The last time the creature spoke to me, not only did I get nothing out of it, but I felt as if my head was going to split in half. I shouldn't be in a hurry to repeat that experience. But I wasn't thinking about that.

I wasn't thinking at all.

Otherwise, I would have run away instead of talking.

More silence. Until the ceiling finally, indeed, collapsed. Instinctively, I raised my arms above my head as if that could protect me from the debris.

At least I did manage to do the very thing that had gotten me into this situation. Become intangible, like any ghost.

Well. At first.

I dodged a few good hits, but in the end I ended up buried under the rubble. Trapped, more or less, I should manage to get out of here, but the darkness and the pain....

I swallowed hard.

I wasn't the only one, at least. Quite a few of the masked guy's henchmen were down as well. That bastard, who had to choose precisely me as bait, the reason I was now up to my neck in shit, wasn't present.

Too bad.

But surely he didn't have much time left in this world, after what he had tried to do. Neither him nor his organization. I grabbed one of the metal bars sticking out of the rubble, bent.

I tugged on it, pulling it out with ease. I didn't even need to use both hands.

Had I really gotten stronger, or was it the adrenaline, so to speak, even though I didn't have a physical body? In any case, it was strength, no need to beat around the bush or try to find justification for everything, a method in madness.

That was the point, yes, to live in the moment.

I stuck the metal bar in the neck of one of the henchmen who was already agonizing under the rubble, helping him on his way to the other side. His blood flowed, thick and so red it didn't look real.

Something strange was happening to me. Definitely.

But there was no turning back, nor did I want to.

As he exhaled his last breath, I devoured my third soul. I was going to become the real plague here, if I kept it up.

His soul also gave me a sword, though its shape was different, the blade curved in a way that didn't seem too practical.

Devouring a few souls wouldn't allow me to defeat Death, but I hoped it would be enough to escape. At least for the time being. Once I got my soul back, he could kill me if he wanted to. The only reason I was resisting was that I wouldn't go to the next world. I would just disappear.

I still had no clues, not even a starting point, but I could think about that later.

Now I had to survive.

I saw Plague at the edge of the hole created by the collapse. The real creature was a tangle of eyeless tentacles. I was willing to accept that it could see through the eyes of whatever humans or animals it got into, but now that it had shown its true form, how did it see? Ah, more useless questions.

The thing is, she jumped from high above and her landing was explosive.

Debris flew out in all directions. The first thing that came to my mind was pins after being hit with the bowling ball. It was a, what was it called? Full house.

The urge to laugh hysterically bubbled in the back of my throat, but I swallowed it down.

Death lunged for me. Blindingly fast.

But Plague, driven by her hunger, was even faster. It came between us. It didn't change much, though. In the end we both went flying, but at least she cushioned the blow. Plague, or rather the princess's body, took the brunt of it.

Poor girl. I had barely heard her speak, but I was sure she deserved better. But it was too late to think such things.

-We have to run,” I mumbled, just in case it wasn't obvious enough to my partner. I didn't get a verbal response, but the next thing we did, synchronized, was run into a wall.

She had understood.

Surely it hadn't needed me to say anything. The terror that was that being could be understood at first glance.

I passed through the wall with no problem, and Plague opened a big hole.

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And we jumped, together, into the night. Fleeing with our tails between our legs. Hoping to leave that big mess behind us, for others to clean up and search through the rubble.

Let's face it, I wouldn't be telling this story if we hadn't made it. I would have disappeared forever, without a trace, and my monstrous companion's hunger and curiosity would have been her undoing.

But it was still too soon to leave that behind.

Too soon.

Once again, I was caught in mid-air.

Not by chains, no more of that. Worse still, in fact. I fell into the clutches of Death and it slammed me against the front of the building.

“You're irritating!” I spat through my clenched teeth.

Death still didn't speak. Apparently, it had said enough and I wasn't going to get another word out of it. Good for me. I was having enough trouble as it was. Trying to do anything while its “voice” was tearing me apart was the last thing I needed.

I summoned the rest of my weapons. The two swords. Not in my hands, but above our heads. The swords fell on the black cloak, penetrating.

Then I kicked it in the face.

It wasn't enough to hurt it, surely, but at least it freed me from its grip. Only to end up against the front again, with one of Plague's tentacles wrapping around my body.

For a moment I thought she had chosen precisely this moment to stab me in the back.

That impatience had won out over hunger, but no. She simply had other ideas. Using her tentacles for support, digging them into the wall and then yanking them out, she quickly climbed up the front of the building to the roof.

