The next morning, full of Deon and his chef’s cooking and precisely six hours of sleep, Ike and Nerinai finally made their way to the gates of hell itself. They crept down the steps of the tower and basement in utter silence, doing everything to avoid another run in with the Arcani or anyone else in the building. Time was already running short if Nerinai’s calendar was right, and any more obstacles would have unforeseen consequences.

The Raveness stopped by a door in the basement that looked like it led into a broom closet. She turned back on Ike with her hand on the handle.

“Do you still have the knife?”

Ike nodded. “Why?” he asked.

“Just in case.” She turned back to the door and hesitated, staring up at its hinges and frame before slowly twisting and pushing in the door. She took a step back as it creaked open. “So far we’ve found and killed twice as many demons as there should have been in the building. I’d rather be ready for a third then not.”

Ike couldn’t argue with that. He put the knife in his hand and pushed ahead of her, stepping through the door and into the poorly lit next room.

The flicker from nearly dead light bulbs illuminated what looked like a murder scene. Patterns of black ichor veins shriveled up against the walls, ceiling, bunched up in the corners, filled every inch of the room. In the few places where they weren’t totally crumpled, Ike could make out a strange pattern of hexagons. Like someone had cut through a room filled with spider webs after soaking them in ink.

“The seals,” explained Nerinai from the doorway. “Each of them would have been impossible to cross normally. No blade would be strong enough to cut, and touching the ichor would leave any normal person a husk.”

Thankfully, they’d managed to carve themselves a perfectly neat walking path. Ike had to snatch back his own hand from going near the stuff on the ground, but there was still a question simmering in the back of his mind from before.

“So, normally, you’d have to use me to get through it all?”

“Yes.”

“Right. I think I prefer this.”

“As you should, Guardian.” She finally stepped into the room, keeping at least five feet between her and any of the seals. “Without shattering the seals themselves, the only way to get through is spilling the blood of a Guardian. The blend of blight and humanity are enough to shrivel the seals long enough to step through.”

“That sounds just delightful. Also, it's a little like blood magic.” Ike started moving through the wreckage by stepping over the ichor and cautiously plating one foot in front of the other.

Nerinai followed. Wordlessly at first, then about the time they reached the door at the other end she said: “In a way, it is blood magic. A Guardian’s blood carries almost as much power as I do, but untapped. A closed cycle until it’s released and burned up.”

With that comforting small talk behind him, Ike pushed through into the next room. A waft of decrepitly freezing air smacked him on entry, and to his surprise the lights were on. He took two steps into the room and stopped dead in his tracks, with Nerinai soon to follow. Two things stopped him: the massive green tinted tear in reality at the end of the room, and the two individuals standing on either side of it.

Marcus smiled back at them. Damn, Ike thought as the Raveness folded her arms and scowled.

“Raveness! Guardian! Good for you to join us down here, and may I say, thank you for the opportunity.”

“The hell are you talking about?” Nerinai barked out.

Marcus stepped into the middle of the room, a path cut in between a dozen cluttered tables on a level beneath the landing. He held up his hands and waved them at the room itself, the stone walls, the bright electric lights. “For all of this!”-

-“The opportunity to study the Abyssal Gate! And oh my, have you seen the records left by the First Shamans?” Nerinai started down the steps, and for a minute he thought she was about to knock Marcus flat on his ass at the least, or worse. His eyes found Isibeil as both of them rushed over.

“This isn’t your place to study you damned idiot!”

“Every place is a place to study. This is scholarship, Raveness.”

She jammed a finger into his chest, knocking him off his balance. “Do you have any idea of the shit I had to go through to get down here without sacrifice? And all for you to come and spit in the face of my victory?”

“Victory?” asked Ike.

“Oh please,” said Marcus, wiping off his chest and stepping away from the scary lady in feathers. “You fully agreed to let us study after we granted you aid during the fight with the skeletal man. For that, I think we’re fairly even. Especially after my aide suffered an injury!”

Nerinai guffawed at him, but Ike looked over at Isibeil. He was right, and once he said it Ike could see her favoring one arm over the other. Had he seen that before? Either way, it didn’t really make up for the injunction past the seals. At least, not to Nerinai.

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“When did we agree to anything?”

“When we made our agreement. I believe my words were along the lines of , ‘let us study whatever we find.’”

“For the temple!”

“We weren’t specific.”

Nerinai looked back at Ike and threw an accusation pointing his way. “You see what happens when we take breaks?”

So we should have starved? He thought, but didn’t dare say.

The both of them took a deep breath, stepped away from each other and Nerinai seemed to cool off from her initial burst of anger. Ike didn’t forget that comment about victory, either. That was odd.

“Explore the lab as you like, Brother Marcus, but let me find you touching anything and-”

“Please, that would be incredibly unprofessional of me.” He bowed, then stepped back over to one of the tables and picked up a journal from where he set it down. Apparently it was his own, as Nerinai only briefly glanced at him then turned her attention back to the massive rift at the end of the room.

