“It is said that ten thousand years ago, there were no Demon Springs. The mortal and immortal realms lay distant,” said Sabina. “But the Lord of Demons Ignatius was not satisfied. He sought the powers of gods and devils. So he gathered the tribes as one, and dug. For centuries he dug, making vast tunnels, seeking to touch the entrance of Hell. He would not live to see it done, but his son Ignatius II took up his mantle, and his son after him. For a thousand years they scavenged the darkness, and the darkness became a part of them. They built great cities in the depths. They grew fearful of the light. Through it all they dug—and some say they forgot why they were digging! But it is hard to stop a thing once it has been in motion so long… and at last, untold centuries after his death, Ignatius was proved right.”

They all nodded along the circle. Ruyi had no doubt they’d heard this story a hundred times before. But Sabina paused anyways, enjoying the suspense. Her voice grew hushed.

“One day, they set their picks on a layer of stone darker than any other, a stone which swallowed all light. This stone was so hot that to touch it melted flesh and muscle alike, and through it, faintly, one could hear the screams of the damned…”

“The gates of Hell!” gasped Ruyi.

“Just so,” said Sabina. “No pick could break that stone, nor any Art. Then the strongest of the Lord’s Guard, the mighty Hardrax, set his hands upon it. Seven times he struck the stone, and by the end of it there was naught but bones on his arms. But he cracked it. He did not break it open—just a crack—yet it was enough. He had cracked forever the wall between Hell and the mortal realm, and ancient, wicked creatures poured through. They took him first, and his brethren, and though the Lord’s warriors fought bravely none could stop them; like a great flood they fell upon demonkind, and those they touched were changed. They were touched with powers meant only for the gods. Their minds were unmade. Most of demonkind perished in those depths. Set your ears to the ground in the dead of night, and some say you can still hear their howls… The rest fled, and their shamans sealed the caverns with ancient, forbidden magics. But they could not seal it all. A few times a year, when the fires of Hell burn hottest, the seals are undone, and the essence of Hell springs forth on mortal soil!”

Thereafter followed a long quiet, filled only with the shrill screams of wind, the soft cackling of fire. Then Ruyi said, “Um. Why are we going toward it, again?”

Sabina laughed. “Because, silly one,” she said, ruffling Ruyi’s hair. “It is not only a great danger—it is the greatest of chances. The essence in those depths is the blood of devils. Taste it, and it is not unheard of for a demon to jump a realm in a night! A week there is like a year outside. And that is not to mention the treasures. There lay knowledge long lost, the ways of the ancient Brewers, the ancient Smiths, who raised cities of floating bronze, who knew the secrets of immortality. There lay essence stones far greater than any we find on the surface. And best of all, there are the beasts…”

Sabina licked her lips. “Those creatures touched by Hell cannot die. They roam the depths, waiting. Theirs is the flesh of devils too. And should we eat it, we take in a shard of the gods. We are all Demon Queens and Demon Kings! Our growth is nearly done… unless we make the powers of Hell our own. Ignatius showed the way, and to him we are forever in debt. We follow in his great shadow.”

It struck Ruyi then that this wasn’t a cautionary tale. She was so used to hearing this sort of thing framed as hubris for humans. But everyone around the fire ate it up.

“Come now, Ru-yi,” said Sabina, laughing. “You cannot tell me you are scared. You faced a devil of Hell, and you broke them!”

That wasn’t how Ruyi remembered it. If anything Ruyi felt it was the other way around. There were parts of her that cracked in that dungeon that she felt would never heal. Sometimes you healed from pain stronger, but she knew she couldn’t take that again. She would become like those demons touched by Hell. Sometimes she felt she already was. Then she thought about it happening to her friends.

“Sabina,” sighed Darius. “You’ve overdone it. Just look at her.”

“Eh? Oh!” Sabina blinked. “Have I truly—I’m sorry! I did not mean to frighten you.” She wrapped Ruyi in a big strong hug.

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“You are strong,” said Sabina softly, nuzzling her ear. “Stronger than you believe. And you do not need to worry.” She grinned. “I am strong, too. I will protect you. And in there, we will all become stronger together.”

Everyone was nodding along. Ruyi felt helpless.

“I just want you to be safe,” she said lamely. She couldn’t say she loved them, but she did.

