I’m lying on the ground staring up at a putrid green sky. Trying to fracking breathe. The rotten eggs stench is overwhelming. A hot wind blows over some nearby sand dunes. It’s pretty damn strong – blasting hot sand over my skin which is quickly making it raw. This wind is carrying the stench I’m smelling. No relief from the heat either. Like air blowing out of a furnace.

I lever myself up onto wobbly legs. I look over my shoulder. The Hell Gate I came from is gone. I stare around. Nothing but sand dunes and gnarly scrub plants that look like twisted fingers sprouting serrated blade-shaped yellow leaves nearby. Some of the lower areas are damp and filled with green and purplish mud. To my west, the land rises into a rocky up-thrust among dunes. North and west, the dunes continue, backed by a distant wicked finger of some dark metal structure looming over dead lands. It oozes black smoke. The wind churning over the dunes makes a hollow wailing sound. It’s so crazy-hot I’m already dripping sweat. Thank gods I’m wearing my combat boots. Otherwise, my feet would be scorched five times over.

There is a sound of a bell ringing. It’s weird, out of place. I look around. There is no fracking bell tower – just dunes, those mean ass plants and… my searching eyes alight on a fricking skeleton on the back side of one of the dunes. It’s of some long reptilian creature with wicked looking jaws. Sooo fracking great! The bell rings again. Now I realize it’s familiar, reminding me of Beatrice. Then I remember – I heard the same sound when mom touched my forehead back at Starbucks. The displaced bell rings three more times, telling me that the time is 7-o-frigging clock. Like I need a timepiece in Hell. Well, scratch that, maybe I do.

When the bell stops ringing an apparition appears in the air in front of me. No. It is not Princess Leia. It’s me. I mean, the spitting image of me in the mirror in the damn morning in a nice safe bathroom in not Hell but on normal good ol’ Earth. Well, not literally in the bathroom mirror. A floating image of only me with no background. Just what I look like right after I’ve had a shower – all nicely dressed and clean. Except this me is the one before my current haircut. The hair is longer and tied back in a pony tail. It doesn’t yet have the red streaks. So, spitting image of me from like two weeks ago. 

“Hey Myra,” The apparition says. “I’m the Mirror Specter you made before you took up this crazy ass quest.”

So it’s a quest now, is it? Sand blows around the image as clouds begin to cross the merciless sun. I hardly feel any cooler. Like that mean sun knows where I am and can shoot beams at me even through the clouds. My left hand is dropping sparks like, well, a hand-held sparkler. So I figure the Mirror Specter was set up through my name curse. Probably activated when Beatrice sent me through the Hell Gate. Pretty nifty really. I didn’t know those Specters were used for anything other than magical librarians. And I gotta say, my Mirror Specter is way cooler than those stuffy things. The Specter me is still talking.

“… Since I am here, it means you are fracking there.” The Mirror Specter looks around. “I mean we are there. I mean here. Gods I can’t imagine what you’re thinking now.”

“Hey, don’t rub it in.” I cough the words more than talk them. The air here is vicious. Some kind of poison in it. Too much sulfur. I need to get away from it somehow.

My Mirror Specter looks at me in sympathy. She reaches out to grab my shoulder and then seems to realize she’s insubstantial. Just a ghost. Yeah, not a hologram but a ghost me with a little bit of me in it. A little piece of my soul sent to ride shotgun with me for brief periods down here in Hell. Brief because the magic that keeps it going costs. And my wisp can only recharge so much each day. But still, a little is better than nada. It makes me feel a tiny bit less desolated. Just a tiny bit.  

“I’m here to help and you should listen because I have like maybe a minute left today.” The Specter looks around. “You’re on a Hell’s beach – that’s bad. And it looks like a storm is coming – that’s worse. You need to get off this freaking beach. The air near the water is usually poisonous here, clue? Water in Hell usually equals poison air. So, you need to avoid most surface water.” She looks at my pocket. “We have water?”

I nod in reply to myself and pull the Perrier bottle out halfway to show it to my Specter. This is really fracking weird. How did I suddenly become a fricking drill sergeant?

“Good. Now pay attention. You will need to extend that water as far as you can with the duplici exemplari curse. You know, the Jesus curse?” It was an old joke. I always called duplici the fricking Jesus curse ‘cause you could literally break bread almost endlessly with it. It gave you like x500 the original material. I guess I’ll be drinking Perrier mineral water the whole time. The Mirror me has read my mind. “It might last you a fricking month, but don’t spare. You need to drink constantly here. It is too fricking hot. Drink while I’m talking for gods sake.”

