Everyone looked at the outstretched hand, then at each other.

“Nope,” Zoe said. “No more deals. I’m making an executive decision. As much as I want to get out of here — I know we all want to get out of here — we should go to this Angel first. The Epiphany of the Flesh is our priority, and then we return to Earth. Any questions or comments?” she looked around at the others. “Excuse my tone, but I mean it: does anybody have anything they want to add?”

Skidmark tapped her chin.

“Not that I’m in favor of eating humans but… do we know we need an Angel to fulfill the Epiphany?”

“One way to find out,” Anton said as he dug in his pockets, before pausing, and looking at the others. “Don’t judge me for this.”

“No promises,” Bella said.

Zoe raised an eyebrow.

“Judge you for what, Anton?”

Anton pulled an ear out of his pocket. From the way his fingers were bunched, Zoe knew he had more than one in there. Without a comment, he placed the ear between his teeth and bit down.

Chewed.

Swallowed.

“Nope,” he said after a minute of everyone staring. “The percentage didn’t change, and I don’t feel like eating enough to find out if I need to eat more.” He offered the half-eaten ear. “Anyone else want a bite?”

“Anton…” Bella struggled to find the words. “Why do you have ears in your pocket?”

He shrugged.

“I enjoy collecting trophies.”

“That’s disgusting!”

“It’s pretty messed up,” Skidmark said as she stepped toward Bella. “Cool, but nasty, mate.”

“I understand,” said the demon.

“That makes it worse!” Bella shouted.

“Everyone, be quiet for a moment,” Oriz said. “We know we need the Angel now, but there’s a question we can ask without a new deal.”

The demon smiled at her.

“Is there?”

“You promised to take us to the Angel swiftly and safely. Now that we can cut through dimensions, has the path changed?”

“Can you cut through dimensions?”

Oriz gritted her teeth.

“Bella? The rune, please.”

Bella’s eyes paled like salt drying on stone. She passed her hand over the long-handled blade and a new rune burned with blinding fire before subsiding into the etched metal.

“It’s done,” she said, her shaky voice rapturous. “I feel the power, and I want to cut, I must…” Her eyes focused, returned to blue, and she sighed. “It’s done.”

“Well?” Oriz asked the demon.

It tilted its head and licked the air.

“Your path is shorter,” it said. “You must enter the Hourglass. You must be ready, for as you fall toward the bottom, the short one must slice through space. An opening will allow you to land directly before the Angel. However, if you miss, you will find yourself lost in the myriad Hells, and even I do not know which one will catch you.”

“And this is what you consider safer?”

The demon shrugged.

“If you fail, your path is longer. Infinitely so, perhaps, but there is infinite time here, as much as time exists.”

Zoe clapped her hands.

“No time like the present then.”

“There is no present in Hell,” the demon corrected.

“Shut up,” Zoe couldn’t suppress her grin. Things were happening again. They were finally moving! “Is everyone ready?”

After a round of assent, and not a few odd looks, Zoe stretched out her arms.

“Group hug then, yeah?”

Her chains slunk around everyone’s waist, and she grabbed them tight. There was no way she would let anyone get separated. Not this time. Friendship resonated up the links of [I Will Carry You] and she felt the load lighten. She wasn’t carrying anyone — they were carrying each other.

Making sure Bella’s hands were free and gripping the runeblade, Zoe leaped through the curtain of sand and passed from one Hell, into another.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

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Sand blasted down, a heavy weight on them all, squeezing gritty, grinding away, and then they blasted clear. Beyond the waterfall of sand, the hourglass expanded. Zoe’s eyes widened at the sight. She coated herself in [Self Reflects the World] but the pinging of errant grains could not distract her. The smell of dust and burning quartz struck her nostrils.

Vastness like she had only ever witnessed when lifting off from a plane.

Her friends and she stood ready. Bunched in a group, back to back, chains linking them. All of them were ready to fight. Zoe had expected to keep falling, but none of them relaxed now they stood on the ground.

At first, she thought she was in a desert. Her feet sunk into loose grains of sand, and it stretched out beyond her until the horizon. A vast pit of sand lit the gold of a noonday dune. She slowly sank as grains slid past her thighs, all heading down toward the center of the pit miles away. Since it was concave, the desert appeared all the larger. Glass surrounded them, ten miles from wall to wall, and it warped the horizon, for she saw the reflection of the world behind the world.

The Mirror essence within her soul twinged.

But when she looked through the glass in the distance, and the glass behind her — for they stood on the uppermost edge of the hourglass — pain filled her eyes and they slammed shut in self-defense.

Something swam through the nothing beyond the glass. The flesh of her mind could handle it no more than a pre-system hand could endure the flames of a stove.

Someday, she told herself, I will look the abyss in the eye and it shall not be me who flinches.

Her friends stood around her, sinking slowly into the sand. Zoe relaxed the chains around them but kept a single link around each of them. With her left hand, she could keep a hold of them all, and leave her right hand free for whatever might come up. If anyone felt uncomfortable with her holding them, they said nothing.

