Seven times thereafter, Lauren heard something else entering the cavern. Seven more times, they all approached her growling and snapping with malign intentions. And seven more times, she felt the contractions as the strange, foreign muscles attached to her lower back systematically dispatched the new invader.

Each time she heard a corpse crumple to the ground, she tried to shut her eyes tighter and squeezed her palms into her ears to drown out the horrible sound it made.

And then, just when she felt like she was about to break, it was over, and an eerie, empty silence permeated the space. Lauren welcomed it eagerly. She felt as though she had finally broken the surface after hours of holding her breath beneath the waves.

In time, the anxiety that had been holding her in place faded into a nagging sensation in the back of her mind, and she felt like she could open her eyes again.

Save for a few unidentifiable mounds of flesh and bone that now littered the immediate area around her, she found her surroundings largely unchanged. Everything else persisted, and even now, her body was still suspended in the air.

‘How am I even supposed to be feeling right now?’ she tried to reason with herself, ‘Scared? Disturbed? Sick to my stomach?’ No amount of horror films, slasher flicks, and crime shows could have prepared her for the things she had witnessed today.

A part of her, too, felt a little revolted at how unaffected by all of this her body seemed to be. ‘Shouldn’t I, at the very least, be reacting to my own feelings? Shouldn’t I be shivering or feel nauseous? Something?’ In her previous life, too much anxiety was enough to lay her out. She’d feel sick, or like her heart was about to burst out of her chest.

But there was nothing. Just stillness, and a pervading warmth from somewhere deep inside of her that never ceased, like a fire burning in her chest that refused to go out. A fire that felt neither painful nor comforting. Just…there.

Time passed as she reflected. It certainly wasn’t fair to say she was getting used to her new situation and surroundings, but she was learning to accept them. The cave, the bodies, all that happened; no amount of trying to shut her eyes and ignore them was making them go away, and it was futile to keep doing it.

‘More to the point, I should probably think about getting out of here,’ she pondered. ‘It's obviously not as safe here as I was originally thinking, and given the number of times this has already happened, I can’t bet on it just stopping because I’m awake now.’

Of course, the first obstacle in this case was that she was still floating in the air, though this was soon remedied. The simple act of wondering how she was supposed to get down seemed to be enough to nullify whatever effect was keeping her there, and it wasn’t long before her bare feet touched the cold ground below, finding the one unsullied patch of ground left in the vicinity.

‘Gross…’ she thought as she brushed up against the remains of an animal-like carcass. ‘I guess it's probably not a bad thing that this doesn’t sicken my body like it does me. I feel like if I start throwing up now, I’m not going to be able to stop.’

Pushing the thought out of her mind, she began to look for a way out. ‘These creatures probably didn’t pop up out of nowhere, though then again, it's not like I know where I came from either.’

She took a step, then immediately retracted it when she felt her toes dip into a pool of viscous liquid. Blood. Lauren could feel the ‘stomach’ in her mind churning.

Off-hand, there didn’t seem to be much light down in this horrid abyss, but it didn’t seem to matter. A little went a long way, and there was enough that she was beginning to make out vague details of things. As a result, she also realized something else: macabre as it was, the pool of blood at her feet allowed her to see just the barest form of her reflection, and she knelt to examine it.

Perhaps the first thing she noticed was that she was still human, or rather, human-shaped, and judging by the mold of her body, still a girl, which was something of a relief. In all likelihood, she would’ve identified as such regardless, but it was still good to verify.

Moreover, she was…incredibly young. Going by looks alone, she didn’t appear to be more than eight to ten years old. ‘That’s problematic. It’ll be a lot harder for people to take me seriously if I’m walking around in the body of a child, pretty or not. In fact, that might even be worse.’

But her youth was overshadowed by one glaring fact: though she shared many traits, it was blatantly obvious that she was no longer human, as evident not only from the gigantic draconian tail that sprouted from the small of her back but also several other distinctive features which soon became apparent.

Though she possessed skin, it was a sort of smokey gray, and while she was somewhat alarmed at being nude, her forbidden zones, as well as several other areas of her body were covered in a chitinous carapace, specifically around her joints and down her back along the spine. It was tough, but flexible, almost like armor plates melded over vital portions of her body.

In addition, she recalled that her head had felt ‘heavy’ ever since coming into this world, and only now did she see why: two bony protrusions were growing out of her scalp, coming to sharp, jagged points several inches away from her head. In addition, another, much thicker and heftier pair also grew back from her temples, spiraling back and forward again.

‘No way…’ she gasped, running a clawed finger across the horns. ‘Is this for real?’ Her eyes, which were almost completely black except for a flickering orange glow in the center, glided across her form. Just what had she become?!

