The wall of blood hit Zeke with enough force to break every bone in his body. Yet, via the wonder that was the divine-energy-infused [Hand of Divinity], he managed to pull himself back together just in time to slam into the other wave that had come crashing into him.

  For a long time, that continued, and he was battered back and forth. He barely felt it, though. Instead, he remained wholly focused on the energy within. Guiding it. Embracing it. Harnessing it, and with more dexterity than ever before. Part of that newfound ability came with the sheer volume of energy. Yet another hole had emerged in the cage, flooding his body with enough energy that he should have been dissolved right down to the last atom.

  But he wasn’t.

  Instead, he withstood it, albeit barely. Such was the effect of his constant efforts at inoculation. He’d gone through it before – with his Path of Arcane Destruction – so he knew the process better than anyone. If he could train himself to endure his own potently destructive Will, then he could do the same with divine energy. It only took time and effort.

  And a lot of pain.

  Thankfully, he’d long since grown accustomed to that, too. Whatever benefits he’d gotten from being a cambion were wholly insufficient to shield him from the agony arcing through his body. That had been the case for quite some time, so he had no protection from it.

  It didn’t matter, though.

  He didn’t need to be protected. Instead, he sank into the pool of pain, letting it suffuse him, allowing it to shape him into something stronger. It sharpened his edge with every pulse, and though Zeke knew he couldn’t endure it indefinitely, he was also aware that he didn’t need to.

  The Circle of Wrath had been conquered. He had yet to reach the gate, but he knew enough to recognize that his way was clear. It had nothing else to throw at him. Just a few measly waves.

  That meant he only had four more to overcome. He was more than halfway to the Ethereal Realm – or whatever they called it in Hell – and he would no longer allow himself to be denied. Not when he was on the downslope.

  So, as he always did, Zeke endured. He fought against the churning waves – and the eel-like denizens that took that opportunity to attack him – until, at last, the bloody waters stilled. Only then did he kick his way to the surface, and when he broke through, he gasped a lungful of bitter air.

  Lighting lanced through the sky, heralding his return, but he ignored it. Instead, he focused on a glimmer on the horizon. It was the only landmark in evidence, so he pushed his tired body into motion, swimming in that direction.

  With every mile traveled, hundreds of attacks came at him, but he repelled them with a combination of strength, fury, and endurance. He didn’t make it through unscathed, but he refused to be denied – right up until, at last, he reached his destination.

  For days, the glimmer had grown bigger until it became a massive silver ring, the interior of which shimmered with nothingness. Zeke didn’t hesitate to swim through, and soon enough, he found himself being pushed along by a current strong enough to carve a path through mountains.

  But there was no landscape. He couldn’t see a thing. Instead, he could only go with the flow of blood, hoping that it would soon end.

  It didn’t.

  In fact, his path twisted along for so long that he lost track of time and space and even his own body. It was like floating along as nothing, on nothing, and with no particular destination.

  In a way, it was rejuvenating. Zeke healed himself back to normal, then finally let [Hand of Divinity] fall away. The divine energy still looped through his body, but without him pulling against it, the volume was so low that it could do no damage to his well accustomed body.

  Then, finally, Eveline spoke to him. Until that moment, he hadn’t even realized just how much he’d missed her voice. Or how much he’d been looking forward to her return. But the second he heard that first word in his mind, Zeke broke down in tears of relief.

  Thankfully, there was no one there to see the weepy mess he’d become.

  “I think it’s probably more from stress than appreciation for my presence,” Eveline remarked. “Though I do appreciate the sentiment.”

  Her voice was the weakest it had ever been, a fact which Zeke more than noticed. So, he asked, “What’s going on with you? You get weaker with every circle.”

  “So do you.”

  That wasn’t true, and they both knew it. If the current version of Zeke found himself in the Plains of the Forgotten, he’d tear through it with few issues. Such was the power of the divine energy rushing through him. It was not just a force multiplier. It shielded him from the worst of each circle’s effects.

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  “Maybe I’m just not as strong as you, Ezekiel. Have you ever considered that possibility?” she asked.

  “I…I guess? Maybe. I don’t know. Is that what it is?”

  “I’ll be fine when we reach the other side,” she assured me. “It just saps my strength, having to erect a barrier to protect myself from these circles of Hell. I was never meant to come here. I’m not strong enough to survive on my own. Even before I lost my body, I was destined to remain in Mal’canus for the rest of my life, short as it might have been.”

  “You don’t talk much about that.”

  “There’s not much to say,” she admitted. “I lied. I cheated. I manipulated others into giving their lives for reasons they never would have if left to their own devices. I took a personal hand as well, killing my fair share. Even before that, in Mal’araxis, I was just as savage as any other demon.”

  “What about your life before that?” Zeke asked.

