The memories came back in flashes.

~*~*~

Some people believed that, after death, a soul would go home to whichever Mother they had best served in life, and the Order evangelists pushed the narrative that Mother Dark’s domain was Hell. They’d name it with all kinds of imagery—Darkness, of course, but also eternal screaming, a writhing mass of monster flesh and fangs, the stink of black blood, the choking aura of all-consuming fear, and so on. Belle, of course, had never believed in this description of Mother Dark’s queendom, but she could understand its weight as a narrative device, its power as a setting, and she could appreciate the craftsmanship.

Or, she had. Until now.

As the mines rose slowly up, up to meet Belle’s boots as if clawing their way out of hell’s very bowels, Belle realized how weak those images the Order evangelists tried to paint in her mind were, compared to this.

It looked at first like enormous, undulating, flesh-toned chains had settled in the bottoms of all the ruts running down the edge of the rocky crater below, but she soon realized that the links in those chains were actually bodies. Like filthy, animated corpses, they shuffled along, gripping each other to stay standing, until they disappeared into one of the dozens of mineshaft openings that Belle could make out through the fog.

It was a fog that took Belle a moment to notice—she’d assumed it was the Nothing that clouded her vision and bled her periphery gray. But no, it was a dead, unmoving, suffocating fog that had gathered over the surface of the lake settled in the bottom of the crater. It would be some hours still before the sun climbed its way over the mountain to burn the mist away and inflict its own hot punishment on the bare backs of the miners.

As it was now, Belle could only just barely see the shore of the lake. Her stomach turned. Some part of her that she couldn’t currently access thanks to the utterly numbing effects of the Elleipsium, told her that the lake held something she did not want to see.

Iron tracks carried along mine carts full of innocent-looking black ore, dragged along by walking skeletons. If Belle didn’t know better, if she couldn’t feel the effects of that ore all around her, she might think it was just great lumps of coal.

When their railcar rattled to a stop at the terminal and the door opened, breaking that one final barrier between her and this hell, Belle expected to be assaulted with the sounds of thousands of wailing, moaning undead, of chains rattling and guards yelling and whips cracking and bones breaking. But instead, she heard only silence.

It was like the air was so dead it could no longer carry sound. Like the fog was a pillow pressed against all their mouths. And Belle didn’t know if this was any better than having to listen to the cries of the damned—because this silence made way for strange, sick thoughts to bubble up inside her own head.

Like she was trying to swim upstream in a river of rushing sand, Belle fought to focus. This would end, she reminded herself, and when it ended, she could use whatever information she’d gleaned from this place to end it. To free them.

He’s going to leave us here, some scared Part whispered. It’s why he allowed us to come. If you step off this railcar, you won’t ever step back on it. You’ll die here. Jac too.

Jac! Belle looked around, feeling the sand weighing down her limbs, gathering in her mouth and tearing at her throat. Beside her, Jac’s face had lost its sunshine glow, her chin its proud tilt. Her eyes were dull and her posture sagged under the weight of her hammer. For the first time in the five years Belle had known her, Jac looked small and frightened.

Belle gripped Jac’s arm like it was a sturdy branch dangling over her river of sand, making Jac look around. She mashed her two-toned lips together to keep them from trembling. Belle leaned in and said, low but firm, “It will end. We will survive this.”

It had always been easier for Belle to be strong for someone else than for herself.

Though the fear still looked well at home behind Jac’s eyes, her jaw clenched and she nodded.

There was one blessing that the Elleipsium bestowed upon Belle, at least for the time being, and that was the calm, almost sleepy look Richard wore when they met him on the terminal. Belle had tried to puzzle out his odd reaction to Elleipsium a thousand times before, but had never managed to come to any satisfactory conclusion. Richard didn’t go catatonic like some, he didn’t become overwhelmed with despair like others, he didn’t get overtaken by his worst thoughts like many. He simply seemed bored, distracted, maybe a little tired.

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Until his magic came back.

Z, at Richard’s side facing one of the head guards who was to be their guide through the mines, was doing better than Belle had expected. He wore a stiff, stubborn smile like it was chiseled into his very skin.

