Her breathing eased. The aches from the ghouls’ attacks faded away and, when she blinked, tears bubbled off her cheeks alongside the blood from the rain. Her sweat, the salty dirt of the world, all of it was washed away. In a few moments, her enhanced armor, which had several cracks and many scales missing, was clean. The light cleansed and healed her, but it did nothing for the hurt that filled her heart to bursting.

The front of her body was covered by her red exoskeleton –her chest, her arms, her navel, and most of her thighs. Rough and uneven, it jutted out in every direction like a strange rock formation. It hadn’t even settled completely. She'd stopped it before the gelatinous substance could completely spread, but it covered her arms up to her wrists. A bit of it even covered the underside of her jaw.

As she sank through the light, she touched the covering on her chest. The sensation shuddered through her; it was like touching the salt pillars, like touching someone else. A strange warmth. A misshaped hardness. At least the exoskeleton hadn’t completely taken over her face, and it hadn’t made it all the way around to her back – she tried to tell herself she hadn’t reverted back to her monstrous form, but she could feel the tentacles swirling behind her.

She turned to look at them over her shoulder. They’d grown. They were thicker and fleshier than before, partially covered with the dark blue of her enhanced armor like a thin layer of fish scales.

All sorts of colors swirled around them. Greens and oranges, purples and pinks, silvers. They formed floating rings that spiraling along the length of each tentacle before dissipating and fading away and coming back. Jenny turned slowly as she sank through the thick golden light to see hundreds of bodies trailing behind her. It reminded her of a school trip to the aquarium. The dark, underground room that had a glass ceiling. She remembered looking up at the beautiful sea creatures and plants above, wishing they could all be free. Wishing they weren’t trapped in a glass cage for people to come see. How was that fair?

The blooded ghouls looked like red mannequins. They clutched their heads, wriggling and struggling as though they had piercing headaches. No color reached out to them. No swirls of color enveloped them. And no sound escaped them; she couldn’t hear their moaning or screeching.

The deaths fell almost gracefully, their arms spread wide, their torn robes fluttering in the light as purple and pink streams curled around their waists and limbs. Enveloped in oranges and yellows. Some of them held hands. And to Jenny, they looked more like the angels she’d always grownup reading about and picturing whenever she prayed – they looked perfectly at ease in the passageway.

And then there were the Yeshua. All of them had their eyes closed. Their beards and long hair drifting, their robes billowing. Every one of him seemed like they were resting, and all signs of damage were gone, healed away by the light. He was still emaciated. Too thin, too tired looking. But just like with the ghouls, no colors encircled Yeshua. She wondered if that had to do with him being NULL too.

Where am I supposed to go? she wanted to ask him, but when Jenny opened her mouth, air bubbled out, melting into the golden light. Panic didn’t strike her. She didn’t need to breathe. This was the air she’d held in her lungs. Spittle floated away from her lips. Spittle and blood, and she let go of whatever bit of stale air she had left.

Her mind emptied. She tried to concentrate on the colors, on the light. She turned away from the falling bodies, maneuvering with her arms. She caught sight of her hatchet floating nearby, and she swam toward it. Once she had it in her hands, she held it to her exoskeleton covered chest, her tentacles reaching in every direction, trying to sense, trying to make sense of things.

She was leading the others. Taking them somewhere. Yeshua had mentioned the World of Demons. He’d called it Hell. But she hadn’t been thinking about that when she opened the passageway. All she’d wanted to do was open it. But now that it was open, how was she supposed to decide where to go?

Think.

How did I get to the world of death?

By wanting it. By wanting to find Susan. She didn’t know of deaths and souls or anything like that; she’d only wanted to find Susan. She’d focused on the thought of death, and the light had guided her through it.

She shut her eyes, trying to ignore the pressing worry of what happened when she used Severed Spirit. When that voice took over.

Was it a voice?

Or was it her true self?

She’d felt so separated from her body. Like she’d been watching herself through a movie screening, like she’d been feeling everything through a story she was reading. Like she wasn’t real.

Doesn’t matter.

Find the Demons. The world of Demons.

Find Hell.

Then Jenny felt it. A gentle push, like the light was pushing against her. Like feeling a breeze nudging her from behind. Something pushed against her, pressing her away.

And something else pulled, as though trying to reel her in. It reminded her again of fish, something from biology about how fish had a strip of special organs along their sides. That was how they sensed movement and current around them, and that was how they truly “saw.”

She kept her eyes closed, focusing on the pulling and pushing sensation. Guide me. Show me where to go. Please.

The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

There was a current to the light. No, multiple currents in four distinct directions. Her heart skipped a beat as recognition filled her chest. The biggest pull was toward what felt like a ‘center’. A core. The sun of a solar system. Her body turned toward it.

This pull felt familiar. It felt right. It was... that was the world she belonged to. Earth. What had Eve called it? The Material World. That was at the center of everything.

From above came a push. It was pushing her down, away from it, deeper into the light. That was the direction she’d come from; that was the world of Death.

If she’d wanted to, she got the sense she could kick, swim or fly upward, and break the surface again, returning to that bloody rain and bringing everyone with her. That wouldn’t do much good. And she couldn’t go to Earth. Something told her it would be a mess to bring Deaths to the material world, a violation of natural order.

Ahead of her was... light. It was cool and misty, and she’d felt this world before too. This one pulled, tugging on her; she’d seen this world when she’d lived through the eyes of that orange covered angel. She remembered the clouds and the shining towers and the flocks of other angels.

