I hung from my platform in hell, knowing, as I had known for every second of the past thirteen years, that I deserved this fate. That I had had every chance to live the kind of life that would have seen me atop the Cliffs. That I had chosen this instead.

And for the first time, I found that I actually minded that fact.

Maybe it was because I’d finally run out of fingers to count the years I’d been here on. Maybe the chains were just particularly grating today. Maybe the constant pounding rush of blood to my head had become too much. It could have been anything, really, but it all added up to the same thing: it was time for me to leave.

Now I know what you’re thinking. Leave? Didn’t you just say you deserved being there? Isn’t hell an afterlife? Yes, yes, and yes. But who in their right mind would live life to intentionally end up in hell if they didn’t have an easy out anyway?

Not me. I have been many things in my life, but willingly cruel without aim was never one of them. I may have believed in what I was doing before I died, but not enough to damn myself to corruption. I had a way out. I had a Name.

It wasn’t my own, of course. As much change as I had wrought on the world above, I was far from consequential enough to be worth something like that. And even if I did have one, calling my own name from within hell wouldn’t do anything to get me out. It might even make me more aware of the endless, sweltering heat and sensations of chafing around my ankles and wrists.

No, no, it was the name of someone who was well and truly important. Properly influential among the upper strata of the true world, and likely exalted in the counterpart to my current plane of residence. They had weight. They had power. They could get me out.

I hoped.

But a Name was more than just the mundane syllables that made it up. There was a music to a Name properly pronounced, a rhythm that combined the knowledge of the exactingly correct way to say it that makes it apply to the specific creature in question and the inherent melodicism of the level of being that tended to gain a Name in the first place.

That was a bit of a problem. I only had one set of vocal cords, after all, and couldn’t produce sound layered enough to support it. Also, human vocal cords – and I was human, regardless of what some of my detractors said – really didn’t have the harshness necessary to force the syllables to clash in just the right way.

Thankfully, I wasn’t relying solely on my own vocal cords.

That’s the thing about the hybrid of resourcefulness and determination that it took to make anything of yourself in the upper world. As long as the barest sliver of that drive remained, I could never be stopped. And if there was any part of myself that would remain intact for as long as I existed, it was that.

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They wanted to bind me? Chain me, hands and feet, upside down? They wanted to leave me alone for thirteen years and expect me to lose everything that made me me? Then they can watch as I turn their punishment into the very thing that pulls me out.

I shifted my foot, and the chain rattled, links clashing with links. I shook my hand, and the metal ground against itself in a faintly musical screech. It didn’t take me long to find the rhythm I needed to take up the other half of the summoning. I had everything I needed: the Name, the rhythm, and the backing. The chant that tied them together was simple.

“Solgilan Nacintiel. Solgilan Nacintiel, I call upon you. Solgilan Nacintiel, I call upon you to repay the favor you owe and I would have you answer.”

I felt the connection take hold, though not much beyond that. Solgilan was not one of those who would broadcast their every thought at anyone who connected to them. The disruption wasn’t necessary for the kind of people who would both have their name and actually be using it.

A gash ripped itself in the air across from me, hanging every bit as much as I was, even if the being on the other side was standing upright. It was such a Solgilan thing to disregard relative spatial orientation like that, even if I didn’t recognize their current repository other than that it definitely wasn’t old Abraham the way it had been last time we’d interacted. This one was much younger and much more feminine even through the obscuring effect of the bright light seemingly positioned just behind them. I wouldn’t have thought they would have ever chosen something like that. They certainly hadn’t wanted to last time we’d talked, seemingly disgusted with everything that came with being definitively any mortal sex.

“Lord Hellbent,” the figure spoke. “We were told you died for the final time.”

“Please. Do you know how many times they’ve said that?”

“We are sure you’ve mentioned it once or twice. Maybe even a third or fourth time.” The amusement in their voice was clear, finally dispelling the doubt that this may not have been Solgilan at all.

Gods, I had forgotten how much I enjoyed talking to someone else that actually existed and wasn’t just a lobe of my brain sectioned off and simulating a conversation. Maybe thirteen years had done something to me. Maybe I really was cracking up a bit.

It didn’t matter. I paid with everything my first life had to offer to make the world what I wanted it to be. Even if I was insane, I wasn’t going to pass up the chance to claim the fruits of my labor. The thought of not taking my chance now that it was here shook me to my very core. What kind of thought was that for someone like me?

I lost myself in a spiral of thoughts in that vein until they spoke again.

“Kozani? Are you…alright?” they asked. “Why did you call us?”

I shook the stupor off. “I’m going to say it plainly, Solgilan. I want out. I’ve done what I would call a reasonable amount of time here, by the standards of the upper world. Let me out.”

“That…can be negotiated. But we will need specifics,” they warned.

“Then let's strike a deal.”