They were walking for a very, very long time.

It turns out that hell wasn’t happy just being ominous and terrifying. The distance between what you saw and what was real was always wrong too. And occasionally something would creep out of the ground or the shadows to try and kill you. Almost like home. Then again, outside of hell Nerinai was pumped full of magic. Here? Here she was a shriveling waif.

As they tried making their way to the tower off in the distance she became progressively worse. Ike didn’t want to say anything at first. Not until he saw her nearly stumble into a crater full of squirming demon worm-things.

He grabbed her by the arm to keep her upright and realized she was panting.

“Nerinai? What’s wrong?”

She shook her head at him and tried pushing on. “Nothing,” she said, as if lying was suddenly ok. She managed another few steps on her own before tripping over a chunk of black stone and falling to her hands and knees.

Ike strapped the shovel on his back- by now it was dripping with ichor- and knelt down next to her. She looked up at him. Ike could tell that she was sick with something and he didn’t want to try guessing what. Her skin was so pale it put bone to shame. She was panting for breath despite the two of them not moving at more than a casual walking speed to avoid running into anything dangerous, and the last thing unsettled him most.

Her eyes were turning purple.

It was a gradual change, but where there had been flecks of the color before, like oil shining on water, it was consuming the whole iris now.

“Something is wrong,” Ike said, “and I can’t help you if you don’t talk to me about it. Are you hurt? Was it something you ate?”

“Please stop making jokes.” Nerinai sighed and turned to look down at her trembling hands. “It’s being here. I think there’s something wrong with my bond. Remember how I said shamans were born from a fusion of human spirit with demon ones?”

“Yeah. So, what? Your bond is breaking?”

“The bond is gone.”

Ike had no idea what that meant, but the way she breathed out the last word made it crystal clear that something was critically wrong. He swallowed and stared up at the sky to take his eyes off of her for a second. This was so far out of his league. What was he thinking coming here?

He cut himself off there. Ike knew exactly what he’d been thinking and it didn’t matter if he could save her or not. He was going to try.

“Is it going to get better?”

“Doubtful,” she said, pushing herself back up. “It’s going to keep getting worse the longer my bond is broken, and I have no idea how I could get it back. The ritual should be done at birth and last until death. I’m guessing crossing through the gate broke the links holding us together and whatever was fueling my strength is very far gone now.”

Ike stood up next to her and saw her legs trembling. He was about to say something before she tried to take a step and fell again, prompting him to reach out and grab to keep her from hitting the ground again.

“Thank you,” she said, barely a whisper.

Ike nodded and slid his arm under hers. They managed to keep moving like that, with him holding up her back and her arm draped over his shoulder for support. Ike was beginning to wonder how long it would be until he was carrying her.

He nearly smiled at the idea of carrying the Raveness, except it wasn’t an idle fantasy or a joke to poke fun at her ego. Nerinai was probably dying.

All Ike could do was help prolong the inevitable.

Their journey continued with more struggle and less words as they kept trudging across the terrain. Without Nerinai’s magic, Ike had to fight all his battles on his own. The demons were sporadic and reckless, but they were also persistent. By the fifth time Ike had chopped a demon into mushy bits and walked back to lift Nerinai off the ground he was panting just as hard as she was.

They weren’t going to last much longer out in the open, but thankfully the tower was finally getting closer.

“How long do you think we’ve been walking?” Ike asked between gasps. He was beginning to feel how thick the air was in his lungs. Besides the constant exercise of supporting his charge and battling off the occasional blight creature, the air itself was making each breathharder than the last.

“Too long,” Nerinai said.

Ike agreed.

The tower that had been teasing them from the horizon stretched up into the sky like a row of broken teeth, its stones dripping with some kind of black moss and all around surrounded by brick carnage. Just getting through was like walking through a maze, like somebody had smashed the thing with a hammer. Ike didn’t even want to know what kind of masochist would build something here.

He was relieved coming through the door. At least now, he thought, they could rest and come up with a plan to keep moving on.

But the inside was just as broken as the outside.

Ike and Nerinai hung in the doorway surveying their dashed hopes. Where the floor wasn’t slimy and empty stone, a giant crater full of murky water with glowing shapes occupied most of the base level. The stairs leading up and the second level itself have been turned into rubble, too, meaning they might as well have been walking towards one of the stone peaks.

Ike was ready to walk away from the building and keep going until they found something useful, but then he heard Nerinai whimpering. She tried to choke it down, but she was suffering.

Ike told her to hold onto the wall for support and walked into the room, clearing some of the rubble into a crude bench to sit on. He scoured every dark corner for something, anything he could use to make their situation better but everything was just rough angry stone or mushy blight and ichor. Internally, he was screaming, but he wasn’t letting Nerinai see him fail. Not now, when she actually needed him.

Instead he guided her back to the crude bench and took off his robes, letting her use them as a pillow so she could lay down and take a break.