Lauren felt a shiver run down her spine. The hair on the back of her neck immediately stood up. There was a presence. Something else was in the cave with her. Something trying very hard not to be seen.

In one action, Lauren had risen from the ground and spun around, hands raised to defend herself. Her tail, too had tightened and become erect like that of a snake preparing to strike at another aggressor.

A soft, yellow-green glow flitted around to the other side of a nearby pillar just in time to avoid being caught up by her ruthless appendage, which slammed into the stone and sent shards of it flying in all directions.

It returned to her afterward, resuming its readied posture, which made Lauren feel at ease. She could move and manipulate her tail at her leisure, but the fact that it reacted automatically to threats like a sixth sense was reassuring. It meant that it was that much harder to catch her off-guard.

There was no movement in response, nor any sort of cry, but the presence remained, albeit faintly, hidden behind the pillar.

“Whose there?”

Up until that point, Lauren wasn’t even sure if this new form could speak, or maybe it was more that she hadn’t yet worked up the nerve to try. She was surprised, however, to find that the voice that passed through her lips was not all that unfamiliar. It sounded very much like her old voice, albeit somewhat deeper and accompanied by a sort of whisper-like hiss that harmonized with her.

“Show yourself!” she commanded. As she did, she felt something pulse inside of her, which quickly emanated into the room, blowing up her voice and rattling loose several pieces of rock from the area.

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“She beckons,” a voice answered, much to Lauren’s surprise. It was a faint tone. “The Mistress beckons. We answer.”

From around the pillar, a glow emerged. At its center, a strange, ephemeral light hovered, blinking softly in and out of existence.

‘Another Admin?’ was Lauren’s first thought. ‘No, it doesn’t look the same. It’s a lot smaller and doesn’t seem to have a body. It's more like a light without an origin point…’

“Con…fu…sion?” the voice echoed from within the glow, albeit it was diminished and quiet, almost like there was a wall between it and her. “I…see. I am also…confused. Lost. Drawn. Like the others.”

“The others?” Lauren responded, though realized what it meant shortly after. It was talking about the creatures that had come before. With that in mind, she added, “Are you also here to attack me, then?”

The light sat, flicking silently for some time. It was obvious that it was concentrating, trying to find words, a fact that seemed to affect its form, causing it to dim noticeably.

“We…will not. We cannot. We would not,” it said, hovering lower as if to show submission, “We are weak. Meaningless. A shadow fleeing from your light. We…serve. We wish to…serve, Mistress.”

This much, Lauren felt she could believe. It wasn’t exuding the same malign intent that the wolfish creature and other monstrosities had. And even if it did, now that she could see it, it didn’t seem to register to her as a threat as evident from the fact that her tail had lowered and now rested on the ground beside her.

The thing she didn’t know what to do with, however, was what it was asking of her. ‘Serve? Serve what? And why does it keep calling me Mistress?’

Either way, this was a creature she could speak to, which meant perhaps she could find out more about what was happening. “Before that, I have questions. Namely, who—or rather what—are you?”

The thing seemed to glow more brightly when she spoke to it, which was telling, though now it dimmed again until it found the words it wanted. “We are…not. But we…were. Once. Now we are only memory. Spirit. We are a spirit. We are a will.”

‘A spirit…so it's a ghost? Wait, will? As in a will o’ the wisp? I think I remember encountering them in video games.’

Lauren nodded her understanding, which seemed to bring more life to the light. ‘Is it happy that I get it?’

“Do you have a name? Can I call you something?”

The wisp dimmed even more than before, to a point where she could barely see it. “We cannot. We have not. Forgotten. Lost. Like us.”

“I see…” Lauren regretted bringing it up. ‘It seems like it has some recollection that it was alive at one point, but it doesn’t know the details, and trying to remember them is painful to it. Guess that makes sense. It must’ve been traumatic...’

A pit had started to form in her throat, which Lauren immediately pushed down.

“Anyway, I don’t know what’s going on, but do you happen to know where this is or how to get out?”

The change of subject was enough to bring back the wisp’s vibrance, and for once, it seemed eager to respond. “Deep. Down. Where dark things dwell. The Pit, they call it. Forbidden. No one goes. Nothing returns from the Gravestone.”

‘Well that’s unsettling,’ Lauren swallowed. ‘The Pit, and something about a Gravestone. This place certainly fits the former, but I’m not sure about the latter. If I had to guess, I would say that’s the name of the region, or maybe some kind of landmark. I can’t say I’m thrilled about being born under that auspice, but I guess I don’t have much of a choice.’

