88: Hell and fire

I awoke extremely warm, covered in sweat and with a throbbing headache. And if that was not, in itself, bad enough, Meera stood at the opening of this small cage-like contraption I’d awoken in. We were surrounded by fire and hot rock which illuminated the already sinister look on her face.
“I thought you’d never wake up… though I won’t deny how much *that* idea would really excite me.”
I growled out and attempted to lunge towards her, only to fall right through her, quite literally.
“Shh! You don’t want to wake the others before the game starts… do you?” She said with a mocking tone to her voice. I turned my head and saw that all around me were cages embedded onto the hot, rocky ground and each filled with a sleeping vampire.
“Why am I the only one awake?” I asked.
Meera chuckled and walked up towards me. She stared down at me with a smug look on her face, as if she enjoyed looking down on me.
“This is the only time the cameras are off, and I want to have a good conversation with you, Diana.”
“Don’t call me that!” I spat. She smiled, overjoyed that she’d gotten under my skin.
“Are you hiding from something?”
I rolled my eyes at her and got myself off of the floor. *Goddess, it was fucking hot here!*
But there was something rather oddly familiar about this entire set-up. The magma streams, the fire and stone… even the smell. It was so familiar, eerily so.
“Where are we?” I asked.
That was when she burst out laughing, startling me slightly. I stared at her, highly disturbed as she continued to laugh at some point even wiping tears which had begun to fall down her cheeks.
“I’m nothing if not unpredictable… so I’ve added in another twist to this game. I wasn’t really feeling the plain and boring fire realm challenge we had originally planned. So, I thought what better way to kill two birds with one stone than bring about the fire and the demons born within it. So, this round is another hybrid one… I’ve brought you to hell.”
I wasn’t even sure why I was still surprised by her anymore. Then again, sending me right off, unprepared, to the one place that could very well separate my soul from my body, was something I should have expected from her.
“So that’s why you’re here. Is this your last goodbye… Katherine?” I asked sarcastically.
“Yes. I suppose it is. Well, if your soul doesn’t leave this place, it will be. If you survive… think of it as a goodbye in advance. This will be the last time you *see* me.” She said, self-assured.
But I wasn’t so sure that this would be my last hurrah. And so, I walked closer towards her until our faces were just inches apart.
“The last time I’ll see you is when I’m standing over your dead body you bitch!”
She tisked and folded her arms. “Now, is that anyway to talk to your mother-in-law?”
“You were never my mother-in-law, and you know that.” With that, I turned my back towards her, clearly showing her that this conversation was more than over. I waited for a moment before turning back, and found her gone, much to my relief. But my relief only lasted a moment before realisation set in. I wasn’t invincible here. I could, as Meera had suggested, be separated from my body and my soul would be trapped here. And then there was the matter of getting Liam and Xavier disqualified. Since Meera had combined hell and fire, I only had this round and the celestial one left before we transitioned into the next section of the games. If I could *at least* get one of them out of this round and the other out of the next, then everything would be fine… provided my soul stayed attached to this body.
As the time began to pass by, I was grateful for the cage I was in, especially because they were locked. I could swear I was beginning to hear things. A hiss behind a rock here, claws against the ground there. And so, almost as if to torture me, the time passed by as slowly as possible and the half hour I waited for everyone else to wake up, felt more like seven hours.
By the time the last person had awoken, the cages suddenly unlocked, and the gates began to swing open.
“A warm welcome to all you contestants!” Meera’s voice filled the room, and I rolled my eyes at the pun in her statement. “I have decided to combine the hell and fire rounds due to the overwhelming success in the previous combined round.”
“Soon this room will be infested with demons, each carrying a key. However, only twenty-five of these keys will be able to unlock the door to the exit which can be located towards the far left of the room. The key needs to be placed against the door. The door will absorb the black magic from the key and allow you to escape the room. Thereafter you will immediately enter into the final round, the celestial round. Once all twenty-five players have made it through, the celestial realm instructions will be given.”