Ike looked down at his underclothes, the thin shirt and trousers. They were stained with sweat and dirt, evidence of how long it’d been since he last had a nice change of clothes. How long he’d had since a bath. God, how he missed the monastery baths.

“Ike,” Nerinai said. She sounded on the edge of tears again. “I-I think I’m going blind.”

There had been a knot growing in Ike’s chest. Right then, hearing those words, that knot grew tenfold and threatened to swallow him whole.

The guardian, who felt so absolutely weak it infuriated him, turned back to see Nerinai’s purple eyes searching around his face for details. Reaching out and half expecting her to slap him, he gently touched her cheek. He didn’t know why, but he didn’t have anything better to offer. Thankfully she closed her eyes and held his hand closer.

“Don’t worry,” he said, hating himself for the lie, “We’re going to make it back to Cadeloch. You’ll be fine. This is just- just a roadblock. You’re strong, you know? You’ll make it. I mean, you can’t not make it, that would be ridiculous. I mean you’re you.”

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Raveness Nerinai Huntwyck was the strongest person Ike had ever known. The best person, by every stretch of the imagination. She’s been fighting the blight, the demons, whatever horrible nightmare the Judicator was, even her own priesthood since she was young enough to think. She’d been willing to bleed herself dry and throw her life away just to keep Ike alive. Ike. A guardian, a sacrifice who never meant anything to anybody.

The lady in black feathers, with the power of a god. How could she be anything other than perfect?

But here she was, powerless and slowly dying right in front of his eyes. No wonder Ike couldn’t do anything to help her. She’d always been the strongest. He was just a pale shadow trying to keep up, and by some bad, bad luck he’d tripped ahead of her.

“Tell me what to do,” he begged.

She squeezed his hand, which was still resting on her cheek, and then pushed it down again. “We need to keep moving. I think… I think something is waiting for us but I don’t know why. And I don’t know what.”

Nerinai managed to catch her breath at least, so the tower hadn’t been too awful of an idea, but Ike knew that she wasn’t fit to keep moving. Blind, barely able to stand, anything that managed to push Ike out of the way long enough would destroy her. Still, he was glad to have a command. Something to hold onto and obey.

Ike slipped his robes back on and slowly helped Nerinai get back on to her feet. She wasn’t any better at walking then she had been. Ike worked twice as hard to keep them moving.

Outside, the terrain was shifting.

The fog was getting closer and thicker, turning into more of a storm than a cloud. The wind’s which had been so calm and peaceful before whipped at their clothes now, pushing against them no matter which direction they walked towards. In the sky above, the emerald lightning was beginning to strike down like fingers reaching for the prey, and the ground itself seemed to wobble under their legs.

“Shit,” Ike cursed. Nerinai only coughed and ducked her head in response.

The two of them pressed on against the storm and their dwindling bodies, foraging in whatever direction meant forward. After a little while nothing stood out as a landmark. Even the demons had stopped coming, leaving them walking an seemingly endless path forever and forever that went nowhere.

Ike was beginning to learn that hell was not just some festering shit hole on the other side of existence, just the place where bad souls and unburied corpses sunk into when death came. Hell was empty. Hell was devoid of familiarity, of the brushstrokes of intelligent touch and engineering, of any resemblance of humanity. Alien. Hostile. Bleak. Decay. These words came to mind.

He was beginning to see that after all, Nerinai had been wrong. Nobody was going to beat the Abyss at its own game.

At the top of an olive hill, Ike’s foot caught in a foot-shaped hole and sucked into the water. He lost his footing and the both of them collapsed to the ground, tired and broken. The Raveness whimpered and curled into a ball in front of him.

Ike curled up his fists and slammed them into the mud. He screamed. A wordless, guttural shout that tore at his throat and turned the brewing fury in his stomach into something audible.

Yanking his foot out of the hole pulled something tender in his leg. Great, he thought to himself, now both of them were stuck.

He was halfway to crawling his way back to Nerinai when he heard something growling in the distance. Behind him, an exceptionally ugly demon on four legs with a pig’s face was crawling up the hill after them. Ike felt rage boiling in his chest. Rage to cover the hopeless anguish at everything falling apart around them. He got up off the ground and snatched his shovel right under the metal head, limping over to the demon, then bursting into a sprint against the sharp pain in his feet and screaming against the wind.

Once, twice, three times, over and over again Ike slammed his shovel into the horrible beast that so stupidly came lumbering at them for a meal. He clobbered the beast to death and found himself suddenly drenched in its ichor. By then he was covered in filth and the pit in his stomach hadn’t even had a taste of the righteous fury it was desperate to rectify.

He slammed his shovel into the ground and stared at the beast with his fist, punching on his knees and blinded by anger.

Why? Why, he kept asking himself. Why did the demon kill? What drove them to chase human’s like prey only to kill them like sport. Why couldn’t he go home? Why was he so weak, and why was he always coming up short of the expectations?

