N. D. Hansen-Hill's Writing Spirit

style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">She’d gone

down maybe a dozen stairs, following always that acrid smoke smell, her keen sense of smell

guiding her. She wound through a maze of tunnels and intersections, Ys, in the dark, arms

flailing, trusting to stink and instinct—and all the while dreading what she would find at the

end of it.

style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">She had

been right to dread. The incinerate glow leached out into the darkness, staining the corridor red

and orange. She knew, when she felt the heat emanating from within, that she’d reached

Hell.

style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">It was hot

and holed and cavernous, and inhabited by maybe a dozen robed figures. The wall lengths were

broken by alcoves; flattened bottoms with rounded arches above. A
style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">New

World solution to
style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Old

World catacombs. The roof was a giant rock chute, and the smoke

churned, eddied and swirled upwards and out.

style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">The center

was an inferno—a stone altar alternately orange, yellow, blue, red, black. Flames licked it,

dancing like the wood-coal which fed it. Dying wood which glowed with that peculiar animacy of

searing orange and bred in the efforts of sweating men in motion. Their robes flapped and their

hoods slipped, as they fought to sustain illusion in the face of toil. Crackle, snap, branches

flung and logs thudding against the base. The searing heat made the scene wobble in waves of

molten air, and already heated tempers flared to incandescence at the pyre's demands for fuel.

style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Sophie

stood there blankly, wobbling on her feet, blood leaking down her legs. She looked from the altar

to the arched crevices around the walls. The dancing orange light picked up the dull dark brown

of carbonized bone.

style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Carbonizing

bone.

style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">She was

seen…of course. By Damian and not-Damian. They were both there, but only one was hers. The other

one, she decided later in her nightmares, had been present only to show her there was more than

one demon in Hell.

style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Damian and

not-Damian had hit her, kicked her, pounded her, again and again.

style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Smoke,

fire, flames, corpses.

style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">And the

demons danced on.

style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">AND

style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Sophie lost

him in the smoke and steam. She screamed, choked on soot and swallowed water—then it was all

gagging, paddling, churning her way through the wash. The surge was relentless, all troughs and

waves, floating wood and falling stone. She was slammed against the wall and felt her shoulder

give. Sophie shrieked and fought for air. “Marco!”

style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">He had her.

Marco grabbed her, and clung. She held onto him weakly, and opened her eyes to find he was

smiling.

style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">A death’s

head grin. It was Gerald Beaumont.

style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">“
style="">Sophie!” he cried, clawing at her head, her shoulders, climbing her like a bobbing

tree. She was going under, down, when Marco snatched her out of Gerald’s grasp and flung him

aside.

style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">But Marco’s

hold on her was tenuous, and Beaumont’s frantic antics cost him. Scratch, tear, rip,

fling, but in the wildly swirling muddle, of dirt and bone, ash and wood, filthy foam and

churning backwash, Sophie was jarred loose from Marco’s grasp once more, out of his reach. He

heard her choked off “Marc-!” as she vanished beneath the rising

waters.