It was all making sense now. If I wasn’t separated from my body, here in hell, there’d be a chance I’d lose my soul immediately after. Meera made sure that I had no chance of escaping.
“I must inform you that, although the demons have been instructed not to kill you all, they are allowed to severely injure you. Not only that, but you can still die in this round. If you use the incorrect key to open the door, the magic within the key will rebound and vaporize you instantly. In my personal opinion, this round is particularly merciful because being vaporized is perhaps the quickest and least painful way to die.”
In my opinion, *not dying* in the first place would perhaps be more merciful than dying. But I wasn’t going to try to correct this delusional woman. Instead, I had another problem to focus on- the keys. If either Liam or Xavier used the wrong key, they were dead. The worst part was that I was damn sure that figuring out which keys were the correct keys, would be nothing short of next to impossible.
“I could not think of a worse place for you to be, than here,” I heard Liam whisper in my ear. I turned towards him, rather nervously and nodded. Neither him, nor Xavier would be impressed with the fact that I had to try to disqualify them.
“What do you mean by that?” I hadn’t even noticed that David had joined our little gathering.
“It means that Phoenix doesn’t do well in the heat.” Xavier said.
David took a glance at me, rather confused and asked whether what Xavier had said was true. I shrugged and panted with my tongue sticking out, almost to emphasise the point.
“God that’s hot…” Liam whispered. Liam’s words had done a successful job of making David uncomfortable enough to stop asking any more questions.
I took a glance around to see all of the lethargic faces around me. I wasn’t the only one not doing well in the heat. Tenebris was always quite cool and so I was sure that most of these nobles were finding it difficult to adjust. But there was something else bothering us all and I was beginning to feel it too. My head ached more than it had before, and my body throbbed violently. In fact, it felt as though a tingling sensation were running throughout my skin. Then suddenly, a severe burning sensation ran through my veins and when I lifted my hands up, I noticed a black insect-looking creature scurrying across my knuckles. I snatched at it, but it slipped right through my fingers and fell to the ground where it vanished in a dusty whisp. But I wasn’t the only one who’d been bitten, in fact, the entire room was filled with agonised screams.
“Fuck… what the hell is going on?” Liam asked.
“Hell beetles.” Said Xavier.
Of course! How could I have forgotten. I read about them somewhere once upon a time. Hell beetles were nasty little creatures which resided in hell. They were extremely deadly to humans and were often used on those who were strong willed, to weaken them enough for demons to begin the process of possession. To vampires, however, they had the same effect as grounding crystals. They kept our souls attached to our bodies. However, I had the feeling that the demons here would have no trouble tearing my soul away from my own body.
It seemed, however, that Xavier and I were the only two people who actually knew about the insects which had infected us.
“They’re harmless, for the most part.” Xavier said reassuringly to everyone. “Guess they were too cheap to use grounding crystals.” He said in a lowered voice.
By the time the last Hell beetle had disappeared into nothingness, our headaches and earlier pain had subsided. But we had only a brief moment of relief before a loud series of hisses and menacing growls began sounding. Then, suddenly I felt an intense heat engulfing my arms, as though someone with fire for hands were grabbing me from behind. I soon realised that I wasn’t even standing on the ground anymore, I was in the air. I wasn’t the only one who’d been taken from the ground. In a matter of moments, people had begun flying across the room, each with a winged demon attached to them.
In a sense of urgency, I began to struggle against the deadly grip around my arms, tearing my claws at the dark, demonic hands clutching me, until I heard a familiar voice in my ear.
“It’s me, Vincent.” It said. I stopped struggling and craned my neck, turned my head around and then gazed up at the familiar demonic face. A sense of relief flooded through me as he spared me a gentle and reassuring smile.
“Lucretia thought you could use a familiar face down here.”
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Stay safe! Stay healthy! Sending my love!