Tired, and with nothing left to hit, he turned his attention back to the wind.

“End this!” he howled against the wind. “Come on! Come out here and stop hiding like a fucking coward!”

He screamed himself hoarse, until his voice was nothing but a raspy whisper fighting against the wind. He screamed the words over and over again, begging something to come and kill him. Anything to make it end.

“Ike…” he heard, Nerinai’s voice so little now. He turned to see her crawling towards him.

By the time he got back up on his feet to go back to her, to spend whatever energy he had left making her end just a little easier, the wind died entirely. He stopped dead in his tracks and turned.

The cloudy fog that was once engulfing everything, the menagerie of sickly shaded clouds began to clear in frightening rapid speed, pulling away from Ike and the ground like it was terrified of whatever was coming. Deep in that fog, a shadow as black as night with eyes like burning red coals appeared in the distance.

Ike tried to swallow and found his throat completely dry. One word came to his mind, clear as day.

Judicator.

Ike felt all of the anger and anguish melt away inside of him, immediately replaced by bone chilling fright. He grabbed his shovel again and retreated, backing up to Nerinai to help her up before whatever that was in the distance got any closer.

Nerinai was shivering now. Ike knelt down, grabbed her arms and looked into her eyes that recognized nothing. That milky violet had begun colonizing the white’s of her eyes. Ike made the guess that she was entirely blind, and the rest of her body was probably close behind. So, doing the only thing he could think of, he pulled her into a hug.

“Ike?”

“He’s here,” he said into her shoulder, speaking fast. “I’m going to make it right, Nerinai. Live or die.”

“What are you talking about? You can’t fight-”

He squeezed her, probably harder than he should have, but that was probably the last time he was ever going to be close enough to try. Holding on to the Raveness felt like the right thing to do. Like maybe by some mystical force or sheer emotion some of her godly power would rub off on him and give him the strength to do what he had to.

But then it was time. He could feel it, the sharp clearing of the air, the tingle in his skin.

Ike let go of the one person who could have saved the world and picked up his peasants tool, turning up to the king of hell, the terror of six centuries of shamans and humanity on earth.

The black shadow of the Judicator closed the distance. Surrounding him was a legion of monsters, every shape and size, hollering bloody screams of hunger and hatred. The whole world distorted until they were surrounded on every side, creating a circle. Ike stood at the center with the Judicator still hovering at its edge.

The Judicator was giant, which made him terrifying to Ike. Even up close his figure was enshrouded in thick black smoke. Before him, jammed into the earth as if it hadn’t moved in ten thousand years was a sword the size that could have cut through a house.

At that moment, he wished he could have convinced Martial Donnahais to listen to him. How he could have used the old man’s savage bravery now, or his sword, or anything that the Arcani had honed and or perfected in the centuries of battling horrors that plagued man. He could have used the Crow’s impressive ritual magic, or the scholar's mysterious knowledge, or Nerinai’s godliness. He needed everything the Black Palace had and more, infinitely more.

But all he had was a shovel.

“SMALL,” careened the voice of the Judicator, speaking down to him like a flea. “SURPRISINGLY I AM BLESSED WITH TWO MEALS IN THIS MODERN AGE. WHY DO YOU LIVE, GUARDIAN?”

Ike swallowed his fear. “I’m afraid I don’t taste very good.”

The Judicator laughed at him. A booming that would have rivaled thunder.

“I suppose you wouldn’t be willing to trade bad jokes for our lives, would you?”

“NO, BUT YOU HUMOR ME. WOULD YOU FIGHT?”

“I would!”

The Judicator seemed to weigh the little boy’s words. Then, moving with the mountainous lethargy of a giant, he pulled his stone sword from the earth and waved it up in the sky.

The demons howled, screaming for their champion.

“I HAVE REIGNED OVER THE REALMS OF MEN AND DEMON FOR SIX CENTURIES.

I,

THE JUDICATOR,

THE JUSTICE OF SHAMAN’S SINS,

WHO HAVE BROKEN THE EARTH AND TORN LIFE FROM IT’S SOIL WITH BLIGHT,

WHO FIELD A LEGION OF ENDLESS BEASTS, WHOSE NIGHT WILL BE REMEMBERED AS THE DARKEST IN SHADOW,

BANE OF HUMANITY,

CONSUMMATION OF RAVEN’S FLESH AND POWER OF THE BLACK MONASTERY,

RAISE MY SWORD TO YOU, GUARDIAN!”

Power of the Black Monastery?

One last horrible and entirely irrelevant secret revealed itself to Ike at that moment. The Archon spirit that Nerinai had been fused with as a child was none other than the Judicator himself. Everything that Ike had ever known was built on a lie.

And Nerinai, poor Nerinai.

Covered in filth and exhausted from fighting for far too long, Ike lifted up his own shovel-spear in challenge.

“I am Ike!” was all he had to say.