It was the head guard, Murphy, who worried Belle. The weight of the Nothing didn’t seem heavy on his sharp, armored shoulders at all. The suffocating mist had no effect on his lungs—actually, for just a moment Belle thought maybe he wasn’t breathing. There was a gleam in his light brown eyes and an eager smile on his handsome, if weathered, face.

Belle hated that she couldn’t read his magic—couldn’t read any magic here. All around her and Jac were threats, death, and a ring of mountains that made up Lushale’s tallest walls, and Belle could do nothing should things go wrong. Belle schooled her expression, stood up straight, and made herself listen to what Murphy was saying.

It was clear from Murphy’s words, his backhanded compliments and snide comments, that he resented Z being sent here to deal with some perceived failing at the mines, but his tone wasn’t what Belle would have expected from a resentful man at all. His intonation was bright, hungry, almost sing-song. He wasn’t upset to find Z before him. He was excited.

But this was only a guess. It was impossible to be sure without seeing his magic.

She had to shake that line of thought—she wasn’t here to protect Z, much as she might want to do that. Much as she might feel responsible for his banishment. Z could read people, play them far better than her, and she had no doubt that he was doing his best to analyze Murphy right now.

Belle was here to learn about Toll, about the mines, and about whatever horrors Aran was brewing here.

She did her best to pay attention as Murphy led them to the main guardhouse, showed Z where his new office would be, introduced him to the guards. Unlike Murphy, the other guards wore the effects of the Elleipsium all over them—most looked only slightly more alive than the miners outside. They were thin within their dull armor, with great dark circles under their eyes and a sallowness to their skin. Their expressions ranged from empty to fearful to cruel. Belle wondered vaguely at the fact that they carried swords or whips, not firearms. She had expected that Aran would want her guards at Toll as well-armed as possible—

Here, this memory ended, and Belle fell into the next one.

~*~*~

There was one reason to be grateful that the air here was so dense and unmoving, and that was that they didn’t smell the Pit until they were upon it.

Most of the fog had been burned off, leaving Belle will full view of the great, foul mass long before she had to smell it. Murphy grinned as they approached, his eager eyes locked onto Z’s colorless face and tightly-clamped lips. Z’s own eyes were glazed, unfocused. His hands trembled.

Jac looked upon the mass of rotting bodies dully, as if far, far away in her mind. Belle hoped that was true. She hoped her friend wouldn’t remember this, and would never have to see it again.

But Lady Belle made herself look. Her gaze traveled from one bloated, eternally yawning face to the next. Those whose eyeballs seemed to have dissolved in their skulls, those whose blue-gray cheeks were sloughing gradually off their faces. There were few scavengers here, not even many beetles or flies to eat away at the dead flesh, so the corpses were left to their own devices to decompose slowly. She tried to imagine them as they had been in life—in true life, before they’d been robbed of their freedom and marked as property of the queen.

Though she didn’t dare say it aloud, she promised them, silently, I will remember you.

Seemingly out of nowhere, an image crossed Belle’s mind—one where she bent down, reached into the Pit, and hooked pinky fingers with the nearest corpse. Pinky promise. The absurdity of it, the grotesque colliding with the child-like to create a scene that was somehow simultaneously obscene and innocent, brought a hysterical giggle bubbling out of Belle’s throat before she could clamp down on it. Richard smirked down at her, almost proud.

Then, they heard a moan.

At first Belle thought she’d imagined it, or that it had just been a sound brought on by decomposition—gasses escaping or skin slipping. But then she saw the movement, just a few yards to her left. A gray, near-skeletal hand scraping uselessly at the side of the Pit, trying to crawl free. The moan came again, and Belle saw the mouth it had slipped from. Cracked, bloody lips and a yellowed, terrified eye were all Belle could make out beneath the distended belly of the corpse atop it.

“No,” Z whispered, stumbling back. Belle heard his stomach turn, heard his breakfast climbing back up his throat. But she kept her eyes on this body who did not yet know they were dead.

I will remember you. It was all she could offer.

She thanked the Nothing distantly, and thought that maybe she wasn’t eager to ride that railcar back up to the city, to feel magic once again. To feel what this moment would do to her, later.

Richard cocked his head thoughtfully. “You throw them in alive?”

“We throw them in when they’re of no more use. Some run out of use before they run out of life.” Murphy’s eyes shone.

Richard nodded in understanding while Z, several yards back now, vomited onto the stone.