Ike watched her go towards it, but held off for a moment. Instead of following her right away he found a place next to Isibeil, who had been watching the whole affair like a hawk. He almost laughed as he did it. All this time and shit he’d crawled through to get to this point, and he still struggled talking before spoken to.

“Hey there- I just wanted to thank you.” He pointed down at his hip, towards the knife, and she frowned.

“Oh- just the-” he stammered, pulling out the knife to show her what he meant. “It’s a good knife, is all.”

“No problem. Is that it?”

“Yep.”

“We should probably get back to work. Your Raveness is about to jump into that portal, by the way.”

Ike frowned, then looked. Nerinai was standing dangerously close to the rift with her hand outstretched. Ike basically threw himself out from between the tables and jogged over to her, torn between looking like an idiot for his caution and feeling an incredibly quick growing sense of dread that Nerinai was about to do something incredibly stupid.

He put his hand on his shoulder when he got close enough. She jerked out of his touch, but she also didn’t touch the gate, so in Ike’s eyes a temporary win.

“Hey!”

“Hey yourself!” Nerinai said.

He did look at the rift too, maybe just to see what caught her attention, maybe just taking a glance. The swirling patterns caught his eye though, and when he looked in deeper it looked dangerously similar to the place he climbed into under the bar. Or, not actually under the bar. Whatever was on the other side of the rift left a pit in Ike’s stomach.

“Hell,” said Nerinai, answering his unspoken question. She stepped up to his side, ignoring the previous scuffle and close enough that their arms were touching. “Hell itself. I suppose I should be ready by now.”

Ike grunted his response. He just couldn’t stop staring into that abyss.

“We’ve reached a point, Guardian, where I think total honesty is the only appropriate means of speaking with each other.”

“What? Just now? I thought we reached that a while ago.”

“Not entirely.” She cleared her throat, preparing to say something difficult. “The next part of the ritual- sealing the gate permanently- requires a sacrifice. Mine.”

“What-”

“I’ll step through the portal and into hell, closing it from the inside. This is the only way I can accomplish my mission once and for all, Guardian, so I’d rather you didn’t try to waste any more time with pitiful arguments and discussion.”

“What are you talking about? You managed to spare me from dying, so why stop there?”

“Because that’s not how this works!” By the end of the sentence she was shouting, and turned her body to face Ike head on.

Ike crossed his arms in response. In all honesty, he didn’t think he had any chance of convincing Nerinai she was wrong, or to look at a different solution. So, he said, “If you go through that gate I’m coming too.”

She scoffed. “No, guardian, you aren’t. I need someone to watch this side of the door and make sure everything seals as it should.”

“And how do you think I’m going to do that all by myself? I’m not exactly magic, Nerinai.”

In silent response, the Raveness wrapped her arms around herself and stared down at her shoes.

“Look,” Ike said, “giving up now is… stupid. You aren’t stupid, by any means, so we aren’t giving up here on this.”

He looked back up at the rift and had to swallow back a tremble in his voice. “This is nothing. Just a big green swirl. No claws, no teeth, not even a weird fleshy face. Everything in the world is more terrifying than this.”

“The gate to hell does not require simple tricks to achieve the fears of mortal men. That much is achieved by virtue of its very existence.”

Ike shrugged. “Doesn’t matter.” By this point, he was pumping more confidence in his voice than he’d had his entire life put together. “Point is, nobody here is dying to shut the gate. Added on to that weren’t you the one who said that sometimes you aren’t making your own decisions? Sometimes? Well, this sounds like one of those times.”

“Ike-”

“As your Guardian, I officially deny your request to step into the portal alone.”

“My request?”

“Yes. Denied.”

Ike could see her chewing the inside of her cheek in frustration. He sure didn’t like telling her not to do something, but what was the alternative? He wasn’t about to sit here and watch her kill herself over nothing. Every other Raveness had done the same thing.

Right?

“What about the crows?” Ike asked, suddenly feeling brilliant.

“What about them?”

“Think about it. There have never been four shamans working together to shut the door since it was first opened, right? Well- we have four shamans!”

With a sigh, she said, “That won’t work Ike. I’ve run through every potential scenario and the only option is heading through the gate and leaving you behind.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I do.”

They stared at each other. Both squinting, brows crinkled up in frustration with the other. Ike was really just mimicking what she was doing in order to prove a point: that he wasn’t moving from this position. Nerinai could burn a hole straight through his heart, stab him in the gut, physically throw him out of the room, and he’d still find a way to force his way back and keep her from dying. At least, from dying alone.

“Fine!” she finally spat out, then started marching to the door.

Ike grinned to himself. He had to admit, even if the debate was over her life, winning an argument felt measurably good. On his way out to find the Crows again, he caught Marcus giving him a thumbs up.