“Sabina was being dramatic… she makes it sound like we’re marching on Hell itself. She could make crushing a gnat sound like a glorious battle. No-one is going to die,” sighed Darius. “They monsters in there are dumb brutes. We are the Demonland’s best, and we hunt them as a pack. We are not stupid, Lula.”

“Oh…”

“And you ought not let death frighten you so!” added Sabina. “A bad death is a bad thing, that is true. But a good death, a brave death, that is a good thing. It is not about how long one lives. It is how well. So says Selecius. Ignatius and his kin, they died good deaths. They died striving, and they have gained immortality in legend. I wish the same for all of us. Be brave. Be strong.” Sabina patted her head. “But Darius is right. It will not come to that.”

Ruyi didn’t wish a good death for any of them. Ruyi wished none of them would die, ever—she swore it to herself. She would make sure of it.

***

They were set to arrive a day early. The shamans took it from the stars—the land told them nothing; it was always the same here, just one flat black expanse fuzzed with purple grasses. There weren’t even trees for shade. They saw the ground undulating in the distance sometimes, like waves on an ocean, and Livia said they were packs of wyrms migrating, but none got close. Once they spotted a pack of sleek silver windwolves—they didn’t dare come close either. Aelia pointed out some sky serpents that Ruyi thought were clouds at first.

Most of what they saw were other lesser demon tribes. Really they were more packs than tribes. Great herds of lumbering yak-demons milling about chomping on the grass, or flocks of demon vultures. Only the dumber ones, the larval ones, dared charge them. They became the night’s dinner.

***

They made their last camp a ten li march from the site of the Spring. There, the praetorianus held their last practice.

By the time it started, Ruyi had been practicing thirteen hours straight.

A fervor had seized her. She couldn’t sleep. She kept throwing herself at Winter’s Wrath, splattered facefirst into it like a bird at a window-pane, picked herself up, and kept going. She wasn’t exploding anymore, but she kept screwing up when she got to the last step, the step the Technique was named for. Winter’s Wrath was a rising storm which ended in a crushing avalanche. At least, that was what it was meant to do, but it was an incomplete Technique— it left that crucial last step incomplete. She had to figure it out for herself.

The more she tried it the angrier she got—at it, and at herself for not getting it. How was she meant to build up all this pent-up essence, and let it loose all at once, and not explode? She was starting to think it was a great big joke. Maybe it was incomplete for a reason; maybe the original author never figured it out. She tried again, again, and again, but there was no such thing as a controlled explosion.

At last with a strangled cry she threw herself on Dow’s back and buried her face in his fluff and lay there, facedown unmoving, for the best part of a half hour. She spent the first half of that time thinking about what a failure she was, and the second half imagining all the awful things that would happen because she was such a failure. She kept seeing faceless monsters, red-eyed and long-toothed, and they were all coming for her friends, and she would throw herself screaming at them and bounce right off their scales. She fell briefly asleep, then had a nightmare about it and jerked back awake. She screamed into Dow’s back. He snored on, uncaring.

Ruyi knew at some level the world probably didn’t revolve around her, even though she felt like it did at least eighty percent of the time. But it was hard to reconcile that with a trend she’d seen all her life—she could do anything and have anything if she wanted it badly enough. If she wanted it badly enough, the world would give it to her.

She’d spiraled like this enough times she could tell what was happening to her. She let it happen. For a time she’d tried to stop it, to make herself numb to feeling, but it wasn’t who she was; she knew that now. She was never going to be cool, and she didn’t want to be anymore. She wanted to be sad, to be scared, to be desperate; she leaned into feeling. She let herself unravel; she let herself implode. She let herself want as badly as she could bear. It was not the kind of wanting a happy stable person could have. It was much more severe, a wanting made painfully acute by deprivation.

When she put herself in that place, it came to her.

It was so simple.

There was no such thing as a controlled explosion. There was no such thing!

What she’d done wrong from the very start, from her first try at it, was that she was scared. She’d hesitated.

“Good morning!” It was Sabina, waving at her, smiling like usual. Ruyi blinked the spots out of her eyes; after so long in the dark seeing her face was a revelation. She seemed like a ghost, unreal somehow in the pale predawn light.

“Ready for practice?”

“Yes!” Ruyi got down from Dow’s back. “I want to try something new.”