  “Not worth mentioning. That world is long gone. My people are all but extinct. If I’m all that’s left, it is a sorry universe indeed.”

  “What did you look like?”

  “I was a being of pure energy,” she said. “If we had met before all of this, you likely couldn’t have even perceived me, much less the rest of my world’s population.”

  “Oh.”

  “You sound disappointed.”

  “I’m not. It’s just that I thought maybe you were an elf or something. I feel sure you said something –”

  “Elves are haughty creatures that deserve every ounce of misfortune that comes their way,” she said. “They murdered and enslaved my people, all for their own amusement. We took it for eons, too. We let them do as they wished, all because a few were different than the others. We saw potential in them.”

  “What happened?”

  “I did.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Ezekiel, I don’t want to talk about this.”

  “We don’t have anything else to do,” he pointed out. He meant to gesture, but he couldn’t even feel his hands. Still, Eveline got the picture.

  “Fine. But I will only tell you this once, Ezekiel. I never want to revisit this subject.”

  “That’s reasonable. What happened?” he asked. If he could have moved, he would have leaned forward in anticipation.

  “Like I said – I happened. I watched them use my people as fuel for spells. They liked to put us in these little lanterns,” she said. “All so we could generate light. Thousands of my people enslaved for illumination, when all they needed was a torch. It was galling. I called for a council, gathering all the other wisps. I pled my case, calling for war. I didn’t want to kill the elves. I just wanted to free my people. The council refused.

  “But I had plenty of support, and I reasoned that I didn’t need the council’s approval. So, young and brash and stupid, I led the attack,” she explained. “Millions of wisps descended upon the nearest elven settlement. I killed seven of them that day. I attacked through their eyes, boring into their skulls and frying their brains. Others followed my lead, and we freed our people.”

  She sighed. “For a while, we basked in our victory. The enslaved didn’t know what to think. Some wanted to go back. Some wouldn’t even leave their lamps,” she said. “Cowards, we called them.”

  Eveline gave the impression of shaking her head. “But they had the right of it. They knew what we didn’t want to see,” she explained. “The elves came for us. They saw what we had done, and they labeled us as dangerous. Coexistence was no longer an option. They swept through our communities, slaughtering us with their magic.

  “Regrettably, I survived – at least for a while. I tried to fight back, to lead a resistance. But there was something I should have already known – they were the strong, and we were the weak. That was all that mattered. My refusal to accept that was how I authored the extinction of my people. Ultimately, it’s why I ended up in Hell. The moment I realized the opportunity before me, I refused to ever be weak again. I would not be enslaved. I would not…I would bow to no one.

  “Until you.”

  “You don’t bow to me, Eveline,” Zeke pointed out. “We’re friends.”

  “You could destroy me on a whim. I know that, Ezekiel. Don’t insult my intelligence and pretend otherwise,” she responded. “But it’s fine. I accept my fate. Do you know why?”

  Zeke said that he didn’t.

  “Because I think you can bring the entire system down,” she stated. “And maybe – just maybe – you can create something better in its place. We don’t have to live in such a stratified world. We can all be equal. Happy. No Heaven or Hell. Just…just people living in harmony.”

  “I…I don’t know how realistic that is,” Zeke admitted. Left unsaid was that he certainly didn’t believe that he was the person meant to bring such a utopia to fruition. He was a creature of destruction, a fighter that sought battle at every opportunity. There was no place for someone like him in that kind of world.

  “Do you think I don’t know that?” she asked. “I wouldn’t live in that world, either. I’m a monster, and so are you. The point is that we both recognize that about ourselves. We also know that this Framework is built to sow seeds of discord. That’s its purpose, to pit us against one another so that the strongest can rise to the top.”

  “It’s necessary. You saw what I saw. You know what awaits at the end of this road,” he said, referencing the eternal war between gods.

  “But what if it wasn’t necessary? What if that war was suddenly over? They wouldn’t need to fight anymore. They could exist in harmony.”

  “Maybe,” Zeke said, though he certainly wasn’t sure about any of that. The world she described seemed incredibly boring to him. However, that was probably because he was, as he’d so often pointed out, a man built for battle. He couldn’t be happy unless he had something to fight. An obstacle to overcome.

  “It’s just something to think about, Ezekiel. Do you think you’re ready for the next Circle?” she asked, eager to change the subject.

  He wanted to shrug, but he felt nothing. So, he said, “I don’t know. Which one is it?”

  “Heresy.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?” he asked. Obviously, he understood the concept in context of religion, but it didn’t seem quite as universal as sins like wrath or lust.

  “I don’t know. The myths say it has something to do with authority, though I can’t predict what that means,” she answered.

  “I guess I’ll just have to play it by ear, then,” he responded. It wasn’t as if the descriptions had helped him so far anyway. Chances were that even if he knew what to expect, he’d have to find his own way through.

  So, he settled into silence and awaited his fate.