If I’d thought Abaddon was ugly, I was going to have to find a new word for Cocytus Landing, which looked like it had been discarded next to the river by some glacier with a grudge. You’ve heard of shantytowns, right? Well, Cocytus Landing was pretty much a shanty city, as cheaply and dangerously constructed as the meanest hovels of Abaddon but on a much grander scale, a monstrous, multilevel, walled slum centered on its river docks.

The first difference I noticed between this and Abaddon was the industriousness. Not everybody was working, of course, but a major chunk of the populace seemed to be doing something, whether hauling spiky logs on creaky wooden carts, or whipping the slaves and other beasts of burden who pulled those carts, or loading and unloading the bizarre ships that bobbed at anchor all along the docks. Visiting Heaven was like a century tripping on E, all laughing and singing and dancing and not caring or even remembering. Hell was gritty and dirty, but things actually worked. The damned made things, struggled for existence, struggled to avoid pain. They ate and shat and fornicated just like people. But they would suffer forever.

As we made our way along the river toward the walls, I watched a stunning variety of ships on their ways in and out of port. Many looked like they’d been turned into boats only as an afterthought, weird arrangements of canvas, wood, and what looked like bones that didn’t seem like they could possibly float. It struck me then that I hadn’t seen any technology more advanced than you could have found in a European city during the low Middle Ages. All work was done by the brute strength of laborers, occasionally aided by the power of water or fire. I saw water wheels spinning along several of the river’s branches, and buildings that might have been mills or foundries looming crookedly beside the wheels. I couldn’t help wondering if this technological embargo was a rule of the Highest or some bizarre quality of Hell itself.

At the city gates, we joined the crowd funneling past a couple of dozen squat, muscular demons from the Murderers Sect. These soldiers seemed to be examining the passersby carefully, so I dragged Gob into the shadow of a tall peddler’s wagon and we went through the gate that way, out of the driver’s sight but picking up bits of spilled rubbish and putting it back on the cart as if it was ours.