammon. Though I must admit, his body is in… incredible condition. If I didn’t know the real Mammon died in the war, I would think I was looking at the genuine article.”
Enzel looked back at the creature, but what he saw looked nothing like Ul’s description.
Before his eyes, there was only a walking corpse covered in filthy, ragged cloth. It was missing one arm and half its head, exposing the face of the siren demon hidden inside the body. Its abdomen was open, as if it had been violently torn apart; charred remains hinted at wounds made by divine fire… probably the way the original Mammon had died.
Enzel cleared his throat.
“Ul… it’s affecting you.”
She did not even turn to look at him.
“Nonsense. I trained specifically to resist siren mind control. Besides, there aren’t any left anymore, outside of the Sins and that control-obsessed maniac in the capital. The old ones couldn’t even affect me.”
She ignored him completely and kept walking, passing by Mammon to continue toward the next floor as if nothing Enzel said mattered.
Enzel gritted his teeth and cautiously approached the demon. His intention was to interrogate him, though the disgust on his face was obvious.
“You. What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Heh… heh… heh… I am trying to reach Heaven. To take its riches. There must be something there… something I can truly possess.”
“I don’t care about that. Why are you controlling Ul?”
Mammon let out a wet laugh.
“Oh, but I am not controlling her. If she is being affected by my presence… then it must be because something inside her responds to my power.”
Enzel frowned.
“Sure. Lucifer controlled me too. I couldn’t think clearly until he let me go.”
Mammon slowly descended until he was face to face with him.
“But I am not Lucifer, little lizard. My power is not born from control. It rises from the devotion of those who venerate me. The more riches I accumulate, the more my tower grows… and the more it grows, the closer I come to divinity.”
Enzel looked around with contempt.
“Riches? You mean all this garbage?”
“Garbage to you. To my followers, they are priceless treasures. And when a demon hoards enough… they end up becoming part of the treasure. The same happens to those who keep climbing. They melt into the tower. Into my kingdom.”
Enzel let out a dry laugh.
“None of this has any real value. And yet you keep piling it up… How little control do you have to end up like this?”
Mammon tilted his head slightly.
“Oh… and you have enough to boast about it?”
“More than you, clearly. What’s the point of all these ‘riches’? What emptiness could they ever fill if you’re never going to be satisfied?”
Mammon was silent for a moment.
“Mmm… your words resonate with me in some way. Not their intent… but something within them. Though tell me, little lizard… what if I offered you something?”
“Something like what?”
“It is said Heaven possessed weapons more powerful than any other. Imagine the power we would have with them. We would rule Hell as kings, and if you only—”
“I’m not interested. How exactly do you plan to reach Heaven?”
Mammon smiled, showing his golden teeth.
“There is a crack up there… caused when Astaroth struck down a seraph. My demons build toward it by instinct. They long for what I long for. And with more than six hundred floors… soon we shall reach it.”
Enzel stopped listening to him. He turned on his heels and ran up the stairs. He had to reach Ul before she kept climbing.
He finally found her on the forty-fourth floor.
“Wait, Ul!”
She barely turned, indifferent.
“What do you want now?”
Enzel stepped in front of her, blocking her path.
“You’re being affected. You’re acting the same way I did.”
Ul narrowed her eyes.
“You’re the only one being affected. Look around. These parts aren’t appearing out of nowhere. This is advanced technology. Do you know how hard it is to find materials for diodes?”
“That guy told me. His power is different. He doesn’t control people like the other sirens… he distorts what you desire. He makes you see value where there isn’t any. That thing in your hand is garbage, Ul. You’re the only one who sees it as valuable.”
Ul lowered her gaze for a second to the parts she was holding. Then she looked away, clearly irritated.
“Don’t be ridiculous. I wouldn’t fall for something so… obvious.”
But her voice faltered. A small crack opened in her argument. Something inside her was beginning to fracture.
Even so, she ignored him and kept walking.
Enzel ran after her and grabbed her by the leg. Ul reacted by instinct, launching a brutal kick that sent him falling backward. Enzel got up immediately and threw himself at her again, grabbing her tightly and making her lose her balance. Both of them fell to the floor.
They struggled violently.
Ul tried to free herself, furious. She drove a knee into his stomach, forcing him to let go, then grabbed him by the snout and slammed him against the floor. Enzel landed on his back, dazed, but before she could pull away, he managed to grab her arm and yank her down. Ul fell on top of him, and Enzel trapped her in an improvised hold.
“What the hell is wrong with you?! Let go of me!”
“No! Not until you’re thinking clearly! Not until you’re yourself again!”
Ul drove an elbow into his ribs, but Enzel kept speaking between struggles.
“Ul… as much as it pains me to admit it, you’re better than me. You’ve lived more, seen more, know more. Do you really not notice that this is different? You said it yourself. There’s no one out there capable of making things like yours. None of this is real, and you know that better than anyone! You know how machines work!”
Ul went still for an instant. Her hand trembled slightly.
