Memories – like gossamer threads of love, illuminated by starlight, swamped me.

Chateau Falco stood below me, strong, defiant, a bulwark of hope against a world gone mad.

Roland and Alucard stepped through a Gateway of crimson liquid, like blood.

I stared at the treehouse, a leaf blowing past the white sapling.

Tory placed a hand on the Huntress’ shoulder. They both cried.

Flash.

Flash.

Flash.

I woke with a gasp. It took me a moment to get my breathing under control, to remember where we were. I waved down Talon and Carl. I couldn’t see their faces clearly, but their posture was aggressive. Defensive.

Those… dreams couldn’t have been memories. Not all of them. I’d never hovered above Falco. Well, when I had been falling from Olympus after fighting Athena, perhaps. Or maybe when riding Grimm one day, but I didn’t immediately recall anything like that.

Maybe… I was seeing through another’s eyes. Thinking back, I analyzed the visions. I had felt… taller, as if seeing everything from a different elevation. I blinked. Alex? Was I seeing through his eyes? Had Pandora bonded us somehow? Or maybe the Ravens? Was I seeing through the eyes of Hugin and Munin? They were on my Crest, a part of me, whether I understood it or not. Then again, if Alex’s last name was Arete, he was tied to my crest, too.

Not that it really mattered, but it made me feel… detached. Not knowing the answer left me troubled. Was it a warning? Or a sign? Was it in the past? Future? Present? Or was I simply having bad dreams because I was napping in Hell, high on vaping sulfur?

Whatever it was, I was here for a reason, and whining about dreams wasn’t getting me any closer to leaving. Virgil waited for us to be ready, and then simply turned away.

We didn’t see anything particularly horrifying on our walk. Mostly we just saw tunnels. For a long time. We came out of one – like a dozen others – and I felt as if I was walking in a trance. Nothing changed, maybe different rock walls, but just more of the same, on and on and on ad nauseum.

Virgil chose different directions at forks in our path – I no longer bothered to count how many, reminded of his comment about counting – as if he knew the way by heart.

Then, I realized he had stopped at an open space. I gasped, woken from my daze.

We stood at the mouth of the tunnel, staring down into a cavern of polished obsidian. The steps before us were as ornate as a palace, lined with large bowls of silent black flame that seemed to cast a silver light, leading down into an expansive courtyard. Frescoed ceilings were splashed with hieroglyphics, Greek battles, and Norse runes. Columns of freshly polished, crimson and black marble, easily ten feet in diameter stretched a hundred feet into the air as if supporting the painted ceilings. The floor was one solid sheet of mirrored glass. Or liquid metal, I wasn’t sure which. It reflected the frescoes high above, creating a distortion, as if the place was much larger than it really was – and if any place needed to look larger than it was, it was not here.

In the courtyard, dozens and dozens of Calaveras lined a wide walkway that led to an empty black throne carved with roses. I jolted, suddenly wary of possibly meeting Lucifer himself.

The Candy Skulls watched as we descended, their heads rotated impossibly to watch us without their bodies shifting. They did twitch occasionally, cocking their skulls sideways as we walked between them towards the large, black throne. They didn’t attack, but they looked ready to do so. Many of them were different forms of arachnid-like creatures the size of cows, but I saw a few that resembled the bodies of ogres, trolls, even some made of rock, not wearing robes. They all seemed to sniff the air as we passed, and a whistling noise escaped from behind their masks as if they were excitedly sucking in breath through their teeth. Or as if their windpipes were too decayed to simply let us hear them inhaling in a normal fashion.

Or maybe they were just fucking whistling in approval.

Behind the throne was a turbulent sea of fiery magma, black spires like oil derricks clawing up from the raging ocean. I couldn’t see the ceiling, but black and green lightning hammered down across the horizon, slamming into the lava. Each strike birthed a new stone spire, but occasionally those forks of lightning would strike an already existing spire, obliterating it into a million pieces of rock that splashed back into the molten sea, then melted back to whence it came.

I turned back to the throne and froze. It was no longer empty.

A tall bare-chested man sat gripping a bronze staff with alternating stripes of blue glass, obsidian, and gold, the top of the staff a flail of sharp, glass beads that seemed to absorb the silver light from the bowls of black flame on either side of his throne. Light, athletic muscles were obvious under his oiled, bronze skin, similar to my build. Okay, maybe bigger, but not by much. White wraps of gauze covered his abdomen and he wore a shimmering golden kilt with sapphires sewn into the knee-length hem – unless the skirt was actually metal, like chainmail.

I couldn’t see his face because he was wearing a tall black mask that almost anyone could have recognized, regardless of their faith – a black jackal.

The mask had two tall pointed ears and a long thin snout. Where his eyes should have been only a dark, almost indigo flame, like I was staring into the deepest part of the universe, a black hole devouring a star. He bowed his head slightly and thumped the butt of his flail into the floor. The Calaveras crashed to their knees, if they had them, doing that odd whistling sound.

“It’s so good to see you again. Call me Lord. Or Anubis,” he said, staring into my soul.

I replied with a slight dip of my jaw, wondering what the hell he was talking about. Again?

“Anubis…” I replied formally, surprised to find him in charge. I may not be an Egyptian scholar, but even I knew there had been a change in leadership – that Osiris had stepped in as Lord of the Underworld at some point.

“Of course it’s a fucking dog. Hell is run by a fucking canine!” Talon breathed, barely audible, not sounding the least bit pleased.

Anubis barked at him and Talon flinched, fur puffing out like a blowfish all over his body as he fell to all fours, arching his back. He hissed instinctively, hopping sideways a few times.

I blinked at Talon in astonishment.

Anubis roared with laughter, his face unchanging. “Oh, this will be so much fun. I hardly get out anymore…”