It’s another Monday morning in the Sorrow Pits and the three foot high imp named Rotneedle is already ready to go home. The air above bubbles and bursts, the infernal sky rupturing like a rotting pustule, a gaping seeping wound yawning wide as the bodies of the freshly damned tumble out like M&M Mini’s from the plastic tube.

As the Damned plunge shrieking into the boiling green soul-lava, Rotneedle thinks about taking a vacation—maybe out to the Void Sea or a scenic trip to the Abyssal Ridge. The Wailscar Rifts were particularly nice this time of year. As he frivolously ponders how best to spend his PTO, a body plummets out of the sky and flops onto the scorched ground beside him, landing with a sickening crunch.

“Ah!” Rotneedle jumps back. “Watch where you’re dropping!” He yells at the corpse.

It doesn’t reply.

The imp eyes the blighted sky. “Strange. I’ve never seen a body fall outside of the pits.”

His coworker Pusgut walks up. “Rotneedle! What’s the meaning of this?!”

Pusgut always acted like he was in charge, even though they were both simple imps—the lowest of the low. If anything, Rotneedle was a whole inch taller!

“It fell out of the sky!” Rotneedle exclaims.

“The sky? Hah!”

“It’s true!”

Pusgut tuts smugly. “Stupid Rotneedle. 100,000 souls pour through that portal per day and I’ve never seen a soul miss the Sorrow Pits in centuries. Millennia even!”

“Neither have I!” spits Rotneedle.” And I’ve been here just as long as you!” he hastily adds.

“Well, no need to dilly dally all day. Pick him up.”

“Me? You pick him up!”

“Ah, ah, ah. Regulation clearly states that whoever saw the body first has to pick it up.”

“You made that up. Besides, I can’t pick him up.” Rotneedle crosses his arms. “I have a condition.”

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“A condition?”

“Yes,” says Rotneedle. “I’m suffering from psuedo-hernia.”

“Psuedo-hernia?”

“That’s right.”

“If you’ve got a hernia, you’ve got a hernia. There’s no psuedo about it!”

“That’s why it’s so difficult for doctors to diagnose! I have all the symptoms of a hernia, but not the condition itself.”

“Pah! The only condition you have is slothfulness.”

“Shucks, you really think so?” Rotneedle smiles bashfully. “I always imagined myself more the prideful type.”

Pusgut waves him off as he walks over to the corpse. “Don’t flatter yourself. Your real sin is stupidi-“

The arm of the corpse lashes out and seizes Pusgut by the face. “-ty?”

The hand clenches, crumpling Pusgut’s features. “Aaauuuggh-“ His head explodes.

-SPLURCH-

A miniature tidal wave of fresh claret splashes Rotneedle.

Dripping in blood, the imp blinks. “…Pusgut?”

A strange, semi-translucent box appears above the corpse.

[1x Combo]

[+50xp Kill]

[+25xp Barehanded]

[+25xp One-Shot]

[+100xp Total]

[Lvl Up!]

[Lvl.1 > Lvl.2]

“What in Satan’s nam-“

- THUNK -

“AAAh!” Rotneedle hops back.

A strange metal object has landed beside the corpse.

Overcome by curiosity, Rotneedle leans in to peak. As far as he can tell, it appears to be a break action, double barrel, wood-stock shotgun. What it was doing in hell was anyone’s guess.

“But how-”

The corpse grabs the shotgun and rises.

“Aaah!”

By the time the murderous interloper is on its feet, two things have become imminently clear:

1. the corpse is very much alive

2. the corpse is very much a man.

Rotneedle didn’t know whether he should be more afraid of the gun or the log swinging between the owner’s thighs.

“Uuuuh.”

The man jabs the barrels against Rotneedle’s hooked nose, which answered that particular question.

The imp throws up his hands.

“Where am I?” The man asks in a voice that sounds like a mid-career Client Eastwood gargling gravel.

“The Sorrow Pits!” Rotneedle yips.

The man squints.

“It’s an intake port for the eternally damned. It’s where we process the-“

The man squints even harder.

“Hell! You’re in hell!”

The man directs his gaze to the pits. “Hell.”

He cuts an imposing figure against the infernal landscape, all corded muscles and sinew—or rather, he cuts an imposing figure if you are standing about ten to twenty feet away. If you are standing where Rotneedle is standing, you just have a lot of gun and dick in your face.

Rotneedle’s eyes flicks. “You’ll need a guide!”

“A guide?” The man eyes him skeptically.

“Yes! Yes! I can tell this is your first time in hell!” Rotneedle puts on his most obsequious grin. “I can take you anywhere you want to go!”

The man stares the imp down.

Rotneedle gulps.

“No deals.”

“Wait!”

The man pulls the trigger and blows Rotneedle’s head clean off.