“We wish. We want…to serve. Serve her Grace,” the wisp repeated its plea from earlier. By now, it was dimming to the point where it blipped out of existence for longer intervals, which read, at least to Lauren, to sound like its way of showing that what it was saying was meaningful or urgent.

‘It's trying hard to convince me. I can’t imagine why, but it's been useful so far, and I don’t think it’ll attack me. That being said, if I recall, wisps of Western legend in my world were spirits of temptation, leading victims into traps.’

A part of Lauren smiled, ‘I’ll have to remember to thank Eden for that little nugget. I never thought her interest in mythology and folklore would come in handy.’

As she made this internal promise, a fleeting image came to mind of her sister sitting next to her on a bed, describing the monsters Lauren was fighting in a video game with a big book on legends in her lap. It was a simple memory of two sisters enjoying their time together, but she treasured it nonetheless.

“Well, I would feel weird having a servant, but either way, I’m glad for the help,” she eventually complied. After a moment, she thought about it and decided to add an extra clause. “But can you stop calling me things like ‘Mistress’ and ‘Your Grace’? It’s a little embarrassing.”

“Cannot!” it responded, becoming bright and vibrant again, and the clarity of its speech improved. “Will not! Would not! You are my chosen master. Mistress. Dark Lady. Demon Queen! To address you otherwise? Folly. Filthy. Foolish! False!”

‘D-...d-...demon…queen?’ Lauren had surmised that she wasn’t human, and was prepared to accept any number of explanations or guesses as to what she had become. But the truth—supposing this wisp was telling the truth—was still staggering. ‘A demon?! Seriously?! As in, like, a fallen angel of the pits of hell?! You gotta be kidding me!’

Lauren’s mind reeled at this. Of all the things that she could have spawned as in this world, she had become to very antithesis of life and goodness.

And a queen?! ‘In retrospect, it makes sense, what with the fact that I’m apparently oozing enough raw power to attract a bunch of monsters here to kill me.’

She drew in a breath, letting it out slowly. ‘Maybe the wisp is just being cordial before a being of greater power? It may be just adding the term Queen because it wants to serve me. That doesn’t change the fact that I’m a demon though. Ugh, how am I supposed to face my sister as a demon of all things?!’

“Distress…” the voice of the wisp pierced the silence, pulling Lauren out of her thoughts, “The Mistress…worries? We have said something wrong?” Lauren could sense that it was upset, which made her feel bad.

She sighed, then shook her head. “No, you’re fine. I’m just not used to…well, never mind. Its nothing. If it makes you feel better to call me that, then it's fine. But I need to be able to call you something, too.”

The wisp brightened again but said nothing. ‘That’s right, it doesn’t have a name to give to me. In that case…’

“I’ll just give you a name myself then. You’re a will o’ the wisp, right? In that case, why don’t I call you Whisper?”

As she said the word, it echoed throughout the room, far more than she had meant for it to, and in response, the brightness of the wisp flooded the immediate area to the point where it briefly blinded her.

When the glimmer subsided, the creature remained, but Lauren could tell that something was different about it. Several other small lights had joined it, swirling about in a semi-translucent ‘nucleus’. It also had a much brighter passive glow, enough that it easily illuminated much of the immediate space.

“Thank you for giving me a name, Mistress,” the voice was much clearer now, and much better articulated. Not only that, but it sounded like a human voice now, with a definable, effeminate tone, and was referring to itself as a single being rather than ‘we’. “I am Whisper, a will o’ the wisp, and I will do all that is in my power to serve you, my Queen. Please, use this vessel however you see fit.”

The change surprised Lauren, who tried to reason what had happened. Did the act of granting the creature a name somehow increase its strength? ‘It does feel different, like parts of its scattered consciousness were drawn back into it, allowing it to form full thoughts and construct complete sentences. It still doesn’t feel dangerous to me, but I can understand it with greater clarity now. This is great! Now I might be able to ask it more complex questions, and maybe it’ll be able to tell me more about this world I’m in! But first things first…’

“In that case, do you think you can show me the way out of here?” After all, this was still a dangerous situation.

“You wish to leave the sanctity of your Domain? Very well, Mistress. We will need to travel up through the remaining six floors if you wish to venture outside.”

‘Six floors?! Just how deep is this place?! No wonder they call it the Pit. Can’t say I’m thrilled about being six floors under the Gravestone. That’s a little too on the nose.’

“Let’s talk more as we go,” Lauren nodded, taking an eager step, only to hear the snapping and crunching of bone and flesh beneath. ‘Ugh…the sooner the better…This place creeps me out.’

As she took a few more steps, however, a hopeful feeling washed over her. Somewhere beyond that dark entryway was the path forward. The one that would lead her to Eden.

‘I just…hope she isn’t frightened by what I’ve become…’