"What the heck is that?" I said as I looked down at the green landscape abuzz with the chirping of birds.

"Let's just say it's a place where your talents can come in handy," Anisa said.

"Come in handy for what purpose, though?" Lily asked.

“He did say he wanted us to fetch something for them,” I said.

“Precisely," Roderick said.

I narrowed my eyes. “Are we really the right people for the job?"

“I'd say there's no one better than you for this,” Anisa said, smiling.

“I'll hold back the flattery for now,” Smokewell said, “Tell us what it is that you said you wanted us to fetch?”

“It's an artefact called Eyes of Cornelius,” Roderick said.

Smokewell cocked her head. “What does it do?”

Anisa’s smile remained comfortable on her lips. “You shouldn't concern yourself with that. Your job is just to go and get it for us.”

“I didn't sign any contracts,” Smokewell said, “I don't have to do anything you say.”

“But the girls have signed it,” Roderick said. “You do know how the contract works, right, Alana?”

The cat remained quiet, glaring coldly at the smug angel.

Lily's face was losing all color from fear. She leaned closer to the black cat. “Madam, they didn't give us a chance to read anything. How does the contract really work?” she whispered.

“Tell her, Alana,” Anisa said. “Don't you care for your pupil.”

The cat's face was unreadable. But her eyes were focused on Anisa. “When you sign their contract, your halo gets marked with an aura of sin.”

That didn't sound good. I looked over at Lily's halo but it didn't seem much different than how it had been the last time I saw it. Then I noticed somethig. A small crimson ring had formed on it. It looked like a bloody thread had been wound around it.

“That sin will keep growing bigger and more prominent if you keep resisting the terms of that contract,” Smokewell said, “If your halo turns completely red…he will come and slice you down. And it turns red pretty fast.”

“Wait, back up a bit. Who will slice us down?” I asked in a small, terrified voice.

“Escalyan,” Somekwell said.

Lily and Asmod shrieked in unison. “That's the God of Justice! I thought he was just a mythical figure from the scriptures!”

“Did you forget that we used to be a part of that same myth?” Roderick put an arm around his sister's shoulder and they both smiled. I hated those smiles.

“So are you going to help your pupils now, Alana? Or will you let Divine Judgement strike them down?” Anisa said.

The pupils in Smokewell's eyes narrowed down to needles. Then she arched her back and turned to Lily and I. “Seriously, I die for one day and you get me in this mess the moment I resurrect?”

Both of us remained silent in our guilt.

Roderick turned to us. “Once you enter through the door, your hexonomicons will give you certain directions to guide you in that world." He pointed at the leather bound notebooks we were carrying.

"You should get going now," Anisa said. "You are on a deadline."

"What?!" I gaped at them. "How long?"

"Five hours."

"What?!" I gaped at them again. "What happens if we don't return in that time?"

"You'll be stuck there forever," Anisa said. “And it's not a good place for mere mortals.”

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

****

On our way down, I grabbed the broom and straddled it mid-air. I focused, trying to make it fly. It didn't.

My heart sank. Why wasn't it working? I tried to focus harder. But nothing happened. Before I knew it, my ass was on the ground. Lily landed next to me, graceful as a ballerina.

Surprisingly, the impact of the fall hadn't hurt me. No, the fall was the least of my worries. The cat was giving me a deadpan stare. "Why do you have the broom between your legs?" Smokewell said.

"Oh...that um..." I don't know if the truth would've been more embarassing if I'd said it out loud, compared to what they were seeing in front of their eyes.

“You won't be able to make that thing hover until you've spent two decades studying it,” she said. “You really thought you could make it fly?”

Then another bit of information surfaced into my mind. Brooms served multiple purposes to the witches in this world. The number of purposes a witch could use the broom for depended on her profieciency of hexes. At my current level of expertise (or Old Elsa’s level, more precisely), the most I could do with the broom was cleanse an area of ritual and help add more power to them.

I guessed the reason this information hadn't come to me sooner was because I'd sub-consciously made my judgement that brooms let witches fly. I hadn't expected it to serve a different purpose. It was still just a guess. But I would need to figure out how these memories worked later.

"Open your hexonomicons," Smokewell said. "Tell me what they read."

I opened my leather tome and something appeared on the last page.

Dungeon: Belly of the Paradise.

Objective: Retrieve the Eyes of Cornelius

Time left before Dungeon Entrapment: 4hr 59mins

Smokewell scoffed. "Just as I thought."

"What do you mean?" Lily said.

"An old fable that I've read talks about a game that gods play where they make mortals go to a dangerous place and do things," Smokewell said as she hopped on top of a rock and arched her back. "Some interpret it as an allegory for life and all that crap. Not me. I knew that this game was real and it was a game where people died running errands for Gods. This is probably one of those."

"Um, I think calling it a game is...putting it mildly, don't you think?" I say.

"It's a game for those above." Smokewell pointed at the sky. The door had disappeared. “Those dangerous places were called ‘Dungeons’. Hardly any mortals in those fables I read could finish the errand.”

“Um why was that?” Lily asked anxiously.

“They died before they could get to the objective,” Smokewell said, “But the fable always ended with the same old moral--the way out only appears when you achieve your goal.”

“So the door will appear once we find the Eyes of Cornelius,” Asmod said.

I swallowed hard. "Seems like we'll just have to play the game then."

"Then we should start by scoping out the area," Asmod said and dug into the pouch on his hip. He pulled out a deceptively small folded piece of paper. When he unfolded it the size of it was that of a king sized bed spread.

He painted several symbols on the sheet with blue ink rather than the red one he used to make the greeting cards with. The spots on the sheet he had made the symbols on twisted and detached themselves from the paper, transforming into paper birds and taking off into the air. They dispersed into the sky before disappearing out of sight.

After about ten minutes, Asmod said, "There's a graveyard to the South. A temple to the East. A village to the North West. And a city up North. I'll make a bird land on each of these check points to mark the locations. Some birds are still in the air. They'll alert me if anything weird or dangerous comes our way."

"Perfect," Lily said. "So, which of these places would the Eyes of Cornelius be?"

"Temple," Smokewell said, "If the angels are drooling over it, then it must be something that belonged to the gods. It won't hurt to check the temple first."

Asmod nodded. "Temple it is then."

"Wait," I said.

All heads turned to me. I adjusted my hat nervously. "Have you guys considered what we'll do once we find the Eyes?"

"Go home, of course." Lily shrugged.

"What else are we supposed to do?" Smokewell cocked her head.

"Yeah, that's the thing," I said. "We don't have a home. I know Asmod will let us squat for a while at his place but what comes after that? Also, we are not sure about the status of the Inquisition. They are probably still hunting for us. Our names were still on their list, remember?"

There was a pause of a thoughtful silence. Then a gentle gust of wind. I kept talking.

"We know the angels are powerful. They could've come to get those Eyes for themselves. But they sent us instead. Doesn't that mean that something is stopping them from entering here?" I said.

"Do you mean that this is the place where they might've been exiled from?" Lily said.

I pointed my broom at her. "Bingo!"

"Bingo?" Asmod frowned.

So that wasn't a game or an expression in this world. I'll keep that in mind.

"Think of it," I kept talking, "there might be something we can take from here for ourselves and sell it off. There must be something worth taking from a place that can forbid people like the Malcolms from entering."

"But, we only have five hours," Lily said.

"Yes," I said, "That's why we should split. Two of us can go get the Eyes. The other two can find some valuable loot. Asmod's birds can keep us informed with each other’s location. What do you say?"