Bella helped Zoe sit up while hurriedly explaining the events of the last non-day in Hell. As they moved on the bed, the floorboards creaked, and mushrooms leaked spores into the air — scarlet, mossy green, and scintillating gold. For a moment, the spores caught the light of the cracked door and the two women were quiet.

“Oriz got her Skein back?” Zoe said. “I’m relieved to hear that. You know, I’d hoped one day to heal her, but…”

“Nobody ever expected that of you.”

“I did and I think she —”

“We rely on you, yes, but we are strong in our own right.” Bella gave a cheeky wink, “I’m even a higher level than you, mate.”

“Oh? I’d win in a fight.”

Bella snorted out a laugh.

“That’ll never happen.”

Zoe smiled as the bright spores danced around her laughing friend.

“Good, good, now help me up. I want to see this island.”

They moved out onto the deck, still wreathed in steam from the Angel’s dripping veins. Only a small glimpse of the Angel was possible from where they’d parked the cove. Zoe gazed for a half-moment, before bloody tears welled in the corner of her eyes. She squeezed them shut, but the image kept pounding behind closed lids, blood drops splattering against the deck with the same rhythm as those molten drops falling into the bubbling marsh.

Was that the Angel she climbed in her dream? Or was it all a feverish monstrosity? She was tempted to summon the map, to check, but if it was the case, then she would trade away a sliver of her soul. Though she knew — not with certainty, but with dread — that the deal was true.

“It’s intense,” Bella said with sympathy. “Though you’re taking the heat better than the rest of us.”

“I always enjoyed saunas. Feels like I might sweat out everything that’s wrong with me.”

“That sounds nicer than this feels.”

Zoe gazed at the shore of mud and rock and the slope leading up into obscuring steam. There was something wrong with her, something different. She felt it inside her Skein, as though the fabric had rewoven itself while she wasn’t paying attention. Maybe it was paranoia? Her [Harmonic Sympathy] could show the truth. Even her status might reveal it, but…

She just needed rest.

Needed to move.

Activity was the cure to restlessness, doctor’s orders.

“You said the others went onto the island?”

“Yeah, a few — hours? — ago. I was waiting here and looking after you.”

“That was sweet,” Zoe squeezed Bella’s hand — chain against flesh both damp with the humidity — and smiled. “But I’m done lying around. Let’s go catch up with the others.”

“You sure that’s a good idea?” Bella smiled as she gathered what scant supplies she could raid from the mushroom-crusted ship.

Zoe rapped the rotten balustrade and more fungal spores leaked out to drift on the swirling currents of air.

“We don’t need this boat anymore. There’s a well on the island. After we eat the Angel, we climb down the well. That will take us where we need to go.”

Bella carefully placed a glowing nodule of fungus into an ancient leather rucksack.

“How do you know that?”

“I saw a map in my dream,” Zoe sighed internally at the half-truth that slipped so easily from her tongue.

Bella slung the rucksack over her shoulders and lifted her sword. She was ready to go onto the island. Ready to fight.

Could Zoe beat her in a fight?

“Saw it in a dream, huh?” Bella repeated. “Is this a case of ‘I cut you and the parasite inside my friend flees for safety’, or will you just tell me what you’re talking about?”

Zoe gripped the mossy railing. She wanted to tear it free and throw it into the steam. Instead, she faced Bella.

“The Four-Hearted Wasp came to me in a dream and offered me a deal.”

“Zoe…”

“No, it’s not… I know, ok? But it was a nightmare, and the demon offered me a map. Offered me navigation. Not just out of hell, but back on earth. It’s a way for me to look for all the things I’ll need to kill Rue.”

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

Bella stared at her, white-knuckled on the sword.

“What’s the price?” she whispered.

“Every time I use the map I give the demon a percentage of my soul.”

“You think it won’t make you keep using it? You think there won’t be a trick?”

“I know there’s a trick! I know that. I’m not stupid, Bella, I’m desperate! We’re stuck in Hell, but now I know how to get us out. And what happens once we get out, huh? Well, now I know where to go!”

Bella blinked. Her grip tightened, before slackening, as she placed her sword at her side.

“What’s the point of having us here if you don’t let us watch over you?”

“I need you. All of you. Are you… are you still with me?”

Bella nodded.

“Sure. You wanted to catch up to the others?”

“Yeah.”

Bella leaped lightly onto the balustrade. The rotten wood sagged under her weight, but held.

“Then let’s go.”

She kicked off toward the shore, a fluid motion that shattered the balustrade and sent mushroom-covered fragments down to the bubbling marsh. Zoe followed with a leap that split the deck and, as the two women bounded up the slope and into the steamy mists, the ship slowly sank into the waters.

###

Higher up the slope, where the steam grew thick but cooled into a warm, almost pleasant mist, a forest of glassy trees sprouted from the rock. They felt strange to Oriz. At once alive, and dead, but more than that — she recognised the shapes, and the echoes of her path, in these trees, but felt no resonance of Skein. These plants were of Sand and Fire, and not of Wood. It was at once a frustrating, and joyous feeling. She would have loved to see and touch plants again — real plants, not the false verdancy of the Gambler’s Green Room — but these were uncanny mockeries.