Sand continued pouring through a crack in the glass behind them — the waterfall through which they leaped. Similar cracks dotted the circumference of the hourglass. They were only dribbles compared to the vastness of the desert, but it must be enough to keep the Hourglass sustained. After all, a place like this must have been in a state of draining for thousands of years or, as the Four-Hearted Wasp would put it, no time at all.

Bella relaxed, and let her sword tip sink into the slowly shifting sand.

“I was ready to cut the portal and everything. I thought we would keep falling.”

“Me too,” said Anton. “My butt was clenched and everything.”

“Nice arse,” said Skidmark. “By the by.”

“Not now, Skidmark,” Zoe said as she turned to the demon. “You made it sound like we would fall straight away.”

The demon shrugged, an awkward motion of pure bony shoulders since she kept it wrapped tightly in her chains. The dark links clenched until its skin bled.

“Answer me,” Zoe said with a cheery voice. Even though there was no sun, the bright light was doing wonders for her mood. “Why did we land here?”

“I don’t think you understand exactly what you are talking about,” the demon said slowly. “You tell me the Gambler is dead?”

Zoe thought about the strange sensation she felt inside Skidmark and nodded, albeit slowly.

“That’s correct.”

“Well, the Gambler held these hells together. It was a work of thousands of years to build them and maintain them and now that he is dead they are drifting apart. I thought this portal would take us to the vortex of sand and ash in the center, but it did not. Punish me all you want — I would if I were in your position — but the longer you delay, the further apart the various hells will drift. Soon, I will not be able to give directions at all.”

Anton frowned.

“How can we delay if there is no time?”

“An excellent question,” the demon said with a smile.

Anton’s frown grew only deeper.

“Wait, does that mean —”

“Talk as we walk,” Zoe said. “Let’s head toward the center.”

She started, and her chains rattled as the others followed. They were not twenty paces away from where they started when the doors slammed shut behind them with a boom that sent a ripple across the sand.

“That was loud,” Anton said redundantly as he sent out his eyes skimming across the surface. “Looks like that ripple is bouncing back off the edges… oh, no, never mind.”

“What is it?” Zoe said.

“Different ripples,” Anton said calmly. “Looks like something is digging its way back towards us. Multiple somethings.”

Zoe let out the slack in her left hand as her right hand formed a fist. She missed her Trinch thighbone club, back on Earth as it was, but at least she had her fist.

“Let’s keep moving,” she said. “We can’t avoid it, so let’s just make sure it regrets coming for us.”

They started sprinting. All of them fanned out as wide as Zoe’s chains would allow. Thirty feet between them and Zoe at the vanguard charging like a bull across the dunes. Her calves sang as she sprung herself forward with Might-fueled steps. Running through sand, bounding through sand, should be vicious cardio, but Zoe’s strength made it nothing.

She saw the ripples now that Anton mentioned. Three ridges in the earth shot towards them. It must be something large underneath, and something capable of swimming through the desert as though it were an ocean.

They were close.

Zoe leaped into the air, her chains pulling taut and bringing her friends up with her. She readied her right fist as she reached the top of her arc. Her feet unraveled and reformed.

With the grace of a meteor she fell, grinning.

The ridges reached where she had been, and they stopped. Zoe could almost sense the confusion beneath the sand. The ridges swirled together, meeting in the middle, and she angled herself toward them. All this in seconds, but her Insight fed her the information.

Time, ever fluid, slowed.

Her mind cleared, Willpower forcing the commitment, and she reached for that thrumming feeling — the feeling of her feet planted securely upon her Body Path — and struck the world like a tuning fork.

Sand is a medium of vibrations, and Zoe slammed down with a resonance that burst the desert apart. The three ridges exploded. Sand plumed into the air, and with it the three bodies of the beasts. At first, they were merely silhouettes hidden by the golden rain of sand. A stench like rotting seafood struck Zoe’s nose and made her gag. Then the sand fell away, and the creatures crashed down.

They were each as long as a limousine, and leathery, like scaleless snakes inflated with sludge. Strange, coral-like protrusions grew from them like fins. Delicate and lacelike, these colorful structures became softer as they extended from the body until they were as insubstantial as mist.

“What the hell?” Anton said.

“Sandwraiths,” the Four-Hearted Wasp said as it sat itself down. “I suppose you’ll all die in a minute or so, or a minute or so ago, however it goes.”

“What?”

The sandwraiths lolled about, heads full of eyes that squinted against the glaring light. Vicious fanged maws snapped at the sun as they wriggled their way back under the surface of the sand.

“No, you don’t!”

Her chains spread out and grabbed at the worms. With all her Might, she hauled. They wriggled and thrashed, dust and sand shot up, but she held them above ground.

“Get them!” Zoe shouted.

One of the sandwraiths snapped its head toward her. A dozen eyes opened up golden and glowing like molten coins.

Her chains retracted, and the sandwraith rolled away.

“No, you don’t!” Zoe shouted, and then she stumbled, her mind reeling.

Hadn’t she just said that?