Ignoring my protests and my attempts to escape her grip. I had no idea what she intended.

Could she intend to confront the thing? Perhaps she was used to being feared by the world, so couldn't conceive that there was a battle she couldn't win, and it would lead us both to our doom.

No, not both of us. I would turn my back on her.

It's not like she was really my ally, anyway. And even if she were I wouldn't follow her on a suicide mission.

We quickly reached the roof, which was big enough for a helicopter to land on. Only then did she let go of me. When my butt hit the ground, I realized it must have been raining recently. My “clothes” didn't get wet, but I noticed the dampness anyway.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” I asked her the same question I had asked her a few times, albeit in different words, along the way.

This time at least Plague deigned to answer.

“We'll get farther if we jump from the highest point.”

I couldn't question her logic, but was that her whole plan?

Death reached the roof, just a little behind us, and that very instant I decided it was enough for me. Plague helped me to my feet, but only so far. Only that far.

I ran on my own to the edge and jumped off, trying not to look down. Which didn't help much.

It wasn't a fear of heights, but common sense. As much as I didn't look, I knew I was falling from very high up and I felt it, which was perhaps more important. I felt my stomach turning into a ball of lead. I felt the stinging in my eyes and the pain in my head as the wind howled, cutting through like the inclement waves of the sea might cut through a castaway lost in the middle of that vastness. And I also felt...

I felt, above all, that I was going to die.

It was a natural fear, almost as old as the fear of darkness and fire. Human beings were not made to fly. I wasn't a fucking bird!

And I didn't fly. At best you could say I glided.

At best. Here's a more accurate version: I fell dozens of meters in the air, whipped by the wind, and screaming at the top of my lungs like an idiot.

Also flailing arms and legs, as if I could control my fall to some extent. It probably looked more like an attempt at swimming.

In any case.

Plague thought that wasn't enough distance, so she grabbed me again with one of the tentacles and threw me like, I don't know, a fucking pole. Giving me some extra distance. And extra fear, another few seconds of enduring the sheer terror of the fall.

But I couldn't complain. I shouldn't, but...

Anyway.

After an eternity and a half, I landed. And I landed wrong.

At first I thought I'd be lucky enough, looking at it a certain way, to land on the roof of a building considerably lower than the one I'd dropped from. None of that. Nothing good was in store for me.

My back hit the railing that was there to keep some idiot from falling off the roof, so ironically I bounced off it, hit the alley wall and then kept falling. I tried to grab onto the fire escape, but my hands went through it just when I didn't want to do that shit.

I wondered if I could fall through the ground and even get to the magma core of this planet.

I closed my eyes and tried to stop this before the fall went too far. I landed and it hurt, it hurt a lot, but it was quick. At least that meant I had stopped there.

In the middle of the dark, lying in a dirty alley like a bag of garbage. Anyway, it was still better than the underground.

Fuck.

How fucking crazy.

How long had it been since the chains had caught me? It couldn't have been an hour, fuck, maybe not even half an hour, but it felt like a real eternity.

I hoped the eternity I was fighting to preserve would be less painful, though.

It should be, along with my sister. But that was only if I was allowed to be with my sister. I had no illusions about being a good person, deep down, who could pass through the heavenly gates.

Oh. And even if I could, it would also depend on whether they would leave us alone.

If this experience had taught me anything, it was that you couldn't be at peace even after death. But I couldn't allow myself to dwell on such things or I would lose hope. I had to keep going. No stopping, no putting my head down.

That's what I thought as I struggled against the weight of the world to stand up in that dirty alley.

It seemed an incredible task indeed, even leaning against the wall with one hand. But I did it. I did it.

And I would keep going without stopping.

Even if I had to do it alone.

Plague had fallen who knows where and behind me. She had no one to propel her, to help her fall an extra distance, and she couldn't throw herself with her own tentacles, of course.

She had jumped in without a second thought, so she should have no trouble surviving the fall.

Or at least she'd reckoned that her chances of survival were still higher than if she turned around and faced the damn thing.

In any case, I wasn't going to wait for her, no matter how useful she was as an ally. Nothing said we were going to meet again.

I was thinking that very thing as I staggered forward, in agony, alone in the dark, and having made no progress on my mission yet. So I couldn't even celebrate surviving all this madness.

I may have been nothing more than a worm crawling in the dark, at the mercy of greater forces. Forces I could barely comprehend. But things could change. Anything could change.

And I would not let myself be defeated.

That, at least, was clear. I wouldn't give up while I could still crawl, even if I couldn't walk.

If life was a war, and damn right it was, then I was a damn good soldier. To the end.