Regardless, her Skein was her joy, and each step sprung like a flower blooming after rain.

The others, however, trailed behind her. Though the steams were fine now, the heat had robbed Anton and Skidmark of their strength. Despite their strengths, they were the lowest level of the party with 25 for Anton and 23 for Skidmark. That they were still alive after this long in hell was a miracle.

That held for them all, she added in the depths of her thoughts, in the dark loam where grass roots only stray. They were all lucky to live, but miracles were to be expected when dealing with gods. She hoped this luck didn’t have a hand on the other end of the line, reeling them in.

What if the Gambler’s death was just part of a larger game?

It had been a few minutes since she last saw one of the glass trees with its leafless branches, and the mists made the flat land at the top of the island a strange nowhere space of barren rock where she could only see a few yards in any direction at once. She stepped off the cliff before she realized it was there. One foot dangled in the thick wet mists obscured the edge of crumbling black stone before Oriz drew her step up short. Her breathing controlled, movements aided by the flexibility of grass, she reveled as she stepped back twice. The lip cleaved away. A bread loaf-sized rock tumbled down into the mists. It vanished, and the steam swirled back into place before Oriz heard the splash.

“How is…” Anton staggered up behind her. “This easier? That rock is crumbling.”

“It needs something to hold it together.”

She crouched at the edge of the cliff and planted a palm upon the webwork of moisture filled cracks. Black and lifeless despite the heat and swampy life of the water. How long had the Angel bled here to make this swamp like this? Certainly a few thousand years at least. Probably older than any single civilization on her planet.

Yet not long enough to bring life to this rock, such was Hell.

Good thing she was here.

She gathered her Skein; its nature, character, and tenacity. It rushed through her arm and down into her palm. Rustling through her veins. She tasted the bright morning dew as she pushed a tangle of her Skein into the stone. This wasn’t a technique, but a pure expression. Grass sprouted amidst the cracks of the rocks and rapidly spread. Roots dug into the cliff face as runners sprouted and spread. Anton stepped back as shoots spread around his feet. Skidmark stood on the edge, panting and leaning on her knees, watching with wide eyes.

Oriz stooped and plucked a ropy runner dangling off the edge. Without a word or a wink she stepped off the edge of the cliff with the length of grass growing in her grip.

###

Oriz rappelled down the cliff face with ease. Her grass was strong and living in her palms and it cared for her as she lowered down. Every time the runner touched against the rock, it sprouted roots that grasped a hold of and secured the crumbly black stone. As her route grew ever more anchored, Oriz reached the Angel’s ear.

She hadn’t really thought about which part to cut, but now the decision confronted her. The ear was twice her size. It would be a formidable feast, and large enough for everyone to eat until they were sick.

Would it be enough for an Epiphanie?

She suspected — Anton’s display not withstanding — that there was more to cannibalism than eating an ear. Cartilage and gristle was not a meal: they needed meat. She extended the runner with a kick off the ear and swung out onto the shoulder.

The Angel didn’t move. Oriz let out a sigh of relief. The Angel was in some kind of stupor. It matched her theory: half-measures could not contain a being such as this. If it could move, it could escape.

So far, her theory held true.

The shoulder’s flesh felt stable beneath her feet. This close, the brilliance was more physical than the rising heat. She tasted the light in the air — the purity — and it made her gag at what she was about to do.

No.

No sanctity with the Crimson Armada. The war machine churned, and if one must become a blade to avoid being blended…

She steadied herself atop the ridge of breathing marble. Shudders passed through the skin, and Oriz wondered if she could cut it at all. Her blade might be sharp enough, but would the skin permit such transgression?

Only one way to find out.

Closing her eyes for a moment of silent, thoughtless prayer, she conjured a long curved blade. The Angel hung slightly forward from the rock, and with a grass blade longer than she was tall, Oriz sliced through meat above the scapula. Her blade parted the glowing skin. Blood boiled forth and ran in hot rivers down the Angel’s flank. She examined her sword.

The charred stalk extended only a few inches beyond her hand, and when she opened her fingers, even the hilt had grown yellowed and cracked. She let it fall from her grip and as it fluttered toward the water it burst apart into dried fragments.

The heat was too much. Pure life burning, molten in form, like metal prepared for a cast. The amount she sliced was far less than she expected. With a sigh, she conjured another blade, tensed her knees, and readied to strike deeper and faster — a flensing blow to the glorious flesh —

The Angel twitched an eye.

An orb as tall as her strained at the peripherals. Pulsing white sclera frayed the limits of flesh as it reached for her. Iris of galaxies. A pupil she could crawl inside.

She met its gaze and —

Stopped breathing. Stopped —

Thinking.

Fell into the pupil — that dark shaft — no suction only open arms and judgement and —