There was something dark there. Not just in her memory of the world, but right now. Something horrible and heavy, something she didn’t want to see. Something she didn’t want to be found by. And even if that thing wasn’t there, even if that thing wasn’t trying to invite her, she couldn’t take the Deaths there. She wasn’t sure if there was any land; would they all plummet to their... well, she didn’t know what would happen if the Deaths fell.

Jenny turned away, toward the remaining pushing/pulling sensation. This one was tugging on her tentacles but pushing against her body, like it couldn’t decide what it wanted. It was cold, ice cold, and a shiver spread through her. If she'd had breath, it would’ve taken it away, like she’d been splashed with ice water.

But it felt right somehow. It felt like the world she was looking for. Besides, process of elimination ruled out all the other directions she could go. That left this icy world, and Jenny opened her eyes. She grabbed at the light, fistfuls of it, trying to propel herself and the hundreds she was dragging behind her.

What’ll happen to the ghouls?

She didn’t care. At least in another world, they would have more space to fight. No more blood rain to fuel the blooded ghouls. And no more bubbling liquid for more ghouls to emerge from. Was that what Yeshua had in mind?

Did he know of the other worlds she could’ve gone to?

Why had he been so specific?

The colors responded. The greens and blues faded to pale white and silver, and the golden light shimmered around her, drawing her in. She’d found the current. The pushing sensation gave way to a fearsome tug, sucking her toward it.

She was flowing into it, moving without kicking her legs or flapping her arms, letting the light guide her. She trusted it. She surrendered to it. And this time, the light didn’t just snap shut below her. It parted in front of her, and Jenny stepped through.

When her armored foot touched down on the other side, it crunched on ice. A cold wind blew through the gap in her helmet, and when she exhaled, steam rose from her face.

With a shudder, she stepped into another world. Something inside her relaxed, and her tentacles wriggled violently, swirling as they emerged from the colors and light, snapping back into Jenny’s shoulder blades and spine with a shlurp.

Like a rubber band snapping, she cried out and fell forward onto the snow, a cramp burning a hole in her navel as her exoskeleton retreated beneath her Enhanced Armor. It drained back into her bellybutton, returning back inside her, and she coughed violently, spitting blood as the trembling eased.

Freezing wind blew through the gap in her helmet. Her armor protected her from the worst of it, but the cold seeped right into her bones. As her visioned adjusted to this new world and she blinked away tears from the biting cold, she saw in front of her another empty wasteland. Instead of salt and gloom and blood rain, this one was bright blue and white. Icy snow stretching as far as she could see through the steady gentle snowfall.

It was silent. This world was completely silent, everything muffled by the snow and ice. There were no trees. No rock faces. No pillars. Only the gray white clouds above, the snow, and the ice-covered ground.

Behind her, the opening she’d made hovered in the air. It blurred in and out of focus, a rippling elongated oval. Colors leaked out, tendrils and beams of reds and yellows that surged, as though the opening was spitting them like solar flares. Most of the light evaporated into the world.

Jenny hobbled around the opening, wondering what it looked like from the side or the back. But it didn't matter how she circled or moved, the gash always looked the same, a wound in the air that she’d healed. Where was everyone else?

She reached for it, willing them to come out, and in response, the passageway pulsed. It shone brighter and brighter, so bright that Jenny had to raise a hand to protect her eyes.

Screams and cries and moans filled the air, and Jenny blinked to find piles of ghouls struggling over one another as frost spread across their red limbs. Their teeth gnashed. Their fingers reached for her. Reached for the Deaths. Their eye sockets wide as though they were shocked. The vapor swirling inside their eyes came to a standstill, and the ghouls froze.

Frozen like ice sculptures dyed red. Frozen in their piles, some half standing, some crawling, most grasping onto other ghouls or deaths.

The deaths’ breaths clouded around their face as they scrambled away from the frozen ghouls. The many Yeshua's were standing to their feet, shaking off their robes. They snapped frozen limbs off ghouls who’d managed to grab a Yeshua or a death, and Jenny sank to their knees as the rest of them huddled for warmth and safety. Coldness crawled up her spine as she allowed herself to feel the wave of exhaustion and relief. She needed to lie down for a while.

As the passage way closed shut and the golden light faded, one of the Yeshua's approached her, concern on his strained face. Snowflakes clung to his beard and eyelashes. “Hell has frozen over.”

Jenny opened her mouth to respond. To ask if they should go somewhere else; she didn’t know if she could open another passageway so soon. She felt drained. Her heart squeezed empty. But then Yeshua stumbled. All of them at once.

His face twisted in pain, and he clutched his chest. The other Yeshua's shimmered, disintegrating into lights that beamed toward the Yeshua in front of Jenny. He was breathing hard, his face red. Each light splashed onto him, outlining him brightly before fading, but it didn’t seem to be helping him at all.

“What’s happening?” Jenny stood quickly, reaching for the System, wondering what kind of potion she should create for him. Was he injured? Exhausted? Did he need a bite of her arm?

He shook his head, the artery on his forehead bulging as his eyes turned red. She could see the one on his neck too. “The Cross,” he hissed through his teeth. Then his eyes rolled toward the back of his head. He faltered, reaching out with a hand as if trying to grab something for balance, as if hoping Jenny would catch him. But as she rushed toward him, Yeshua disintegrated into vapor.

For a moment, his silhouette lingered, made of misty air. Then he faded away.

Jenny was breathing hard, not sure what to do, staring at the spot where Yeshua had just been. She glanced at the Deaths as though they might know what was going on, but they looked just as frightened as Jenny felt. They were all shivering and crying, rubbing their arms or holding onto each other for warmth. Yeshua was gone.