I pick up my Perrier, choke out duplici exemplari, and chug down some of the still-slightly-cool sparkling water. It makes me feel better. A little.

“Now, for part 2, you’re going to need to get off this beach and find some shelter quick. Storms here are gods awful beasties.” She looks around. I can see where she’s looking. There is a sand cliff leading to rocky high ground about a half mile away. The rocks contain crevices and outcroppings. Mirror me points at the rocks. “Go to that and find shelter. It should be high enough. But get to the lee side and go as deep into a rock crevice as you can. Watch out for original owners. Gotta go.” And with that she is blown away in the sandy wind. I feel really weird – like I just lost my best friend.

The wind is picking up now and that sand hurts. But despite my Specter’s warning, I’m curious about what she said. Hell’s beach? That means there’s an ocean nearby? Probably on the other side of those dunes not far from here? Duplici has refilled my Perrier. I take another swig. I really am damn curious to see a Hell’s beach. Screw it, I’m going.

I trudge up toward the dunes. As I get closer, the air grows ever more putrid. I decide to hold by breath. It’s not easy – what air I keep in burns my lungs. I scramble over a rise and look out. Before me is a raging ocean filled with massive waves thrashing in green and purple slime. I can see pink gas rising off wave crests atop the churning toxic soup posing as actual water. Bacteria or algae material that looks like rotting flesh is piling up on shore. The foam over top of it looks like vomit. Skeletons and decaying corpses litter the beach as far as the eye can see. They probably succumbed in the poison air. Most are close to the water line. I realize the risk I’m taking is stupid. Yet I somehow feel so alive in this deadly place as I stand on my bone-cluttered dune. Out over that death sea is an advancing green-black shelf cloud. Beneath it, the ocean looks like an explosion of water and foam rising above the regular water level. I’m reminded of a film I’ve seen about the Indonesian tsunami even though this far off tidal wave like thing is being driven by a storm. The cloud is maybe 20 miles off and moving fast. Well, I saw it. I’m a goddamn Hell tourist. Now time to get the fuck out before that storm rolls in.

I run down behind the dune, still holding my breath. I take about 20 paces before I choke in some more air. It’s terrible, nasty, makes my nose run and eyes water in all kinds of bad ways. The wind is carrying the ocean toxin inland. My next breath is ever so slightly better, but it’s still bad. I’m running on toward the rocks my Mirror pointed toward. Pretty smart really, without me I’d probably be a goner. I may still be a goner. My feet pound the ground as my lungs scream at me. I have to breathe and it hurts to breathe. It’s a frigging Hell version of Catch 22. The exertion is insane as I’m choking on air and running. Behind me, the ocean is starting to growl. It’s the growl of the storm sucking water over rocks, sand, and bodies. Over it all, I hear a strange and wicked howl coming from the direction of the Hell Gate. Now what is that? Maybe the Gate is still partly open? But what could’ve made that noise?

I can’t stop to think too much as I race toward the rocks. But I’m wondering if something happened to Beatrice and Mori back there. I did leave them with three freaking Pride-Eater Demons and Ivan fucking Volkov. Not your run-of-the-mill polite evening company. Not my problem, I think to myself. But I’m worried. The howl carries on for a few more seconds, it seems to travel onward into the wasteland around me. It’s loud, even over the storm. At last, it grows quiet.

I’m still running full tilt. I can breathe a bit better now, which is a godsend, because I was really starting to run out of air. Good thing I don’t have asthma. I’d be done-in for sure. The little weirdo plants are like razor mines. One leaf slashes a small hole in my jeans. Now I’m swerving to avoid them. If I trip and face plant onto one, I’m probably dead. Who knows if they’re poisonous? Why not? The air and water are. Great!

Behind me, the storm is rapidly growing larger. It is big and green and black and mean. A towering wall stretching out over all the ocean as far as I can see. The rotten tsunami wave below it has gotten close enough that I can guess its height. Probably about 30 feet. It’s terrifying, but I’m gaining altitude as rising land has given me a much safer view of the beach. I should have thought of that before I almost killed myself on that poison shore. Hell’s sun is now completely gone — swallowed up in a big white, gray and green cloud top like fifteen miles up. The wind is pelting hard. It beats at me in gusts. Grit riding on it hits me like a power sander. If the wind gets too much stronger it will start to rip through my clothes and flesh. Seriously. No fricking joke. Fat-ass raindrops are starting to fall around me. At least these are cooler. Maybe just a little. Luke cool. They pelt me intermittently bringing with them slight relief. My hair and back are a plaster of wet sand.