“You don’t need anything here to create what you make. Why would you want to imitate what others covet when you build things others actually need?”
Ul’s fist slowly lowered.
Her eyes moved across the floor and finally settled on the piece she was still holding: a broken casing covered in golden grime. Nothing useful. Nothing she could not make better herself.
She stayed silent for several seconds.
“No way…”
Her fingers loosened, and the piece fell to the floor with a dull clatter.
“It was affecting me…”
Enzel slowly let go of her and dropped backward, panting. Ul sat beside a wall, resting her arms on her knees.
“Are you okay?”
She looked around with an exhausted expression.
“I think so…”
Now that greed no longer clouded her mind, the scenery had changed completely. The mountains of electronic parts, the glittering jewels, and the shining objects that had once seemed priceless were nothing more than junk: rusted fragments, cracked crystals, worn-out cloth, and scraps of old paper. A garbage dump disguised as paradise.
Ul exhaled heavily.
“I need to design some device to protect us from types like him…”
“I don’t doubt you can do it… but maybe we should get out of here first.”
Ul looked up at the stairs leading to the next floor. Even though the Sin’s influence no longer weighed on her, she still felt a faint curiosity; a persistent whisper inviting her to keep climbing.
But now she knew it was a trap.
She stood up.
“Yes… you’re right. But first, I want to interrogate that demon.”
The two of them began to descend, pushing junk aside to find the invisible steps. Floor after floor, they made their way down until they returned to the level where New Mammon was waiting for them, reclining among mountains of false riches and watching them with that twisted smile.
Ul brought an improvised knife to his neck. Her expression was not threatening, but irritated.
“All right… what the hell were you trying to do?”
Mammon smiled, unmoved.
“Heh… heh… heh… as I explained to the little lizard, I did nothing. You walked upward of your own will. If you fell under my influence… that says something about you, does it not?”
“Uh-huh. And you’re not going to stop us? Attack us? You’re not worried we might hurt you or sabotage your… tower?”
Mammon merely shifted among the coins.
“Do so if you wish. I have already explained the only thing I seek… the riches of Heaven.”
“Right. Then tell me something useful. How do the powers of the other New Sins work?”
Mammon shrugged.
“I do not know. Heh… heh… heh… We do not speak to one another, nor do we cooperate. When we found the original corpses, we fought over them like dogs over a bone. That is all. We hate each other.”
Enzel frowned.
“If you’ve already been to Heaven, why didn’t you take what you were looking for? Or how did you come back?”
“Back then, I was not… this. My obsession appeared afterward. And I do not remember how I reached that place. Everything is… blurred.”
Mammon stared into nothing with a strange, empty sadness.
“I know these things are worthless. But something inside me forces me to keep searching… as if there were something I could truly possess. And yet… I cannot enjoy this greed. Besides… I feel that something is wrong. I do not know how long this tower will remain standing.”
Ul slowly lowered the knife.
“Hmm… I’m starting to see a pattern.”
She fell silent for a moment. For an instant, she considered shooting him, raising the weapon again… but after a few seconds, she lowered it once more without any expression.
Then she looked at Enzel.
“I gain nothing by killing him. We’d better leave before we end up turned into statues.”
The two of them descended through the last floors and finally stepped out of the immense tower. The air outside was colder and heavier, as if they had been short on oxygen the entire time they were inside.
Ul cast one last look at the golden pools outside. Now they only looked like thick tar with a yellowish gleam, something that could only seem valuable through self-deception.
They stood for a moment, watching the top of the tower. Up there, tiny silhouettes of demons were still building new floors.
“That guy said there were more than six hundred floors… but I don’t see more than fifty.”
Just then, the demons finished their work. The first floor began to sink slowly into the earth, as if Hell itself were swallowing it. A new entrance emerged at ground level, identical to the one they had passed through when they entered.
Ul watched the scene for a few seconds.
“There’s your answer.”
They walked to the vehicle. Ul took the driver’s seat and began activating the systems while Enzel settled in beside her.
“By the way… there’s something I didn’t mention earlier.”
He pointed at Ul’s right leg. From the hoof to the heel, it was completely covered in solid gold.
“Ah…”
Ul looked at the limb with a mix of annoyance and resignation.
“I’ll have to fix that. Though I suppose my kicks will be stronger now.”
“Is gold resistant?”
“Not particularly. But it is heavy… Ah, wait. It’s pyrite. Yes, this is completely useless.”
They both let out a small laugh, the kind that comes after surviving something uncomfortable.
Ul set the vehicle’s course. Little by little, they moved away from the Golden Ivory, leaving Mammon and his tower of illusions behind.
After a few seconds of silence, Ul spoke without taking her eyes off the road.
“Enzel.”
“Hmm?”
Her voice came out softer than usual.
“Thank you.”
Enzel did not answer. He only nodded.
The engine roared, and the vehicle advanced toward their next destination.
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im not ignoring the previous chapter but to not confuse myself im gonna ignore the number