Legs are starting to burn now. Running in Hell over sand uphill while breathing sulfurous air is no joke even for someone who prides herself on staying in decent shape. The strong wind pushing from behind is a help to speed me along, though. At last, my feet touch rocky ground. Before me, the outcrop rises up. It’s like lots of fingers of some kind of hard rock clawing out of the sand to poke at sky. They make crevices and canyons between them. They’re also part of a land rise perhaps 100 feet above the shoreline. I don’t even turn around to look back. The wind and sand are now too brutal. I dive into one of those pathways in the rock, make as many little turns as I can to get some shelter from the wind and grit whipping through. I cross behind three separate walls of rock and make my way to shelter in a hollow beneath an overhang before I feel safe. It’s not really a cave. But a cleft that cuts about 10 feet into one of the bigger rocks. There are cracks and crevices that run deeper. But my Mirror’s warning about ‘original owners’ makes me wary of trying to go too far in.

Cooler air wafts out from the holes. It also smells cleaner. I put my back to stone, slide myself down to a semi-comfortable sitting position, pull out my almost endless decanter of Perrier water, take a big gulp and watch the storm rage just outside. I can’t see too much because I picked a pretty protected spot. Relatively high up and wrapped in by a crescent of large stone formations. What I can see is terrifying enough. It gets dark as night outside. Sand and water are hurled around by what must be tornado strength winds. The material is all blowing away from me and I’m sheltered by many walls. So, I’m basically safe. I don’t feel safe. I know if I step outside, I’m going to be picked up like a rag doll and ripped apart by sand-razor-wind in moments. Water coming down in that roaring mess is more than torrential. I’m quickly drenched as it pours and pools in my cleft. Thank goodness I picked a higher place. Otherwise, I’d probably be swimming. This rain water seems kinder than the ocean water. I tentatively taste it. It’s still sulfurous and probably not safe to drink. I stick to my Perrier bottle.

Despite the storm’s outrageous jet-plane roar of noise, I’m getting tired. The water falling in is cool enough to be comforting, the air coming up from the cave is kind. It lulls me. Hell, I’m pretty damned tired. It’s been a long-ass day – all with drinking the memory draught, sneaking into Furze Bank, falling through a Hell-Gate, landing on a Hell beach, breathing poison air while having to run a race through razor plants against the mother of all storms. I look at my name curse. It’s still got a decent amount of magic left in it. My wisp is pretty strong and my parents did their best to use their own magic to get me into Furze Bank. All I’ve done so far is open the Hell-Gate, summon my Mirror Specter and turn my Perrier bottle into an endless refills fountain beverage. All? Hah! That’s actually a lot. But I’ve got a handful of minor curses or a couple more major ones left to me.

A permanent Ignarus curse is already running on my name curse as magical tattoo. It doesn’t always work. But it prevents most mundanes and non-magically-sensitive types from seeing the color changes in it when I use it. It also makes the sparks less obvious to them. Although, as you remember from the Pride-Eaters, it’s not fool-proof. I decide to feed a bit more curse energy into my tattoo’s Ignarus and extend it to my body. I need to rest. But I need to do it with some assurance of safety. I haven’t yet met any of Hell’s live inhabitants. But I don’t want to press my luck. The dead things on the beach didn’t look friendly at all. What should I expect? I’m literally in fracking Hell.

Ignarus amplio, I chant quietly, focusing my energy on the already active curse magic. A couple of stray sparks fall from my tattoo. I feel the curse widen like an electric field. There is a kind of snap and crackle like electricity as Ignarus envelops me.

It’s not perfect. But a girl who just spent the day breaking into Hell and surviving her first frigging encounter with it has gotta sleep. As satisfied as I’m going to be, I close my eyes and allow myself drift off. Sleep comes quick – bringing with it more of those damn ringing bells. As I drift off, I again feel a sense of duplicity. Of occupying two places at once. In one there is hard rock, roaring wind, and lashing water. In the other, there is a sense of floating and sensory deprivation. The combination makes it oddly easier to drift off into deeper sleep.

(Haven’t yet read the first chapter? You can find it here: Helkey 1 — The Memory Draught.)

(Looking for another chapter? Find it in the Helkey Table of Contents.)